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 the citizen really knows what they are eligible for and also making the information commercially available to the search engines, because it is all out there. We just want to make sure that we are providing it in a context so that we do not create more frustration.

Chairman. So leaving aside matters that we might not want to have easy access to, because of privacy concerns or classification, is there any other policy reason that would justify limiting access to otherwise publicly available information on Federal websites through search engines?

Ms. . No, sir. The way that we have put together the policies, but we would need to go back and relook at that to see of any agencies may be interpreting it that way. But the way that the policy is based on the current E–Government Act, it is for greater dissemination of public available information. And then also, the Administration has passed an Executive Order, again supporting the Freedom of Information Act, saying look even further at your information and make this available before it is asked for.

So that information is out there. But we do have to do it in a way that it is easily accessible through the means that citizens research and look for the information.

Chairman. I appreciate that answer because that is certainly our intention, that except for privacy and classification reasons, everything else should be maximally and as easily as possible available to the public including through search engines.

Mr. Schwartz, do you want to add anything to this discussion?

Mr. . I think Ms. Evans made a good point about the context issue. I think it is an important one. But I also think that the American people are smart and they know how to use search engines. While it may be frustrating a few people, we do not want to block information from the vast majority of people who would be able to figure out the context and use that information. For the minority of people that cannot figure it out, that might be frustrating, but at least they have an opportunity for access.

So I think that there is sort of a balance there of how do you give the right context but make the information as maximally available as possible and maximally searchable as possible.

Mr. . If I may add a comment on this, as well.

Chairman. Please.

Mr. . We worked with the State of Arizona earlier this year to open up eight of their major databases, which were not initially designed to be crawled by search engines. And the pages that they present to users, indeed may not be utterly clear to the user on first blush, but they did so. They opened these databases. And as we indicated in a report we published or a case study we published yesterday on this website I referenced, Google.com/publicsector, the administrators of these agencies, whose databases were opened, are very pleased with the results of citizens for the first time learning about, for example, license record of contractors and of real estate developers, and so forth. So we know it can work because we have seen it work.

Chairman. Good. That is a good example. Mr. Wales, do you want to get into this?

Mr. . Yes. Actually, in many cases we have heard about the difficulty when the web crawler comes to a form and they have