White House hopes new website will help create jobs

The Obama Administration is building a new online presence to empower job creators with the information -- and financing -- they need to reverse the nation's unemployment figures. Business.USA.gov will be aimed at simplifying the ocean of economic-related information floating throughout the dot-gov domain, administration officials said.

With unemployment at 8.5 percent this election year, officials announced a government reorganization that would consolidate federal agencies that support business and trade. "This consolidated agency will have one website, one telephone number and one mission," Jeff Zients, Office of Management and Budget deputy director for management, said during a call with reporters. Business.USA.gov is mostly empty right now and officials are in the process of standing up a call center at 800-FED-INFO. The new site will lasso resources from imports and exports agencies, the Commerce Department's business divisions, and the Small Business Administration. Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel told Nextgov that a major advantage Business.USA.gov will have over the current mishmash of sites is it can be personalized to pull up the most productive data for every visitor. Retired military officers, for example, could set preferences that would push them information relevant to veteran-owned businesses. Site users will be asked for some basic information about their businesses, which the site will use to adapt the information they are presented with online, VanRoekel said.