USA.gov Not Enough? Now GovInfo.gov Tries to Mind the Gap

February 15, 2016

I love it when US government indexes proliferate. The consultants enjoy the fruits of their duplicative labor. The folks looking for information have another choice. I thought that USA.gov, produced by the ever reliable GSA outfit, was the portal to US government information. There are some caveats; for example, classified information is not on USA.gov and there may be some servers’ content which is either not indexed or scrubbed. Where are the public documents related to health care contractors who assist the various agencies in rooting out fraudulent medical claims? Good question.

I learned that I can “discover US government information” at www.govinfo.gov. I did a quick check of the site, ran a couple of queries, and browsed documents in alphabetical order. I like alphabetical ordering.

Several observations:

The query “CIA budget” returned an eclectic list of documents. The top hit was a privacy act. I expected no less.
The browse list revealed a category approach. Clicking the “plus” sign allows drill down. Lots of drill down.
A number of links directed me to another Web site so I could order documents.
I ran the federal budget query on USA.gov and was directed to yet another US government Web site, not the GPO Web sites.

When I browsed the site, response time seemed a bit sluggish. A small banner reminded me that the site was in beta. At some point the GovInfo.gov site will replace the Government Printing Office site.

I have no strong opinion about these government “find information” sites. There are a number of them. Redundancy is good for jobs, good for contractors, good for consultants, and good for those who know which US government site to consult for which specific document.

Now about those vendors supplementing investigations of medical fraud? I know the documents were available. I downloaded them from www.cms.gov a couple of years ago. Poof.

Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2016

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Government, News, Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.