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By Peggy Garvin

As any student of American government knows, the United States Constitution creates a system where power is distributed among three independent branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judicial. The Constitution also balances the powers of the national government against the powers of the individual states. Distributed power has advantages for a democracy. For the researcher, it means that government information is distributed, too.

USA.gov

In a large and decentralised system, online finding aids that aggregate information across agencies, across branches and across the states are essential. Top on the list is USA.gov. This official government portal is run by a federal executive branch agency, the General Services Administration, but includes all branches of the national government and state information in its scope.

Use USA.gov to browse for government websites by topic, such as Consumer Guides or Science and Technology. The default screen shows information organised for U.S. citizens and for specific subsets of that audience, such as military veterans. The next tabbed screen links to information specifically for and about businesses. Since the General Services Administration is the registrar for the .gov domain, their USA.gov site also serves as an excellent directory of federal government websites.

USA.gov maintains a directory of state government websites as well. Most states use the .gov domain, but some - such as Texas at http://www.state.tx.us - use an older domain format and others - such as Florida at http://www.myflorida.com and Idaho at http://www.accessidaho.org - do not use the .gov domain in their primary site address.

USA.gov's directory helps you find the official site, even when the URL strays from the standard. Local and tribal governments use an even broader range of top-level domains. USA.gov maintains its own centralised list of links to tribal sites but defers to outside organisations, such as the National Association of Counties and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, when it comes to organising the jumble of local US government sites.

USA.gov has a government-wide search engine, USASearch.gov. Powered by Microsoft's Live Search and Vivísimo's clustering engine, USASearch indexes federal, state, local, and tribal sites. Use the advanced search to filter results by federal or non-federal status, or by a specific state name. Some tips:

• When viewing your search results, use the Agencies sort tab. This is a handy way to discover which agencies deal with a specific topic, technology or industry.
• Use the More link at the bottom of the Agency sort display to see all websites with hits. The most helpful agency may not appear in the top ten.

Both USA.gov and USASearch may lead you to some non-government sites. The General Services Administration links to reliable outside sites when they complement their own finding aids but does not flag them as such. Only .gov and .mil (for the US military) websites can be trusted to be official. Some .org or .edu - or even .com - websites may be official, but you will have to draw upon your own skills and knowledge to make this determination.

One search engine is never enough, and Google provides an alternative to USASearch. Google U.S. Government Search indexes .gov, .mil, and other known government sites, just as USASearch does. Google Government Search and USASearch each try to identify and index official sites outside of the .gov and .mil domains, such as the National Defense University at http://www.ndu.edu, but their coverage varies.

Cross-Agency Portals and Statistics Sources

In an attempt to offer government information by topic, rather than by agency, the US government has created cross-agency, subject-specific portals. Consumer.gov, DisabilityInfo.gov, Grants.gov, GovBenefits.gov, Recalls.gov, Students.gov, and many more can be found via USA.gov. Cross-agency or topical sites of particular value to business researchers include:

• Business.gov for the small businesses audience
• Export.gov for export assistance
• FedBizOpps.gov for federal government contracts announcements
• Regulations.gov, for announcements of proposed federal regulations.

The US does not have a central statistical office at the national level, making FedStats.gov - the one-stop federal statistics portal - a research favourite. Another key statistics source, The Statistical Abstract of the United States, pre-dates the web. Back in 1878, a government official recognised that 1) the government collected a lot of data and 2) the data would be more helpful if compiled in one location. Now in its 127^th print edition, The Statistical Abstract also lives online. As it has done from the beginning, The Statistical Abstract supplements government tabulations with tables from non-governmental sources. All tables are clearly sourced.

Legislative and Judicial Sources

The Library of Congress THOMAS site serves as the central portal to resources from the US Congress, including the two chambers' sites at http://www.house.gov and http://www.senate.gov. The Government Printing Office, a legislative branch agency, offers publications of the legislative, executive and judicial branches on its site at http://www.gpoaccess.gov.

The Administrative Office of the US Courts maintains a centralised website at http://www.uscourts.gov on behalf of the individual courts. The Court Links section of the site provides map-based links to court websites and, just below the map, links to major judicial resources.

Centralised State Information

The US national government has gained much ground since the nation's founding, but states retain more power than researchers from unitary governments may realise. States often lead the way in regulation, as they are currently doing in areas related to climate change. When looking for state-level information, researchers know to turn to unofficial finding aids that centralise the information. For example, USA.gov links to many unofficial sites in its own directory of state government office sites by topic.

If you don't mind the commercial links on every page, State and Local Government on the Net is an easy place to find state and local information by state and topic. What this site does not cover, an association website probably will. There are professional associations or organisations to represent just about every government role. For example:

• The National Conference of State Legislatures links to the state legislatures' websites. It also has a valuable collection of links to 50-state legislative surveys by topic, such as mortgage foreclosure, prescription drugs, and financial privacy.
• The National Center for State Courts links to state court sites, court-related organisations, state court structure charts (each state is different!) and more.
• The Federation of Tax Administrators links to state revenue offices and 50-state comparisons of tax rates.

Back at the .gov domain, Business.gov has a State & Local section with links to information on business licensing, incorporation, and related topics, by state.

Librarians to the Rescue

Many university libraries produce guides and one-stop portals to government information. Two of the biggest and best are:

• The University of Michigan has a huge directory of government-related links.
• The University of Colorado at Boulder organises and annotates federal government sites by topic.

An association of government documents librarians, the Government Documents Roundtable, maintains a portal to state agency web databases. If you're still stumped, ask a librarian. Government Information Online is a free, public ‘Ask A Librarian' service supported by a group of US public, state, and academic libraries.

Related Links:

URLs for sites mentioned in this article:

Administrative Office of US Courts: http://www.uscourts.gov
Business.gov: http://www.business.gov/
Directory of State Government Offices by Topic: http://www.usa.gov/Agencies/State_and_Territories/Agencies_by_Topic.shtml
Export.gov: http://www.export.gov/
FedBizOps.gov: https://www.fbo.gov/
Federation of Tax Administrators: http://www.taxadmin.org/
FedStats: http://www.fedstats.gov/
General Services Administration: http://www.gsa.gov/
Google US Government Search: http://www.google.com/ig/usgov
Government Documents Roundtable (ALA) Portal to State Agency Web Sites: http://wikis.ala.org/godort/index.php/State_Agency_Databases
Government Information Online: http://govtinfo.org/
Government Printing Office: http://www.gpoaccess.gov
House of Representatives: http://www.house.gov
Library of Congress THOMAS: http://thomas.loc.gov
National Association of Counties: http://www.naco.org/
National Center for State Courts: http://www.ncsconline.org/
National Conference of State Legislatures: http://www.ncsl.org/
National Defense University: http://www.ndu.edu
Regulations.gov: http://www.regulations.gov/
Senate: http://www.senate.gov
State and Local Government on the Net: http://www.statelocalgov.net
Statistical Abstract of the United States: http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/
University of Colorado at Boulder Directory of Federal Government Sites: http://ucblibraries.colorado.edu/govpubs/us/federal.htm
University of Michigan Directory of Government Links: http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/
US Conference of Mayors: http://www.usmayors.org/
USA Search: http://usasearch.gov/
USA.gov: http://www.usa.gov/

By Peggy Garvin

Peggy Garvin is an independent information consultant. She is the author of "The United States Government Internet Manual 2008" from Bernan Press and a columnist on the topic of government information for Searcher magazine and LLRX.com. She writes, trains and consults on the topic of US government information. Contact her at peggy@garvinconsulting.com.

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