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Press Releases: Government to Citizen

October 17, 2006

FirstGov.gov Adds Two New Search Capabilities

Washington D.C. - Two key features designed to allow citizens to locate news and images across federal government sources are now on FirstGov.gov, the government’s official web portal, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) today announced.

"The addition of the news and image service is another step in our continuing efforts to provide citizens with the best service possible on their Federal web portal, FirstGov.gov," said GSA Administrator Lurita Doan. "This is one-stop shopping for government information made better today and we will continue to find ways to make it better tomorrow.

FirstGov.gov provides official information from multiple federal, state, local and tribal government resources. The search function, located in the upper right hand corner of the portal, allows a user to search data across these official online sources. Accurate and applicable search results are integral to citizen satisfaction, and the additional news and image search features add relevancy and capacity to the FirstGov.gov search offerings.

These features enhance the search technology introduced for FirstGov.gov in January 2006 and, as promised, demonstrate FirstGov.gov’s continuing commitment to add features that enhance the citizen’s ability to locate government information and services. With these new features, citizens can access current news or images from official government sources. The FirstGov.gov search technologies are currently powered by Vivísimo and Microsoft.

FirstGov.gov, the award-winning federal portal, provides government information and services to citizens, businesses and other governments, and is an integral part of USA Services, one of the Presidential E-Gov initiatives created in 2003. USA Services delivers information and services to citizens through multiple channels. This includes the Internet, email, telephone, and publication distribution. Last year, USA Services reported 235 million public contacts, of which 11 million were through 1-800-FED-INFO (for telephone and e-mail), 16.1 million publications were distributed through the Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC) in Pueblo, Colorado, and 168 million were FirstGov.gov.

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