The federal government plans to close or consolidate about 500 of its Web sites in the coming months and is scrapping plans for any new ones as part of a campaign to cut government overlap, reports The Washington Post.
According to the Post piece, “In a video announcing the plans, President Obama notes — with a slight smirk — that the government’s Web portfolio includes sites devoted to desert tortoises, polar animals and a quintet of U.S. Forest Service rangers who play the fiddle.”
The Post piece continues:
“I’ll put their music on my iPod, but I’m not paying for their Web site, and there are hundreds of similar sites that we should consolidate or just get rid of,” Obama says of the rangers in the video.
The White House has said the federal government operates about 2,000 individual Web sites.
The plans are part of a new White House “Campaign to Cut Waste” that will involve Vice President Biden, Cabinet secretaries and top agency watchdogs putting a new emphasis on identifying and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse, said the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the issue until after the formal announcement.
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