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November 2000 G2C and more
By Joshua Dean Serving customers on the Web
G2C: Education Each year, millions of students entering college apply for financial aid using the Education Department's Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Four years ago, the Education Department decided to put FAFSA online (www.fafsa.ed.gov). "Since then, we've been seeing increased volume on the Web every single year," says Jeanne Saunders, director of application processing at Education. "We decided to put FAFSA up on the Web because, quite frankly, we saw that as the future of how we will all conduct business." This year, Education is expecting 10.2 million applicants. Saunders expects that 2 million of these applications will be filled out and filed on the Web. However, by mid-August, Saunders says the department already had received 1.5 million online applications, proving earlier estimates to be conservative. "The highest time by far is spring because students are filing in order to make college and state deadlines," Saunders says. "We knew it would be a great advantage to students and parents," Saunders says. "[Putting] FAFSA on the Web was intuitive. We hadn't built a business case and we didn't actually know what the costs were or what the savings would be. But it seemed obvious to put it on the Web from the standpoint of speed and efficiency and the reduction of errors." FAFSA on the Web exemplifies two key tenets of e-government. First, it is a new avenue of service to citizens opened without the expectation of replacing the traditional mode: paper forms. Second, the Web application is tied into the department's mainframe so the data remain electronic throughout the process. Education has been able to improve the standard form by taking advantage of Web hyperlinks that direct students to online help as they fill it out. "We tried to make the site interactive and encouraging," Saunders says. "It has a clean look, and there is more help on the Web than paper allows." Putting FAFSA on the Web has reduced the time it takes to process applications. Paper applications have to go through a complex scanning and checking process to ensure that all the data the department needs has been included. This typically takes four to six weeks at non-peak times. The Web has helped Saunders and her team cut processing time to just one to three weeks.
G2B: Transportation The Transportation Department has a wide range of licensing and regulatory functions spread across its constituent agencies. Recently, the department's finance office began looking for better ways to handle licenses and fines. "We saw the opportunity to reduce paperwork and introduce efficiencies into the department's operations," says David Kleinberg, Transportation's deputy chief financial officer. "We wanted to provide a common utility to take in the funds that came in from the public." Thus was born DIY, or Do-It-Yourself-Transportation's licensing and fine payment Web site (http://diy.dot.gov). Leonard Bechtel, team leader of the DIY project, points to Transportation's Research and Special Programs Administration (RSPA) registration site as "the best success." Anyone who wants to transport hazardous materials in the United States must register with RSPA. In the past, it took four weeks to receive and review an application and issue a registration number. "We've automated the process," Bechtel says. "If you have a valid credit card, the system will generate a registration number online. Then you have a certificate you can download and print out. The process went from four weeks to 20 minutes." The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) boasts another DIY success. Truckers who want to engage in interstate hauling must register with FMCSA for an operating authorization. The registration form is three pages long. Before DIY, FMCSA dealt with checks and paper forms that had to traverse many sets of hands before data was entered into the agency's system. "Information should be input just once," Bechtel says, and quickly adds, "by the customer." Now, with DIY, the motor carrier safety agency uses an online form with built-in edit checks ensuring everyone has completed the form correctly. Plus, the time previously spent recontacting truckers as a result of errors in their application has been eliminated. FMCSA now takes care of one-third of its business online. This adds up to 600 truckers paying out $160,000 to $170,000 per month. "As more people become Web savvy I expect this time next year that at least half of FMCSA's business will come over the Internet," Bechtel says. Bechtel points to the summer of 1999 to show how DIY is helping the agency. That summer, FMCSA employees were struggling to get through a five-week backlog of applications. "Now, with the amount of transactions that DIY was able to take off their plate, they've been able to eliminate that backlog," Bechtel says. In adding DIY, a new service channel, Transportation was able to better serve a multitude of constituent agencies. It couples effective credit card processing with a storefront that guides customers to licensing and fine payment services. Those services are integrated directly with Transportation's financial management system, so most processes start out digital and stay that way.
G2G and G2C: Defense Each year, between 1.8 million and 2 million young men turn 18 and are required to register for military service in the event that the military needs to reinstate the draft, according to the Selective Service System (www.sss.gov). The system was set up by the 1967 Military Selective Service Act chiefly to provide "manpower to the armed forces in an emergency," to run a "fair and equitable" draft, and to provide alternative service programs for those registered as conscientious objectors. "Our audience is 17- to 25-year-olds," says Lewis C. Brodsky, director of public and congressional affairs for the Selective Service System. "They are by law obligated to register with Selective Service, and we make sure they have every opportunity to satisfy the requirement." Brodsky says the Selective Service has a compliance rate of about 88 percent. That's in part because young men must be registered with the system to get certain benefits such as eligibility for federal student financial aid. The Selective Service began accepting registration online in December 1998. Since that time, the agency has collected approximately 570,000 registrations via the Web. "The numbers increase every day," Brodsky says. Online registration is accounting for 30 percent to 45 percent of all registrations. In the past, the only way to register for Selective Service was to go to a post office and fill out the agency's form. "We had to pay a fee for every registration that came in through the postal service," Brodsky says. "Then there were the distribution costs and postal charges. After that, we had to process the application. We scanned in the information, or keyboarded it in-in any case, it took quite a bit of time to process registrations." Now that more young men are registering via the Web, Selective Service's postal costs are declining. Plus, the cost of processing the total number of applications is going down. "On the Web they are directly inputting data into our registration database," Brodsky says. "This means we don't have to key it in ourselves." Brodsky acknowledges that Selective Service can't stop accepting mailed in registrations. Even so "we see digital registration growing and mail-back registration shrinking," Brodsky says. "A young man gets instant satisfaction online," Brodsky says. "He plugs in the data, presses the send button and instantly gets his Selective Service number." Selective Service not only added a new service channel, it Web-enabled its legacy database to accept digital registrations, streamlining the entire process and eliminating the need for manual re-entry. Selective Service also has worked with Education to enable men to register when they fill out their student financial aid forms online. Data is transmitted electronically from Education to the Selective Service, completing the e-gov loop.
G2E: Navy One customer group often forgotten in the evolution of electronic government is government employees and their families. The U.S. Navy is using e-gov techniques to improve the flow of information to sailors and their families. Because long shipboard deployments cause strains on Navy families, the service in 1995 began seeking ways to ensure that quality-of-life information reaches Navy personnel and their loved ones all over the world. “We are a forward-deployed force,” says Randy Eltringham, director of Lifelines, a system for delivering quality-of-life support to various ports and bases via seven different technologies. “Examples of quality-of-life information include information on self-help, deployment support, stress management, parenting and relocation assistance. We seek to empower people with good, accurate information,” Eltringham says. Lifelines (www.lifelines2000.org) uses the Internet, simulcasting, cable television, satellite broadcasting, teleconferencing, Dish TV and the EchoStar system for overseas broadcasting. The Navy has found that certain media channels are more appropriate for certain types of information “We’re trying to choose the best media, but we’re also looking for cost efficiencies as well,” Eltringham says. The Navy also wants to avoid communications crises such as the one created by the explosion on the USS Iowa April 19, 1989. The Navy lost 47 sailors on the Iowa as a result of an explosion in the battleship’s turret. “Most of the victims were young, single sailors,” Eltringham says. “Thousands of family members drove to Norfolk, Va., [to find out the fate of their sailors]. The Navy had a huge need for the community to come together to support each other. That’s what our quality-of-life programs for a mobile military lifestyle are about. Lifelines is a place to go when you don’t know where to go.” Lifelines regularly features live broadcasts, giving forward-deployed sailors and their families welcome information and, in some cases, a taste of home. “We attempt to give our people equal access to Lifelines regardless of their duty location.” This is why Lifelines broadcasts using the EchoStar system and the Dish TV. Eltringham is even considering a version of Lifelines that is optimized for a handheld computing device. On the Web, an average of 2,000 people access the Lifelines site per day, visiting 68,000 pages.
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