Clinton Holds Online "Fireside Chat" While Being Serviced By White House Intern.

June 24, 2000 11:01 AM

Clinton Holds Online "Fireside Chat" While Being Serviced By White House Intern. The Prez took this "historic occasion" to unveil a new federal web site - firstgov.gov, a sort-of government portal that would link up to all federal web sites. Firstgov.gov will begin a multi-city advertising blitz once it secures $254 million in venture capital funding. And just wait for the IPO.
posted by solistrato (2 comments total)

And this whole thing will be built in 90 days, by an outside company, for free. Oh yeah. You know that's going to be some well-architected and useful stuff. I'm guessing in that amount of time all they could do is build some kind of specialized search engine for all the existing government sites, which is a step in the right direction at least.

It would certainly be interesting to see some kind of uber-site that amasses all the government information into one cohesive site. But in order to do something like that properly, it would take a whole bunch of time, and a whole lot of cooperation from disparate government agencies, and I don't think that's gonna happen anytime soon.
posted by endquote at 3:30 PM on June 24, 2000

I'm confused, since "fedworld.gov" was supposed to be just such a government portal. It grew out of the venerable Fedworld BBS.

That said, it would be nice to have a web page that effectively performed the adage, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you."


posted by dhartung at 8:15 PM on June 24, 2000