This book provides a brief history of U.S. Government agencies that were retrieved from the agency websites and other sources. The purpose is to preserve that documentation. The editor is not attempting to copyright public documents.
USA.gov is an interagency product administered by USAGov (formerly the Federal Citizen Information Center), a division of the U.S. General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service. It got its start when Internet entrepreneur Eric Brewer, whose early research was funded by the Department of Defense, offered to donate a powerful search engine to government. That gift helped accelerate the government's earlier work to create a government-wide portal.
In June 2000, President Clinton announced the gift from the Federal Search Foundation, a nonprofit organization established by Brewer, and instructed that an official U.S. web portal be launched within 90 days. USA.gov went online on September 22, 2000 under the name FirstGov.gov. The GSA and 22 federal agencies funded the initiative in 2001 and 2002.
USA.gov was legislatively mandated through Section 204 of the E-Government Act of 2002 (PDF, Download Adobe Reader). Since 2002, USA.gov has received an annual appropriation from the U.S. Congress. In January 2007, FirstGov.gov officially changed its name to USA.gov.
USA.gov links to publicly available websites that are government-owned or government sponsored, unless directed not to by the agency that owns the site. Acceptable federal government-owned or government-sponsored website domains include .gov, .mil and .fed.us.
USA.gov also links to: quasi-government agencies and websites created by public sector/private sector partnerships; state and local government sites (e.g., www.maryland.gov); and some government-sponsored websites that end in .com, .org, or .net (e.g., www.usps.com for the U.S. Postal Service and www.ncfy.com/clear.htm for the National Clearinghouses and Resource Centers on Families and Youth).
USA.gov also links to websites that are not government-owned or government-sponsored if these websites provide government information and/or services in a way that is not available on an official government website. USA.gov provides these non-government websites as a public service only.
The U.S. government, including the U.S. General Services Administration (the primary sponsoring federal agency of USA.gov), neither endorses nor guarantees in any way the external organizations, services, advice, or products included in these website links. Furthermore, the U.S. government neither controls nor guarantees the accuracy, relevance, timeliness or completeness of the information contained in non-government website links.
The USA.gov staff evaluates all links using the following criteria:
USA.gov will not link to any website that exhibits hate, bias, discrimination, specific religious views, or social agendas. Furthermore, USA.gov reserves the right to deny or remove any link that contains misleading information or unsubstantiated claims, or is determined to be in conflict with USA.gov's mission or policies.
(Link: https://www.usa.gov/about)