Gateway Celebration

Comments from Paul Mamo, Office of Management and Budget

The Renaming of this road Science.gov Way is a fitting tribute to science.gov, a gateway to the vast world of government science research results.

Soon after George Bush assumed the Office of President, he outlined 5 major management priorities for his Administration. One of these priorities is "Expanded Electronic Government."

My primary responsibility as Assistant Administrator for Information Technology and E-Government at the White House Office of Management and Budget is to make the President's vision a reality. Science.gov is a major step in that direction.

By making the R&D results from all the science agencies accessible and searchable from a single site, science.gov enables citizens to easily find and learn about the results from hundreds of billions of dollars worth of government investment. This is truly transformational technology. Before science.gov, if citizens were to learn about government research results, they first had to figure out which agency did the research.

I am particularly gratified to see science.gov become a reality, as it stemmed from seed money for Department of Energy and the National Technical Information Service arranged through my office in OMB. The funding was specifically aimed at developing search capabilities across information collections on the deep Web, a powerful tool that citizens can now use on science.gov.

Science.gov is also transformational in that it exemplifies a new spirit of collaboration among agencies to advance the people's work. Even for long-time federal employees like me, it is difficult to recall another example where so many agencies partnered together on a voluntary basis to produce such a beneficial and concrete outcome. Science.gov presents a model for other e-government efforts to follow.

I congratulate my former agency DOE and the staff of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information for being such effective champions of the President's e-gov priority.