Firstgov.Com Versus Canada.Com

FIRSTGOV.COM VERSUS CANADA.COM

I compared the United States FirstGov.Com portal page with our neighbor

Canada’s government portal page. I first looked at firstgov.com to get a feel for the

United States government page.

When you first open http://www.firstgov.gov/ you immediately notice that there is

an abundance of information. There are four main tabs set up as the main crux of the

web page and those are: For Citizens, For Businesses and Non Profit, For Federal

Employees, and Government to Government.

Right off the bat renewing a drivers license and passport application is what

jumped out to me personally. These were under the, “Citizens Get It Done” heading.

Also, under this heading were links that direct you to e-filing taxes, checking

immigration status, governmental benefits, government job application procedures,

changing your address, and even shopping at government auctions.

At mid page on the For Citizens tab was a section entitled, information by topics.

There are 14 main topics and when you click on one of them it sends you to another link

that has numerous other topics that a user can click on for almost any kind of information

you can imagine. For example: I clicked on Education and Jobs topic. Under the topic

is brief information on what you can find such as employment, training, careers, labor,

wages, workplace, online learning, schools, student and teacher resources...This led me to

a page that has well over 70 links to other topics. A few examples here are : US Dept of

Labor, US Dept of Education, College Search, Disability Information, Career Choices,

Labor Relations, and many more subjects to look up. Each of these links takes you to

other pages full of related information with more links to follow.

What I found interesting also was you can read this web site in almost any

language. I clicked on Spanish and the entire web page converted to Spanish. Also on

the left hand side of the home page is a small index with links entitled: A-Z agency

index, Federal Executive, Federal Legislature, Federal Judicial, Cross agency portals,

state government, local government, and tribunal government. I chose to look at Federal

Legislature and that takes to a page where you can find out information on the US Senate,

US House of Representative, and agencies that support Congress. An abundance of

information in all areas in the index.

When you go to Canada’s web site, http://www.canada.gc.ca/main_e.html, you

first have to choose English or French and then it takes you to the opening page in the

language you select. The opening page has 3 main tabs entitled: Canadians