Government Executive - Authors - Heather B. Hayes

The Knowledge Banks

Heather B. Hayes — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

ike many other government organizations, until recently the Transportation Department found it difficult-if not impossible-to share quality information among the numerous offices and agencies that live beneath its umbrella. One reason is that subordinate agencies like the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration control their own operational systems, data and formatting standards. Although these individual systems were good at collecting, tracking and maintaining important details, they were generally incompatible with other systems and therefore inaccessible to personnel outside the agency.

Senior managers were unable to obtain the strategic, enterprise-wide information they needed to make important decisions. And even when data was available, it often arrived late and in an almost unusable form. For example, agencies usually relayed their monthly budget data in accounting documents whose different codes and numbers required a great deal of translation and analysis.

"At the beginning of this Administration, there was no real management reporting available for financial information," says Richard Gates, a financial specialist in Transportation's Office of the Assistant Secretary for Budgets and Programs. "You could do a lot of work pulling things together by hand and then having someone type that information into spreadsheets, but you could never get a full picture of what was going on in the department in any sort of timely manner."

The solution, DOT officials decided, was to build a data warehouse, a system that uses complicated hardware, software and user tools to pull-actually, borrow-strategic information from disparate operational databases into one large centralized "warehouse" that everyone can access. With all the hard facts in one place, specialized tools can manipulate the data to deliver not just quantitative but qualitative information-trends, reports, analysis, correlations and aberrations-to management.

Once set up, a data warehouse delivers tangible benefits almost immediately, including the ability to do more work with less employees, a reduction in paperwork and access to information that wasn't available previously.

DOT uses its data warehouse to track individual program budgets, determine how much money is obligated to each state and see what grants are issued to which people for what purposes. The data warehouse also generates monthly reports that summarize trends.

"What we've found so far in tracking our data is that there were some things that just came up in the course of a year where we were able to catch problems while they were still small and allocate funds accordingly or get people to cut back in various areas when necessary," Gates says.

Senior Transportation officials are sold on data warehousing, having already developed plans to pull in data from additional sources so agency performance can be measured and budgets formulated.

What is a Data Warehouse?

In many ways, the term "warehouse" in the context of this technology is a misnomer, implying that data is going to be stored away for long periods of time. In reality, it should be thought of more as a mall or mart, because information is transported from out-of-the-way and in some cases forgotten data sources to a place where it can actually be seen, browsed through and utilized. What's more, the shoppers in this store will find not just codes, numbers and raw data, but nicely packaged information.

"The ultimate goal here is to put information as close as possible to the person who needs it or who wants to make use of it," says George Wilson, a computer specialist helping to develop a data warehouse for the Health Care Financing Administration.

Data warehousing is analogous to landscaping a backyard, says Pat Garvey, deputy director of the information management division at the Environmental Protection Agency. "When you're figuring out what kind of look you want for your yard, you don't just look at one corner at a time, you take in the whole view."

As classically defined, a data warehouse involves pulling data from defined sources and integrating that data so that it is no longer simply operational but strategic information. One reason for such a narrow interpretation is that until recently, data warehousing was used almost exclusively in the business world, most notably in retail outlets like Wal-Mart. Corporate managers with an eye on the bottom line utilize the technology to detect consumer buying habits and formulate strategic marketing plans accordingly. For example, by scanning each sale into a data warehouse, grocery stores have determined that men in their 20s who purchase beer on Fridays after work are also likely to buy a pack of diapers. Thus, a display of Pampers or another brand might be set up in the beer aisle, or merchants will put one (but not both) of the products on sale on Friday evenings.

When it comes to the federal government, however, a data warehouse's function is harder to pigeonhole, mainly because the public sector's mission is a lot more diverse than collecting stacks of sales receipts. Certainly, a large number of agencies can benefit by using data warehousing to track trends and help make enterprise-wide decisions, as seen within the Transportation Department, but many agencies intend to use it for purposes that don't really fit the traditional terminology.

Federal Warehouses Grow

Most technology watchers believe data warehousing and government agencies are a perfect pair. That's because data warehouses work best for large organizations with mission-critical data scattered in a variety of incompatible systems-as is the case with most federal agencies. Moreover, because the technology allows distinct but related data to come together in one place, it promises to overcome the government's ill-gotten reputation, says one industry watcher, of "having a right hand that doesn't know what the left is doing." When Social Security checks continue to be mailed out to a recipient who is no longer living, it's because death certificates are recorded by one system and benefits paid out by another. And never the twain shall meet-until now.

Early on, the competitive business world kept a tight, almost proprietary hold on data warehousing, and for some time, the federal government was slow to jump on the bandwagon. Over the last year, however, agencies have begun developing full-blown data warehouses.

The Health Care Financing Administration, for example, plans to use the data warehouse it's developing to help find fraud and abuse in the Medicare program. The Defense Investigative Service uses a data warehouse to assign work to field offices and set priorities for personnel security investigations. The Education Department hopes to use data warehousing to create a one-stop shop for education statistics.

"We in the federal government don't have a bottom line per se," says Gloria Parker, director of the information resources management group at the Education Department. "A big part of our business is collecting and disseminating information and providing service to our constituents."

Parker notes that a prototype has been developed utilizing real data from the National Center on Educational Statistics. If approved by senior officials, she says, the data warehouse will eventually be expanded to include 15 principal offices.

"We want to make it so that the public or anyone else that needs this information doesn't have to run around to a lot of different places looking for it," she says. "In this way, they can access through the Internet or some other source, look at the data, query it, download it, do with it whatever it is that they need to do, but at the same time, be confident that the information they're viewing is complete and correct."

The EPA is already reaping benefits from using a data warehouse, known as Envirofacts. It brings together all the agency's regulatory data in categories like water quality, air quality, solid wastes and hazardous wastes. Users can judge the environmental health of a facility or a location.

"Previously, the public had a hard time determining whether the corporation down the street was a good neighbor or not because the information on any violations were kept in different places," says Garvey. "Now you can go into the system, look under that corporation's name and see their smokestack release, see what chemicals they've put in their landfills, see what pollutants might be emitted in their water."

Setting Up a Data Warehouse

One reason the federal government has been cautious in creating data warehouses has to do with the cost and complexity of building them. Data warehouses cost anywhere from $50,000 to $4 million, depending on how robust the undertaking. Also, human and political complications arise when agencies begin defining data sources and standardizing their data.

The biggest problem lies in the fact that each legacy, or established, system labels the same categories differently. Gender, for example, may be distinguished as "M" or "F," "0" or "1," or some other identifier. A department could be labeled Finance by one system and Department 6 by another. At EPA, "when it came to referring to a regulated entity, our Superfund folks used the word 'site,' our water folks used the word 'facility' and another system used the word 'company,' " says Garvey. "It complicates things considerably."

As with any project, setting up a data warehouse involves comprehensive planning. Steps that should be taken include the following:

Commitment, understanding and input should be obtained from key people, especially thosewho run the databases and who might feel threatened by this move onto their turf.

Consider such issues as: What is the business objective? Who will be served? What types of analysis tools will they need in using the data?

The sources of data required need to be identified. What operational systems, external databases or flat files from some other data source are going to populate the data warehouse?

The data within the various systems must be "scrubbed" so it is consistent. This is the most laborious and time-consuming aspect of building a data warehouse. Formatting issues like how gender and other simple fields are going to be identified is tough enough, but scrubbing also involves standardizing how statistics are computed and making sure decisions derived from the warehouse are based on the most appropriate data.

"The rule of thumb is that you've got to pick a data warehousing project small enough in size that you can accomplish something meaningful within a year and then slowly expand from there," says Will Workman, director of strategic marketing for decision support in the government division of Oracle Corp., which sells information management software. He says at least one unnamed government organization trying to set up an ambitious data warehouse has spent the last three years struggling with complicated data definitions and scrubbing.

Data warehousing promises a number of advantages to government organizations including decreased operating costs, increased sharing among internal offices and outside agencies, reduced burden on employees and citizens who research information, and faster turnaround for projects.

However, those already setting up data warehouses mention perhaps the most critical benefit. "Data warehousing will help take up the slack as we continue to downsize our personnel," says William Hughes, deputy director of Investigations Control and Automation for the Defense Investigative Service. "People will have information readily accessible and they can do the job they were hired to do rather than spend their time making a bunch of phone calls and running around trying to dig the information up."

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Tools for Building a Warehouse

Heather B. Hayes — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

ata warehouses work by extracting information from multiple databases working on many types of computer platforms. They can be built by in-house staff or systems integrators such as I-Net and Sylvest. Here are the major components involved:

Extract Tools. These can be anything from programming languages, like COBOL or Natural, to automated tools that create new images of the data, such as Carlton's Passport. "Scrubbing" is generally performed during the extraction phase.

Data Transfer Tools. Products such as Software AG's SourcePoint help users move data into warehouses.

Database Management Software. Programs from companies such as Informix, Oracle and Sybase offer strong query capabilities and large storage capacity. Relational databases are best for simple, two-dimensional queries, while on-line analytical processing databases are better for multidimensional tasks, such as forecasting and trend analysis.

Application Software. Tools such as Patrol from BMC Software help manage and optimize multiple databases.

Servers. Powerful, enterprise-wide computers, such as Digital Equipment Corp.'s TurboLaser 8000, process and distribute data.

Query Tools. These software programs enable users to ask questions and essentially "mine" the data. Some perform two-or three-dimensional queries while others use deductive reasoning to determine relationships between data.

Delivery Systems. Products such as Digital's TeamLinks, Lotus Notes or Netscape's Web browser help route query results back to end-users via e-mail, local-area networks or the Internet.

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The Knowledge Banks

Heather B. Hayes — Fri, 01 Mar 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Senior Transportation officials are sold on data warehousing, having already developed plans to pull in data from additional sources so agency performance can be measured and budgets formulated.

What is a Data Warehouse?

Federal Warehouses Grow

Setting Up a Data Warehouse

As with any project, setting up a data warehouse involves comprehensive planning. Steps that should be taken include the following:

n Commitment, understanding and input should be obtained from key people, especially thosewho run the databases and who might feel threatened by this move onto their turf.

n Consider such issues as: What is the business objective? Who will be served? What types of analysis tools will they need in using the data?

n The sources of data required need to be identified. What operational systems, external databases or flat files from some other data source are going to populate the data warehouse?

n The data within the various systems must be "scrubbed" so it is consistent. This is the most laborious and time-consuming aspect of building a data warehouse. Formatting issues like how gender and other simple fields are going to be identified is tough enough, but scrubbing also involves standardizing how statistics are computed and making sure decisions derived from the warehouse are based on the most appropriate data.

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Linking Supercomputers

Heather B. Hayes — Thu, 01 Feb 1996 00:00:00 -0500

fficials at the NASA Aerospace Simulation (NAS) Facility first began using the most powerful computers (called high-performance or supercomputers) a decade ago with the goal of reducing, if not eliminating, wind tunnel testing of new aircraft. Wind tunnels, while extremely effective at evaluating how an aircraft will perform in flight, were expensive. Because tests took years to complete, major U.S. aircraft companies were unable to get their products to market fast enough to compete effectively in the global economy. NAS officials, who routinely perform long-term research and development for industry, believed supercomputers and high-end applications could recreate an airplane on screen and simulate factors such as turbulence and air flow.

Unfortunately, because of the cost and complexity of advanced computing, NAS officials struggled to advance their goals. But then in 1991, the National High Performance Computing and Communications (HPCC) program was created. Several agencies joined up and began exchanging data and resources, enabling NAS officials to collaborate with federal scientists and engineers working on climate control simulation and other related models.

"Previously, we were trying to solve some specific system software problems but we could only do so much considering the cost of the machines that we needed and the amount of money that we had," says William Feireisen, project manager for computational aerosciences for the High Performance Computing and Communications Program at NASA's Ames Space Center. "With the HPCC program, we get a chance now to look at all the other system software work that's being done and we can leverage that."

Today, thanks to this cooperative effort, people in the NAS program have increased their supercomputing capabilities by a thousand-fold. They can not only simulate aircraft using three-dimensional models, but they can link up with aircraft companies via high-speed networks, enabling industry, university and agency experts to collaborate with NAS officials on improving the simulation process. Although the work continues, one early result has been a marked improvement in the time it takes a new product to reach the market.

"What we're really doing is developing the kind of tools that these companies will need to create better, safer, more environmentally sound planes and also to compete better economically," says Walter Brooks, division manager of the Advanced Computing and Communications Technology Division at Ames. "We're creating a general competitive advantage or base from which all of the U.S. industry can launch."

More Horsepower

The HPCC program acts as a "virtual agency," helping to coordinate the ongoing efforts of 12 federal agencies-as well as academic scientists and industry researchers-to develop and improve supercomputing and advanced communications technologies like networking, virtual reality, digital libraries, electronic commerce and scientific visualization. "I think it's pretty well recognized that the same needs for high-performance computing exist all the way across the government," says Feireisen, "and that these needs are so large and so difficult that an individual agency just does not have the horsepower to address them as effectively as a cooperative effort does."

The goals of the program include the following:

1. Increase the productivity and competitiveness of key U.S. industries by addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering, such as developing computationally intensive environmental models to ensure accurate monitoring of acid rain and ozone levels.

2. Provide key support for the National Information Infrastructure (NII), a White House program that enhances access to government information through advanced high-speed networks and software. The NII application video-on-demand, for example, will rely on scalable parallel computing and mass storage systems developed by high-performance computing research centers.

3. Allow scientists and other researchers to collaborate on projects through robust networks.

4. Perform long-term research to safeguard the United States' status as a leader in high-performance computing and networking technologies.

Like other federal programs, HPCC will likely take hits in the budget battles on Capitol Hill, but not because of any major policy change. Since 1991, the HPCC program has received significant bipartisan support.

The HPCC program comprises five components: High Performance Computing Systems, the National Research and Education Network, Advanced Software Technology and Algorithms, Information Infrastructure Technology and Applications, and Basic Research and Human Resources. Each component is equally important, for if one does not advance at the same pace, then the remaining four are also halted in their progress. Most people agree that systems software is the one area slowing up progress. "There has to be a balance," says John C. Toole, director of the HPCC's National Coordinating Office. "I think in general, software will always lag. It needs to be tightly coupled with the best and brightest people, but it takes time to emerge from a research point of view."

Less Duplication

Agencies participating in the HPCC program include the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Education Department and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

As in the NASA Aerospace Simulation program, nearly all federal offices involved in HPCC began investing in supercomputing research and development long before the program was created by legislation. For example, the Internet, a worldwide network of networks that today connects more than 4 million computers, was set in motion nearly 30 years ago when DARPA devoted high-performance computing resources to develop a network that could connect researchers.

The HPCC cross-agency approach has eliminated much duplication in effort and equipment, created opportunities to collaborate and share lessons learned, and gained considerable support and assistance from information technology vendors. For example, many companies today lease, rather than sell, high-end machines to agencies. And in response to agency needs, Digital Equipment Corp. and Cray Research Inc., recently developed methods of linking machines together, an advancement that will make high-end computing more affordable.

"You really get the industry's attention when you've got a national program like this," says Feireisen. "One of the key points of this is it allows all of the agencies to speak with a uniform voice so the common problems are communicated to all the various computer vendors."

Toole adds, "I think we have much earlier access to a very vibrant research community, so that the participating agencies get a much earlier handle on what's real and what isn't, what's evolving and what can be appropriately applied to their own organization."

Such advantages have spurred agencies to take on ambitious projects. HPCC is allowing "an extraordinary increase in people's ability to deal with real problems," says Michael Levine, scientific director of the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. "Not problems of simply academic interest, but real achievement in such fields as health care, the environment and transportation."

Some examples:

The Energy Department is using high-performance computers to pursue a complex three-dimensional numerical simulation system that will be able to test and prototype nuclear weapons systems.
The Defense Department is using simulation and modeling to develop more effective stealth planes, as well as to determine the most effective battlefield tactics.
NOAA has developed a hurricane prediction system using high performance computational modeling that can more accurately predict the path of a hurricane and provide earlier warnings.
The National Institutes of Health is using computational models to simulate the structure of biological molecules in order to more effectively fight heart disease and other medical problems.

Toole notes that the HPCC's goals have already been well-integrated with agency goals and programs. But most agree that while the infrastructure is in place and advances have been made, research and development efforts have only just begun. NASA, for instance, believes that it needs to increase its computing ability by another 1,000 percent before it will fully achieve its flight simulation goals.

"We're advancing on all fronts," says Levine. "As in any complicated endeavor there are fits and spurts and certain areas are tougher than others. But it is progressing at a rate that I never would have guessed was possible five years ago."

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A Vision Too Grand

Heather B. Hayes — Thu, 01 Feb 1996 00:00:00 -0500

hen the Defense Department first began publicizing its Corporate Information Management (CIM) plan in 1989, top military brass, congressional leaders and even the press were almost unanimous in their praise.

Certainly the goals of CIM were difficult to criticize, for the change management program promised to streamline computer operations and cut red tape out of one of the world's largest and most bureaucratic organizations. The word "corporate" in the project's name suggested a key goal: to bring tightly organized, business-style management to DoD's sprawling operations.

CIM promised savings of more than $70 billion over seven years, enough money to fund modernization of defense computer systems and help bolster military readiness. The savings would come out of administrative and logistical operations, through such initiatives as the consolidation of data centers, the merging of redundant payroll, procurement and other systems and the reduction of inventories through better management of supply chains.

Savings generated would pay for installation of an information technology infrastructure capable of fighting the modern war. So CIM would be helping not only the pencil-pushers in the bureaucracy but also the young soldiers in the field. It would, in the process, spare the military the embarrassment of again having to admit, as it did in the Persian Gulf War, that it couldn't communicate effectively or tell from hour to hour where its tanks were located. Using CIM, the military would truly become the proverbial lean, mean fighting machine, effectively equipped and able to respond and deploy to any spot in the world within 24 hours.

What's more, CIM was in the very capable hands of Paul Strassmann, the information technology guru who had almost single-handedly overhauled the business processes at Xerox Corp. Strassmann had come in specifically to design this DoD program and implement it over a seven-year period. As Hank Philcox, then chief information officer at the Internal Revenue Service and chief architect of the agency's $8 billion Tax Modernization System, a major reengineering effort, says, "If anyone could get it done, Paul Strassmann could."

Nearly seven years later, however, CIM is no longer the darling of the change management groupies in Washington. It has had some successes: Its business process reengineering (BPR) efforts, for instance, have been labeled by many as the best in government. But it has achieved few of the objectives it promised, and now some experts question whether CIM has a future.

"I think that the Department of Defense tried to do too much at one time without putting the policies in place to accomplish their goals," says Mickey McDermott, assistant director of the General Accounting Office. "Even today, there's very little policy on how to achieve the goals of CIM. Overall, the concept was good, but the implementation was faulty."

A 1994 investigative report by Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, now the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, emphatically defined CIM's modernization effort as a complete failure. Further, it said that grossly inflated promises of budget savings would soon come back to haunt DoD. "Because defense budgets were based on the phantom savings to be derived from this program," the report concluded, "difficult decisions will have to be made in the future on whether to increase defense spending or cut critical defense programs and military readiness."

Strassmann himself is disappointed with the result. "Many of the pieces of the program are proceeding," he says. "The problem is that those are now isolated details. The overreaching vision of using CIM as a way of funding modernization of the information infrastructure has not been there. CIM was worth about $120 million a month of net savings. If you get behind that rate, then there's no money left to reinvest. So it all just becomes a cost-cutting exercise."

What went wrong?

Promises and Rivalries

From the beginning, Strassmann was an enthusiastic leader in the effort to overhaul the way the military dealt with information. It was a challenge he not only welcomed but felt uniquely qualified to undertake. After all, this one-time commando for his native Czechoslovakia during World War II had been a top executive at General Foods, Kraft and Xerox. In the latter job, he was responsible for all strategic investments, acquisitions and product plans for the company's worldwide electronics businesses.

Shortly after Strassmann retired, Deputy Secretary of Defense Donald Atwood asked him to come over to DoD. Atwood and Strassmann had both worked as consultants to General Motors in the aftermath of that company's acquisition of EDS.

Atwood knew that defense budgets would head south in the post-Cold War era. As one response, he formulated the CIM initiative, believing it could change business practices in ways that would help the military effectively carry out its war-readiness mission at a time of declining resources. The program was put under the direction of Duane Andrews, then assistant secretary for Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence (C3I), the office that provides technology support to the services. Atwood asked Strassmann to design the details of CIM and implement the program.

"The underlying idea of CIM was that we would take down the bureaucracy faster than the downsizing of the military," explains Strassmann, now a consultant in New Canaan, Conn. "Everything else was subordinate to that."

The CIM strategy was to accomplish that goal with a variety of means, including the following:

Business process reengineering. The goal here was to design new, more efficient processes for doing work. Often the old processes were dependent on applications of information technology carried out by retrained workers.

Migration. This step involved analyzing legacy computer systems and moving the most effective ones to help support the new processes.

Data standardization. Each service had its own data formats and systems for common functions, like personnel records. Data standardization would not only remove redundancy but also make it easier for the services to share information.

Just-in-time procurement. DoD's archaic procurement system built up billions of dollars' worth of obsolete equipment inventories. Strassmann wanted to cut these inventories, put limits on future purchases and develop a shorter acquisition lead times, so that necessary equipment would be obtained only when it was tied to a particular mission.

The Bush Administration made CIM one of nine big information technology programs on its "presidential priority list." The project received equally strong support from Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., then chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and other congressional leaders. CIM, in fact, received $1 billion annually in its early years to conduct process analysis, determine best practices and design and plan the implementation.

By the end of 1992, with the Soviet Union broken apart and the Pentagon budget continuing to decline, the CIM idea seemed more critical than ever. But little was known about the specifics of the plan, which was due to be released in 1993, and few could guess how defense organizations would react to the changes it would propose.

Only one thing was certain: It wouldn't be easy to impose a common vision on the four armed services, whose rivalries are legend. As one retired Marine officer says, "Each service thinks they're the toughest or the best. And nobody from the Army or the Air Force, and even the Navy really, has any place coming in and telling [the Marines] how to do our job. I mean, what the hell do they know about our business?"

From the beginning, the services' parochialism served to undermine CIM. "It was probably a very high deterrent," says McDermott. "Everybody wants to keep their own systems, for one. Plus, the services really control the money and the Office of the Secretary of Defense had no real authority to make people put the CIM tenets in place. All they really could do was try to encourage people to go in that direction."

Strassmann tried to address the problem of the services' competitive cultures through a slow and deliberate pace of change. "Many of the ideas were introduced slowly so that we could create the institution, and then after the culture is there and it's accepted and there are small examples of success to point to, then the rollout would begin," Strassmann says.

Unfortunately, according to McDermott, Strassmann's hands were tied from the beginning. Because the program was placed under the direction of C3I, it was perceived by program heads as addressing technology issues rather than functional ones. So instead of applying technology to new, improved processes, for example, many offices simply applied new technology (often migrated from one area to another) to the same old processes. Strassmann was viewed as a technologist while he was really trying to promote change in functional operations, a task for which, McDermott claims, "he didn't have the power to do what he needed to do."

Then in November 1992, President Bush lost his reelection bid, an event that had seemed highly unlikely to the Pentagon brass a year before. CIM advocates like Defense Department Secretary Richard Cheney lost their jobs but Strassmann agreed to stay on. "I was very committed to CIM," he states. "In fact, I had just signed a three-year lease on my apartment in Crystal City," near the Pentagon.

Nevertheless, it became apparent to Strassmann that the commitment would not be reciprocated by the new administration. He thought the Clinton transition team was more interested in DoD social issues than with preparing the military for future challenges. "Let me just be charitable," he says. "They didn't have a clue. They said, 'The world is peaceful and we really don't need this and don't need that.' Unfortunately, the world is not a more peaceful world, as we have seen."

Just before Clinton's inauguration on Jan. 20, 1993, Strassmann abruptly resigned as director of defense information. Without saying much to anyone, he paid off his lease and went home. With that, many believed, so too went all hope of a successful CIM implementation.

"I just handed in my chips, that's all," he says. "I just felt I would not get support in the new administration and under those circumstances, it was the only honorable thing to do."

The Aftermath

As it turned out, the CIM program was suspended for the first 10 months of 1993. Eventually, the program was revived, but with a smaller scope and a projected savings of just $26 billion over seven years. Strassmann's responsibilities were simply transferred to Cynthia Kendall, now the deputy assistant secretary of Defense for information management. Clinton later appointed Lt. Gen. Emmett Paige Jr., to the post of assistant secretary of Defense for C3I.

In the summer of 1994, a comprehensive, strategic plan was finally unveiled, listing six goals. These included reinventing and reengineering DoD's processes; tying DoD organizations together through common, shared data; minimizing duplication and enhancing information systems; implementing a flexible, worldwide information infrastructure; and applying CIM to integrate department-wide operations.

Under Paige and Kendall, CIM has completed 148 BPR projects and has made more than 1,300 recommendations for improvement. Some of the recent success stories:

The Marine Corps has reduced its original software code by 80 percent and instead now uses mostly defense-wide code. Funds once used to maintain and update original code are being used to buy boots for Marines in the field.

The assistant secretary of Defense for health affairs and the service surgeons general have adopted private-sector best practices to reduce the order-to-ship time for medical supplies from weeks to hours. Services now use one common management system called the Defense Medical Logistic Standard Support System, which reduces overall wholesale inventory by 60 percent and hospital inventory by 65 percent. Savings of $3 billion are projected over 12 years.

A cooperative business process reengineering effort undertaken by the Pentagon and the Department of Veterans Affairs has promoted the sharing of benefits and medical information, helping to reduce processing time for VA death benefits from six months to six hours.

Under the direction of the Defense Information Systems Agency, 194 military data centers are being consolidated into 16 mega-centers. The project will be finished by the end of 1996, a year ahead of schedule, Kendall says.

Still, CIM has been flooded with criticism. The General Accounting Office began reporting on the lack of an overall vision for the program even before Strassmann left. The House Armed Services Committee was so fed up with CIM's performance that in 1994 it agreed to reduce the Pentagon's $9.8 billion information technology budget by $680 million. The Senate didn't go along, however, and the budget request was fully funded. Most recently, GAO labeled CIM a "high risk program" that could potentially cost the government billions of dollars without clear returns. "Defense has identified several opportunities to streamline or reengineer . . . but few have been implemented," said the accounting office in a report issued last July. "As a result, Defense continues to spend about $3 billion annually with little demonstrable benefit. Few redundant systems have been eliminated and significant savings have not yet materialized."

CIM's plan has met with harsh criticism within the Pentagon as well. The most high-profile example was the military services' strong protest of the Bush Administration's decision to consolidate information technology purchases and central computer design activities under DISA. Reaction was so intense, in fact, that Gen. Paige agreed to rescind the directive. Today, only the data centers are under DISA's control.

"Certainly, there was concern about moving the data centers or the other functions from the services to DISA because they lost control of them. And that's the main issue," says Kendall. "I think whenever you're dealing with change management, it's scary. People are scared of the unknown. In hindsight, with respect to the data centers, given the dollar savings it turned out to be a good thing. But at the time you're making the transition it's very emotional."

Lessons Learned

CIM provides a series of lessons for those attempting to implement enterprise-wide change management programs-both in and out of the Pentagon. Managers familiar with the program say CIM demonstrates the need for top leadership commitment and involvement from the beginning, the flexibility to compromise and adjust a plan when an aspect of it is not working, and ongoing economic analysis to demonstrate to critics what an investment is reaping.

Perhaps the most important lesson CIM provides is to never underestimate the massive complexity of instituting change within the context of the government. "What they were trying to do was absolutely the right thing," says Philcox. "But when you're cutting so many different organizational boundaries, you've got to get those people who are in positions of power on board as part of the team. Unfortunately, you're asking them to reengineer processes that may significantly reduce their own power base and maybe even eliminate their job. And very few people can live with that kind of outcome, so that's a major problem with efforts like this."

Michael Yoemans, director of functional process improvement within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for C3I, says CIM is in transition and has been judged too quickly and harshly. He says the biggest challenge the program had to overcome was the initial high expectations that Pentagon officials created by advertising huge cost savings.

"You have to be really careful not to set up a program in such a way that it becomes a target," he says. "You have to carefully couch your expectations, so that you're not spending all your time explaining to GAO why you haven't shown all of these savings right away."

Another problem that needs to be recognized, Yoemans says, is inadequate understanding of the complexities that are involved in consolidating and reengineering different computer systems within an organization as big as DoD. "Streamlining and changing business practices can be very complicated," he explains. "For instance, if we wanted to take all the payroll systems and get them all down to one, it sounds pretty simple. Payroll's payroll, right? But when you look inside an organization's payroll system, you see interfaces to their labor distribution, project management, personnel and so forth. It's like one internal organ in a body. You can't just rip it out and expect for everything to be all right. You have to reattach the organ. So instead of it being just one system, it's actually an entire infrastructure with many tentacles."

What Next?

Kendall says many of the CIM improvements are now being institutionalized, and thus will be considered as part of future budget formulations.

McDermott, on the other hand, notes that while "the goals of CIM can be achieved, I don't think CIM as it was implemented can be achieved."

He suggests that the program should first be given to an office with more authority-perhaps a deputy secretary of Defense-who can define the program in functional terms. Clear and concrete policies need to be put in place about techniques and timetables for implementation, McDermott says, and better tracking systems are needed to follow how the money is being used and what results are being achieved. Finally, service rivalries need to be recognized and planned for.

Ironically, downsizing and smaller budgets may have primed the services to come together and make an honest attempt at implementing CIM's goals. "When CIM was first put in place, I don't think they were ready for change, but I think they're starting," says McDermott. "We're starting to see a different trend and a different way of thinking over there."

DoD, it's worth noting, took a big risk by attempting the large-scale change that the Corporate Information Management program entailed. In spite of mistakes made and difficulties faced, "it's essential that we continue moving forward," Kendall says. "We will continue to identify more opportunities, either through consolidation and outsourcing, to improve the way we do business. That must never stop."

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Linking Supercomputers

Heather B. Hayes — Thu, 01 Feb 1996 00:00:00 -0500

More Horsepower

The goals of the program include the following:

Increase the productivity and competitiveness of key U.S. industries by addressing fundamental problems in science and engineering, such as developing computationally intensive environmental models to ensure accurate monitoring of acid rain and ozone levels.
Provide key support for the National Information Infrastructure (NII), a White House program that enhances access to government information through advanced high-speed networks and software. The NII application video-on-demand, for example, will rely on scalable parallel computing and mass storage systems developed by high-performance computing research centers.
Allow scientists and other researchers to collaborate on projects through robust networks.
Perform long-term research to safeguard the United States' status as a leader in high-performance computing and networking technologies.

Less Duplication

Some examples:

The Energy Department is using high-performance computers to pursue a complex three-dimensional numerical simulation system that will be able to test and prototype nuclear weapons systems.
The Defense Department is using simulation and modeling to develop more effective stealth planes, as well as to determine the most effective battlefield tactics.
NOAA has developed a hurricane prediction system using high performance computational modeling that can more accurately predict the path of a hurricane and provide earlier warnings.
The National Institutes of Health is using computational models to simulate the structure of biological molecules in order to more effectively fight heart disease and other medical problems.

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Up Close and Personal

Heather B. Hayes — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

hen it comes to overseeing deportation hearings, the caseloads heaped upon federal immigration judges are almost too heavy to bear. An overwhelming number of immigrants need their cases decided. As a result, judges spend most of their time on the road, traveling to out-of-the-way prisons and detention centers where most detainees are housed.

"In a lot of cases, a judge will only get to a particular prison once a month or sometimes once every two months," explains Lynn Petersburg, deputy associate director of information at the Immigration and Naturalization Service's Executive Office for Immigration Review (OIR). "So in a lot of cases, aliens are spending long periods of time waiting to have their day in court."

A pilot program testing the benefits and possibilities of videoconferencing may be the solution to this customer service dilemma. Videoconferencing-which allows two-way audio and two-way video across television monitors or desktop computer systems-has cut down on judges' travel time. More importantly, it allows judges to hear more cases in a shorter span of time.

Room-based systems have already been installed at OIR headquarters in Falls Church, Va., and its Chicago office, as well as at several prisons in Texas, Maryland and Louisiana. The systems include a main camera and television monitors at each site and a document camera and scanner at the prison. The OIR has successfully tested videoconferencing during mock trials and is now evaluating it during live hearings.

"The judges like the fact that they can be much more readily available to aliens and their attorneys and the prison officials like it as well, because it helps cut down on security risks," Petersburg says.

She notes that videoconferencing is being considered for other OIR activities as well. For instance, the technology could give immigrants in remote areas better access to pro bono attorneys who are well-versed in immigration law. Attorneys could present oral arguments before the Board of Immigration Appeals without having to travel to Virginia. And portable videoconferencing systems are expected to help the OIR respond within hours to immigration crises, including deportation or asylum cases, that often pop up with little warning along the southwestern border or in Florida.

The technology poses few concerns among OIR officials, although improvements have been requested in video quality so judges can more accurately assess an immigrant's demeanor or the authenticity of an evidentiary document. Another concern is that legal and procedural issues must be clarified before deportation hearings can be played out via television monitors and telecommunications lines. A working group made up of attorneys and operations personnel is studying whether or not interactive court hearings are appropriate in the arena of immigration law. The Ninth Circuit Court recently shot down the Justice Department on videoconferencing, ruling it is not a legal means of trying criminal behavior.

"We want to make sure that all of these issues are addressed up front, before we install the equipment," Petersburg says. "But already we can see that videoconferencing offers a lot of benefits to us, especially in the customer service area. Most importantly is the general improvement in our availability to the people we serve."

Closing the Gaps

Thanks to falling prices and better quality, videoconferencing has become very popular in government. It's an especially practical tool for agencies with tight budgets and high travel costs, or those who deal with foreign countries.

With videoconferencing, people from different parts of the world are now able to come together and discuss issues without leaving their offices. Employees from different regions can participate in the same courses and seminars, and trainers don't have to worry about setting up a new classroom every week. With desktop systems, managers can meet face-to-face with a colleague to write a paper together or to discuss financial matters and illustrate their positions on a master spreadsheet.

"Once a videoconferencing meeting kicks off, you become totally unaware that it's a virtual meeting," says Audrey S. White, chief of the National Park Service's telecommunications section. "The dynamics of a real meeting are inherent in the system. You're looking at the person who's talking. You're observing the facial expressions, the body language, the attitude. It truly becomes a real-time meeting to everyone who's involved."

Although most people traditionally think of videoconferencing as a meeting tool, agencies have devised unique applications, including the following:

Engineers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming are testing portable videoconferencing systems so people in the office can help employees sent out to the field to inspect missile sites.

Army medical personnel can now send video images of soldiers injured in battle back to U.S.-based Army medical centers so surgeons and specialists can observe the patient, assess the severity of injuries, make a diagnosis and instruct medics on how to perform emergency surgery.

Videoconferencing rooms set up by the U.S. Information Agency in major international cities for U.S. speakers to discuss issues with foreign citizens and politicians have also been used by foreign and Washington-based officials to negotiate trade and economic agreements.

A videooconferencing network sponsored by the Energy Department allows scientists and physics researchers from around the world to collaborate on high-level scientific experiments and projects. Systems have been installed at Harvard and Princeton universities, the University of Michigan and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as numerous agency offices.

Regional National Park Service directors used videoconferencing to speed up their restructuring plan, which included downsizing from 10 to seven regions. The directors met almost exclusively via videoconferencing each month and were able to implement the new department framework in record time, White says.

To speed up recovery efforts in the aftermath of a natural disaster, Federal Emergency Management Agency inspectors take along a portable system to show administrators and managers in Washington the destruction. By seeing the area firsthand, decision-makers can assess what response is required, send financial aid and begin reconstruction efforts faster.

Technology Improving

Videoconferencing systems can be divided into three categories: room-based (or roll-about), portable and desktop computer systems. Room-based systems are used for small and large meetings. Portable systems are available for temporary sites or field work. Desktop systems are generally used for one-on-one discussions.

Unlike television, which is one-way and transmitted across airwaves, videoconferencing is interactive via digital telecommunications lines. Standard phone lines can only handle audio, but digital lines can handle voice, data, graphics and video. Most videoconferencing systems use either ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network), Switched 56 or T-1 lines.

During a conference, a strategically placed camera captures moving pictures of the scene in analog format, which is commonly used for television viewing. However, for videoconferencing, the picture must first be converted to digital form with a "codec" (coder/decoder). The codec then compresses the video picture and transmits it across the digital phone lines. On the other side, the codec decompresses the video and converts it back to analog form, and the pictures and audio show up on the monitor. Microphones are set up in the room to better capture sound.

A control mechanism determines who will be seen on screen during a meeting. The two types available are voice-activated and directed mode. The voice-activated mode is popular because the system automatically shifts to the person who speaks loudest. The directed mode allows the conference host to pull down a list of participants online and select which one should be viewed.

Traditionally, videoconferencing has included only audio and video transmission. However, vendors are now offering products that combine these features. Vtel Corp., for example, offers a product known as media conferencing, which allows users to annotate graphics, store slides, share computer files and send one-minute video mail messages. PictureTel includes a groupware function that allows users to collaborate on documents in real time.

While the ability to "see and be seen" is extremely useful in negotiations and discussions taking place via videoconferencing, the quality of the technology is still evolving. "It's not like watching Ted Koppel," warns Jonathan Silverman, team leader of economic security for USIA's Bureau of Information. "It's not that good and probably never will be."

Low-end systems often transmit wavy or jerky images and sound gaps, he says. Higher video quality is contingent upon resolution and the number of kilobytes transmitted per second, which determines how many frames are viewed per second.

Despite current limitations, Silverman believes videoconferencing is a boon to any agency. "You can certainly get a lot out of being able to see who you're talking to," he says. "For us, it really levels the playing field. Unlike a one-way satellite system, both sides have control over the microphones and the cameras, and as a result it really allows you to talk with people, rather than talking at people."

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Up Close and Personal

Heather B. Hayes — Mon, 01 Jan 1996 00:00:00 -0500

Closing the Gaps

Although most people traditionally think of videoconferencing as a meeting tool, agencies have devised unique applications, including the following:

n Engineers at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming are testing portable videoconferencing systems so people in the office can help employees sent out to the field to inspect missile sites.

n Army medical personnel can now send video images of soldiers injured in battle back to U.S.-based Army medical centers so surgeons and specialists can observe the patient, assess the severity of injuries, make a diagnosis and instruct medics on how to perform emergency surgery.

n Videoconferencing rooms set up by the U.S. Information Agency in major international cities for U.S. speakers to discuss issues with foreign citizens and politicians have also been used by foreign and Washington-based officials to negotiate trade and economic agreements.

n A videooconferencing network sponsored by the Energy Department allows scientists and physics researchers from around the world to collaborate on high-level scientific experiments and projects. Systems have been installed at Harvard and Princeton universities, the University of Michigan and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as numerous agency offices.

n Regional National Park Service directors used videoconferencing to speed up their restructuring plan, which included downsizing from 10 to seven regions. The directors met almost exclusively via videoconferencing each month and were able to implement the new department framework in record time, White says.

n To speed up recovery efforts in the aftermath of a natural disaster, Federal Emergency Management Agency inspectors take along a portable system to show administrators and managers in Washington the destruction. By seeing the area firsthand, decision-makers can assess what response is required, send financial aid and begin reconstruction efforts faster.

Technology Improving

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