Gore Envisions a Government Online

In a strong appeal to those who feel disenfranchised from Washington, Vice President Al Gore promised Monday to create an “e-government” that would make more federal services and information available at the click of a mouse.

Gore, speaking to a group of about 150 gathered at North Carolina State’s Centennial Campus, said his plan to put practically every federal agency online by 2003 would make government more responsive and cost-efficient.

“The power of government should not be locked away in Washington but put at your service, no further than your keyboard,” he said.

In addition to being able to find information online about health care plans, drinking water purity and student loans, Gore said, the public would be able to review progress reports agencies would be required to post under his plan.

The federal government could save billions of dollars, he said, by creating an interactive system allowing buyers to compete in government auctions over the Internet. And under his proposal, Americans could buy outdated government equipment on a government auction site called “G-Bay.”

Many federal agencies, as well as state and local governments, already post voluminous amounts of information online. But the Democratic presidential contender wants to go beyond current efforts.

Gore called his plan “a second American revolution” to help renew the faith of “an electorate that is too often alienated and often feels voiceless in a system corroded by special interests and powerless to make change.”

The vice president said that with the “Information Age government” he wants to create, a housebound grandmother could e-mail police officers about dangerous behavior on a street corner, and a child in a poor neighborhood could go online at school and surf images of the portraits in the National Gallery.

Campaign spokesman Chris Lehane estimated the Gore program would cost $100 million over three years but added that the cost would be made up by the “tens of billions of dollars” that would be saved by the new interactive services.

His voice often slurring with a thick Southern twang, the former Tennessee senator spoke at the campus in the heart of North Carolina’s high-tech Research Triangle, praising the region for the development of new technology. Outside, a muggy June shower fell over the lush, tangled landscape.

In his address, Gore tried to position himself outside “the ramshackle bureaucracies” of Washington, portraying himself as a leader who will bring government back to the people.

“It is the heart of what we must do to revitalize the ideal that has animated our democracy since its founding: that people are the master and government is the servant,” he said.

In keeping with a new campaign tactic that avoids direct attacks on his presumed Republican opponent in November, Gore never mentioned Texas Gov. George W. Bush by name.

Earlier, Gore delivered the commencement address at Tarboro High School, east of Raleigh. He was scheduled to attend a fund-raiser in New York City.