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 ing in web design, this is often exactly the kind of thinking that they have. They think of all of the bad things that people might do and design everything around those worst case scenarios rather than saying, oh you know what, let us keep things as open as we can and wait until we see the bad behavior and then think about what to do about it. We call the police. We get an ambulance. Or in a digital context we simply change it back to the old version.

Chairman LIEBERMAN. I am going to stop now and yield to Senator Akaka. Thanks again for being here.

Senator AKAKA. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for holding this important hearing on implementation and reauthorization of the E–Government Act. I have been a strong advocate for transparency in government as well as for privacy for all Americans. We need to continue to keep emphasizing privacy and expanding access to appropriate government information.

That is where I come from. And I want to thank the Chairman for what he is doing along these lines and working hard at it.

I would like to ask the first question to Karen Evans from OMB, and tell you that making government information more available to the public by posting it online is important for government transparency. However, I am concerned that information in Federal forms posted online are often written in, let me put it this way, bureaucratic language that is difficult for many Americans to understand. This can be especially burdensome for those helping people to access the information online, especially librarians.

What steps is OMB taking to ensure that government information posted online is clear, well organized, and readily understandable?

Ms. . Well, sir, it is good to see you again, thank you.

Senator. Thank you for being here.

Ms. . I believe that our current policies that we have issued dealing with the implementation of the E–Government Act speaks to that very issue about talking about having information out there accessible, easily to find, and easily understandable. How the agencies have actually gone about that and executed that is what we are discussing more today.

I believe that the Federal CIO Council, which was also codified through this Act, has a leadership role in this as well as the Web forum that we have established through USA.gov, that they then work on best practices. They continuously put together toolkits for content managers for agencies to put that information out. But based on many of these things that my colleagues have said today, I believe we will have to go back and revisit many of those to see if we really are doing it in the best way that we can, or should they be updated so that things are going out in a way that citizens understand them and can easily find them.

Senator. I would like to follow up by asking Mr. Wales about your thoughts on this kind of an organization. I was interested to hear the Chairman use the word ‘‘wiki.’’ And as you know, in Hawaiian that means to hurry up or do it quickly. And when I saw pedia, I was thinking of walking fast. But it is along the line of encyclopedias and of course, the whole thing comes to me as