Essay Sample on E-Government Act: 2002 Regulation for Digital Government Services

Introduction

The E-government Act is the regulation endorsed by the government to monitor the digital government and its services. It began in 2002, and its sole purpose was to do away with paperwork in government agencies, provide reliability, security and provide governmental information to individuals at high speed in any platform and at any place. That was the primary goal of the E-Government act, although it also provided and supported other purposes. The included maintaining privacy and transparency of the information to users, especially the stakeholders that mostly use government-supported systems (E-Government Act of 2002, 2002). To support the act and the mandate to which it was argued, multiple policies were put in place. The strategies applied following the bill were also used to promote how information was to be freely used under the freedom of information act. The bill allows the citizens to access and use data about government systems that are deemed to be unclassified information. Freedom of information act supported the use of open data to some extent since it did not allow PID to be accessible by the public while data was being used. The e-government act, when implemented, however, made the public to access nearly all the information online and in official websites without the omission of the personally identifiable information of stakeholders using the systems. The act could put government agencies and the nation at risk; therefore, multiple policies need to be implemented to avoid this from occurring.

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The policies enforced starting with the office of management and formatting as they are supposed to keep everything about the governmental systems up to date. Updating the systems keeps the risk attached to the networks very minimal. Cybersecurity is a nonnegotiable feature to any system supporting online functionalities because online threats and dangers are inevitable. Due to this, the current president of USA Donald Trump enforced a policy that encompassed and described that all heads of governmental agencies were to be held accountable for the security of the properties their systems protect. Due to this, the systems are entitled to be up to date and restrict the use of the current government standards concerning online operations. Another policy enforced was executive order 13800 (Office of Privacy and Open Government, 2018). The system was made to ensure that all governmental website agencies were kept secure from any form of attack. The president stated that he was well aware of the fact that threats and attacks through the website were unavoidable and therefore issued the executive order. However, the security of the digital government is not entirely dependent on the policies and executive orders as much as they might seem to be precise. As a result, the person heading the systems should understand the threats associated and how they might be mitigated (Trump, 2017). This document will evaluate three government websites to identify architectures used, possible risks, and best practices to keep them protected.

Service Provided By Government Website

The section is focused on providing the services offered by three official websites. The websites were not entirely evaluated but were reviewed for the purpose of describing the services they offer, and architecture used to ensure their security (Wilshusen, 2015). The websites reviewed include Foodsaftey.gov, Benefits.gov, and Regulations.gov.

Food Safety Website

The website was developed to give information to the public about the food they consumed. The information's purpose was to describe the safety of the government's food provided to the public for consumption. The type of data handled on the website is the strategies involved to ensure food safety. It gives people with such information as to how to handle food to avoid bacterial infection or exposure. The website has a life chatting bot to handle the unanswered questions from the public. If the live chatting bot fails to handle the questions asked, an expert is invoked to answer the questions. The website handles tons of information about food security and how it is maintained by the government. It does not process valuable information that can be sabotaged by cybersecurity offenders and hackers. Due to this fact, the website can be termed as a low-risk website in the category of government ones. The chances of hackers accessing this type of website are low, but their moves and intentions are always undetermined. They could pose misleading information to lure the public (Foodsafety.gov, n.d.)

Benefits Website

It is a vital website and can be ranked as a high-risk website because it is frequently accessed by the public. It entails information concerning the benefits of individuals and how they can be located. It has a benefit-finder tool that gives people the ability to know their type of benefits they are able to access and whether they are available. The website contains information about different kinds of benefits ranging from benefits subjected to social security and people with disabilities, among others. The data is available at no amounting cost. Accessing the information is easy, simple, and also secure. No involvement of the third party to provide information about such benefits to a person. The website is considered to be a high-risk website because of its olds information about personal data and the benefits the individual is eligible to. Hackers mostly target personal data, and therefore they could aim to access such data to blackmail a person about his or her benefits. The hacker could use the DDOS attack to alter a person's interests and the availability of the benefits (Benefits.gov., n.d.).

Regulations Website

It is a website that contains information about the regulations that the federal government uses to enforce the law to citizens. A person can surf the site and be able to get all sorts of regulations that are previously and currently applied. A person can get information about the ones to be applied in the near future and what they would entail. The website advises the public to respond to the regulations and the boundaries they extend to in a forum setting. No one is allowed to respond to the regulations on an individual basis. Since the website contains information about regulations, no real threat is expected to be posed by an attacker on such a website. It is, therefore, considered as a low-risk site (Regulation.gov, n.d.).

Web Application Architectures and Security Issues

The above-evaluated sites used various architectures and security features to curb any security issues that could arise. Web architecture is a feature that allows a website to function to its optimum. They are the protocols used to ensure the site made delivers what is intended to the maximum. This is achieved by the use of web scripting languages such as html scripts, securing web servers, and databases for data access and usage (Digitalgov., n.d.). Websites are vulnerable based on the level of security concern emphasized by the architecture used by them. The security issues concerning online systems such as websites are unavoidable yet diverse at the same time. Cross-site scripting allows malicious code to be injected on a web script code of a particular website. Another threat is mostly issue dealing with hacking (OWASPA, 2018).

Hackers target personal data as they use it to change the truth about a person, organization, or government. Many governmental officers have lost their jobs due to the content the hackers post on their social media platforms. Also, if an official website is hacked and misleading information is posted on the site, the public would use the information without noticing and create a lot of damage. There are different security risks that could arise due to the failure of enforcing better security features in a site resulting from the type of architecture involved. Some of the dangers are phishing attacks and unreliable spam message attacks.

Web Application Best Practices

There are various practices involved to make sure that the security of websites is kept to the maximum. Security and relating information are the only fundamental feature that should be maintained about a site. They should be managed using the following best practices. The hardware where the websites are running should be up to date. Viruses affect extremely outdated hardware components. The NIST framework emphasizes keeping equipment updated and less vulnerable to the virus attacks (Dastur, 2018). The website manager can analyze data accessed and posted to the site to ensure security. Their multiple metrics outlined by the NIST framework to determine traffic patterns on a website, and every website manager should be well aware of the (NIST, 2013).

The website should have a section to retrieve feedback. After the visitors surf the sites and find the information useful, they should be granted a part to give their appreciation. They can also provide new resources and what should be added to the sites. Government sites should allow frequent surveys to be conducted. Through this, the systems would keep updated on what the pubic requires to be done differently. The website administrators hired should be skilled and competent enough to continue with the current trend of maintaining security to the websites (Lewan, 2017).

Summary

The e-government act bears policies that describe how digital government is handled online. The law carries all security concerns to be administered concerning such information provided by government websites. This shows how important it is with the current security concerns targeting government websites. The security concerns are diverse while dealing with sites. Therefore, all the policies outlined in it should be put into action, and the government should consider employing the best practices.

References

Benefits.gov. (n.d.) Benefits.gov. Retrieved from https://www.benefits.gov

Digitalgov. (n.d.). Readiness, Recovery, Response: Social Media Cyber-Vandalism Toolkit. Retrieved from https://digital.gov/resources/readiness-recovery-response-social-media-cyber-vandalism-toolkit/

Dastur, Z. (2018). Digital Transformation in Government Best Practices. Retrieved from https://lucep.com/digital-transformation-in-government-best-practices/

E-Government Act of 2002. (2002). Public Law 107-347, Retrieved from https://learn.umuc.edu/d2l/le/content/350298/viewContent/14322109/View

Foodsafety.gov (n.d.). Foodsafety.gov. Retrieved from https://www.foodsaftey.gov

Lewan, D. (2017). Digital Government Best Practices | The ForeSee Blog. Retrieved from https://www.foresee.com/blog/digital-government-best-practices-meeting-expectations-todays-multichannel-multi-device-citizens/

NIST. (2013). Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations. Retrieved from https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/SpecialPublications/NIST.SP.800-53r4.pdf

Office of Privacy and Open Government. (2018). Privacy Laws, Policies, and Guidance. Retrieved from http://www.osec.doc.gov/opog/privacy/laws_and_regs.html

OWASPA. (2018). Cross-site Scripting. Retrieved from https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Cross-site_Scripting_(XSS)

Regulation.gov. (n.d.). Regulations.gov. Retrieved from https://www.regulations.gov/

Trump, D. J. (2017). Presidential Executive Order on Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/presidential-executive-order-strengthening-cybersecurity-federal-networks-critical-infrastructure/

Wilshusen, G. C. (2015). Actions Needed to Address Challenges Facing Federal Systems. Retrieved from https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/669810.pdf