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Campaign to Cut Waste: .gov Effort to Improve Federal Websites

Summary: 
The .gov reform effort, part of President Obama's Campaign to Cut Waste, is working to identify websites that can be consolidated or eliminated in order to reduce costs and improve the quality of service to the American public.

Yesterday, we took a major step forward in improving how you get government information and services online.  For the first time, the federal government has published the list of all .gov domains managed by federal executive branch agencies– all 1759 of them! 

Before today, no one – except for the few folks who manage the .gov registry – has had a clear picture of what our federal web space looks like.   Now, anyone can see how many different domains and websites agencies manage, what topics they cover, which sites may duplicate or overlap with others, and which sites are no longer being actively maintained.  As part of President Obama’s Executive Order on Customer Service and Campaign to Cut Waste, we can identify and consolidate unnecessary websites, saving money and providing better service to the American public.

We invite you to view the list of .gov domains and give us suggestions in the comments section about how we can best use this information to make good business decisions.  If you’re a developer, download the dataset, make discoveries about the data, or provide us with a creative way to visualize the .gov domain.

In the next several weeks, agencies will review each domain on the list and gather key metrics that will help determine what action to take – to maintain the site, merge the content into another existing site, or eliminate it.  At the same time, we’ll launch a national dialogue to engage the public in conversation about improving federal websites.  We’ll tap into voices from every corner to ensure we have broad input -- from students, teachers, and librarians to the tech industry, scientists, innovators, and anyone who has an interest in improving the online customer experience with government.

We kicked off this initiative yesterday with a live video chat, and you can see much of that great conversation by watching the #dotgov hashtag on Twitter. We’ve also enabled commenting on the domains dataset. Making government data transparent can spark the creativity of many bright minds across the country, and we hope you’ll explore, discuss, and remix this data, and maybe even use it to map the .gov domain in ways we haven't seen before.

The .Gov Task Force will oversee all of these efforts, always looking for more ways to keep the conversation going.