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:
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 127th 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.
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.
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:
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/
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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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.
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