Congress Leaves Open the Diplomat Pay Gap

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The State Department had included locality pay in its fiscal 2007 budget request, he said, adding that the union was confident that future funding would be available because removing pay disparity is important to the department.

"We believe that Congress in the end missed an exceptional, perhaps unique, opportunity to resolve this pay equity issue," Holmes wrote.

E-Gov and You

The Office of Management and Budget yesterday posted information on 18 electronic government initiatives, including data on the use of federal Web sites that provide services to the public.

For example, GovBenefits.gov, which provides information about Social Security, Medicare, child support, disability assistance and other federal benefits, receives more than 301,000 visits per month and provides more than 118,500 referrals a month to agency benefit programs, the OMB report said.

Another e-gov project, IRS Free File, permits taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes of $50,000 or less to prepare and file their tax returns over the Internet using commercial software for free. The report shows that more than 3.9 million people used Free File during the 2006 filing season -- or 4 percent of taxpayers eligible to use the Web service.

Information about the projects, including a report from Karen S. Evans, the OMB's e-gov administrator, is available at http://www.egov.gov.

Stephen Barr's e-mail address isbarrs@washpost.com.

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