In July, Commerce Secretary William Daley announced his intention to the recreate his agency as the paperless "E-Commerce Department." Daley told his staff to cowme up with a proposal for making the "digital department" a reality.
Karen Hogan, the director of Commerce's new effort, outlined that proposal at a breakfast last week organized by the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). The core of the proposal is the creation of an agency-wide secure intranet. An intranet is an internal, secure version of the Internet. Commerce's intranet will move travel claims and time and attendance tracking online.
The plan calls for the intranet to first be implemented at the office of the Secretary and by 2001 to have all bureau offices worldwide, including the far-flung offices of the Foreign Commercial Service, attached. "Internal processes have been automated for awhile, but employees don't always use them," said Hogan. Full implementation will occur sometime in 2002.
Commerce's drive to modernize has significant obstacles to overcome, Hogan said. The budget is the first-Commerce cannot get extra money until the 2001 budget cycle. This means the department will have to reallocate resources and personnel to the digital department initiative. Another hurdle is convincing Commerce's diverse bureaus, which include the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Patent and Trademark Office, to move to a departmental standard.
Hogan said the agency is looking into adopting the seat management concept, under which agencies pay a monthly fee for office systems and support, rather than buying PCs and networks. Commerce has completed a total cost-of-ownership of its information technology systems to help department officials evaluate seat management proposals.
Other agencies discussed their e-commerce and e-government initiatives at the AFCEA breakfast as well.
Chuck Payne, the chief of the U.S. Mint's Electronic Products and Services Division, said the Mint has "moved into the big leagues," selling almost $17.5 million worth of coins from its Web site since it was revamped in March. The Web site and associated systems not only have increased sales but also speeded up order fulfillment from three or four weeks to four or five days, Payne said.
Terry Tychan, director of the Office of Grants and Acquisition Management at the Department of Health and Human Services, outlined the Centers for Disease Control's use of electronic data interchange for its Vaccines for Children Plan, a program which sells vaccines to health care providers. HHS currently uses purchase cards to pay for 90 percent of micro-purchases, and also uses electronic funds transfer to pay out 99 percent of the grants it issues. Looking forward, HHS plans to create a knowledge repository and is establishing an online past performance system for government contractors.
And finally, as a result of recent downsizing, the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) has been attempting to automate all of its systems. Currently, 20 percent of the agency's major transactions are done without ever touching human hands. VBA's goal is to have its processes 90 percent automated by 2002.
VBA is also looking into ways for enabling beneficiaries to access account status online. Commenting on the toll of automating processing Elinor Hunter, chief of VBA's Systems Staff and Education Service said, "I won't have any staff in the field anymore, but I'll have a bunch of good computers."
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