A group of federal agencies and vendors are creating a super World Wide Web crawler and search tool that would help agencies automatically index their electronic documents and make it easier for the public to find federal information.
The software, called the Advanced Search Facility, is being developed by Pilot Research Associates, Vienna, Va., and its subcontractors under a contract with the General Services Administration. Proponents view ASF as a way to rescue the moribund Government Information Locator Service by offering agencies a free, automated tool for creating GILS-compliant records of their documents.
In addition, ASF, which the group plans to release as freeware within the next couple of months, aims to make it easier for users to find what they want on the Web.
"The problem it solves is one that's not being addressed by Internet search engines," said Paul Christy, deputy director of Stat-USA, a part of the Commerce Department that publishes economic and trade information. Stat-USA developed the requirements for ASF with the Office of Management and Budget and the U.S. Geological Survey. "Internet search engines do a great job at locating a needle in a haystack, but the government is lots of haystacks full of needles," Christy said.
William Miller, the acting chief for geographic research and applications with USGS, unveiled the project at a Nov. 4 meeting of the Federal Webmasters Forum.
GILS— an electronic card catalog of government documents— was required by Congress four years ago to help the public find federal information. Most agencies ignored the mandate because they found creating records for the system too complicated and time-consuming.
"Webmasters have time for everything but describing documents," Christy said. The $500,000 project is being funded by the Government Information Technology Services Board.
Almost all the functions included in ASF "have been available in separate packages before," said Elizabeth Huber, program manager with Pilot Research, in response to questions e-mailed to the company last week. But these capabilities have not been "as highly integrated, nor as focused on the problem of creating and managing locator records."
Digg
De.licio.us
Slashdot
Technorati
