If you think an electronic government is way off in the future, think again.
The National Electronic Open Meeting, sponsored by the Clinton administration, will run through May l4. The two-week nationwide public meeting, that started May l, is an attempt by the government to interact with citizens in order to shape the administration's future computerization efforts. Topics addressed include discussions on paying taxes, receiving social security benefits and what government services should be available on-line.
The discussion is open to anyone and runs 24 hours a day.
The meetings can be accessed via the World Wide Web at:
http://meeting.fedworld.gov. You can also e-mail to: < a href="mailto:join@meeting.fed-world.gov">join@meeting.fed-world.gov. The e-mail message should read: subscribe (the topic heading) (your name). The topic headings are: services, benefits, infoaccs (for information access), partdemo (for participatory democracy) and techgoal (for technical issues).
You will get an introductory message back with comments posted to the topic area you request.