The White House files

Abstract

The US Clinton-Gore administration has given information policy a high profile as a means for 'reinventing government'. Vice President Al Gore has described high-speed computer networks as 'information superhighways', and as analagous to the development of the interstate highway system for American competitiveness and economic strength. Federal agencies have been encouraged to provide more public access to data. However, the administration has also set its own example in networking and information provision, with Internet e-mail addresses for the President and Vice President and, more recently, in making nearly 5,000 files and more than 60 megabytes of White House information available to the public via an electronic mail server. A summary analysis of this filespace at the end of February 1994 is presented. The main groups of files are for the 1993-95 Budgets, the North American Free Trade Agreement, the National Performance Review, the Health Security Act, the Health Care review, speeches, Internet-related files and White House papers.