Hacker Fears Have Frustrated Efforts To Downsize Dot-Gov Sprawl

Concerns about data compromises are partly to blame for drawing out an effort to merge roughly 2,000 dot-gov websites, according to federal officials and internal emails. But officials say they are still committed to making government services and information easier to navigate, as the website consolidation initiative approaches its three-year anniversary.

Combining National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration website content with content from the Coast Guard illustrates the trickiness. The Coast Guard, a Homeland Security Department agency with a dot-mil suffix, is more of a bull’s eye for hackers than NOAA, officials say. USCG employees shy away from sharing data with other agencies, one information technology employee complained on the government's Web content managers listserv in 2012. Nextgov retrieved the message, with the employee’s name redacted, through an open records request.

The Coast Guard staff "are security maniacs because hackers like to target them," wrote a NOAA web manager in the Office of Space Commercialization, which is part of the Department of Commerce.