18 interactions...july + august 2003 Digital government aims to better serve people by leveraging technology to make government services more accessible to a broad range of citizens. Digital government (DG) services fall into three classes: infor- mation dissemination, citizen transactions, and gov- ernance participation. Information dissemination via the Web has been by far the most pervasive service addressed by government agencies at all levels [4]. User interfaces are especially important chal- lenges to DG for the following reasons: 1. User interfaces must support the broadest possible participation by constituents—this is universal usability in action. 2. Because the nature of government centers on infor- mation creation and control, user interfaces must support a wide range of specialized information services; for a national government, this means mil- lions of Web pages and files. 3. Customer expectations are rigorous—people expect government Web sites to contain everything (the general public often makes no distinctions among levels of government or even national boundaries), to be integrated (there may be no recognition of the size and scope of government), and to be free (sup- ported by tax dollars). 4. Governments are constrained by a variety of man- dates specifying what must be provided. This leads to less flexibility in what data are collected and how they are disseminated. 5. Government agencies and their services are, by nature, low-risk-taking operations. The incentives that the private sector has to be innovative (for example, large profits) are not at play in government service—taking a risk that pays off can be advanta- geous to departments or careers but rewards tend to be incremental rather than quantum. All these factors suggest that user interfaces for DG require specialized attention both within govern- ment and in the human-computer interaction (HCI) community. design Digital Government Information Services: The Bureau of Labor Statistics Case By Gary Marchionini Cary C. Boshamer Distinguished Professor School of Information and Library Science University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill march@ils.unc.edu By Michael Levi Project Manager, Data Collection and Dissemination Systems U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Levi.Michael@bls.gov Illustrations by mwienerarts.com