Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Campaigning for president, Barack Obama pledged to bring greater transparency and openness to the White House and to use technology to reboot government. One hundred days has not been nearly enough time to achieve his ambitious goals, but academics, technology analysts and nonpartisan groups say the man billed as the first "tech president" is off to a good start. On January 21, his first full day in office, Obama issued a memo informing the heads of agencies and departments that making government "transparent, participatory and collaborative" was a top priority of his administration. The primary vehicle for...

A national identification system is one approach to strengthening identity security, but a white paper published by a coalition of government organizations also proposes a "confederated" system in which Americans could use multiple identifiers for clusters of agencies and/or businesses. This approach would enable individuals to sign on to an account once and have access to different accounts among several entities they commonly transact with, according to the National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council's (NECCC) white paper. Agencies and companies would have to develop policies, procedures and an interoperable technical framework to support such an arrangement. The advantage to this system...