Personally, my first priority would be to lay out a plan so departments within the government would have easier sharing of information. I don’t think individual departments have the ability to look at the whole picture when they are focused on their small portion. If information was shared, a lot of the bureaucracy we’re all used to whenever dealing with the government could be streamlined and I believe the extra costs of developing a system along those lines could be recouped from the ability to process things more efficiently and reduced fraud.
After that I’d try to make sure whatever services and information can be made available online are easily accessible.
Imagine you had a .gov account where you could go to file your taxes, or find out how your Senator voted, contact the local SBA, research how to get a passport and all the other interactions that just aren’t very centralized right now. It would make the federal government a lot more accessible and less daunting in my view.
It would be a huge undertaking but the individual parts aren’t anything that hasn’t been done before.
Other than that I’d just like someone who understands what they’re talking about to take a look at current or proposed legislation like those mentioned by EmpressPixie… if you refer to the internet as a “collection of tubes” you may not be qualified to decide what hundreds of millions can or can’t do online. There needs to be a resource for lawmakers to go to so they can actually be informed.
Right now some people say it’s illegal for US citizens to play poker online, some say it isn’t, some operators have pulled out of the US market and others have stayed and flourished. Meanwhile I can go down to the Quicky Mart and buy a scratch off ticket for $50… one lousy ticket. I don’t understand the difference other than one is purely luck and the other I have some say in the outcome and hopefully hours of enjoyment.