at least one government agency be a partner. It encompasses work at the federal, state, local, and international levels. Partner agencies are expected to contribute resources to the collaborative efforts, with the expectation that the program’s funding will increasingly leverage additional resources from participating agencies.²⁴

Launched in 1998, the Digital Government program has issued grants totaling roughly $30 million to fund more than two dozen research projects and a number of planning grants and exploratory workshops. Funded proposals involve more than 30 federal departments and agencies, some 60 universities and nonprofit organizations, and a handful of commercial firms, and have attracted more than $4 million in matching support from the participating government agencies.²⁵ Stimulated in part by the availability of federal and state research support, several university-based research centers examining e-government issues have been established.

An offshoot of the Digital Government program is the Digital Government Consortium, a grouping of agencies partnering with IT researchers and/or interested in pursuing future research collaborations. Among other activities it publishes “DG Online,” a quarterly that presents news on digital-government developments and related IT research, and maintains the Web site <www.diggov.org>. Another offshoot of the NSF program is an e-government fellows program conducted by the Council for Excellence in Government that is intended to help create awareness of the strategic benefits of and opportunities for collaborating with the academic research community on the part of mid-level government program managers. In addition, the Interagency Working Group on Information Technology R&D has established a program, called the Federal Information Services and Applications Council (FISAC), with the goal of transitioning research results from federal agencies that conduct IT R&D to missions and systems across the federal government. FISAC carries out these activities through several working groups—the IT for Crises Management, Federal Statistics (FedStats), Next-Generation Internet Applications, and Universal Access teams—and through engagement with the NSF’s Digital Government program.