Obama Pushes for Efficient, Modern Government

The federal government must embrace the type of technological innovation and experimentation that has borne fruit in the private sector, President Barack Obama said Thursday at a White House forum on modernizing government.

Bringing the government into the 21st Century is critical, he said, and the "technology revolution that has transformed society over the last decade has yet to reach government offices." President Obama acknowledged that there are still many offices in the federal government where "reams of manila files" and envelopes are walked from desk to desk because of lack of technology use to transfer their contents digitally.

President Obama singled out the Patent and Trademark Office as one of the worst cases of failing to become modernized. He said while 80 percent of patent applications are filed electronically, the agency manually prints out those applications and then scans them and enters them manually into a case management system.