Government Executive - Authors - Lisa Corbin

Getting a Seat at the Table

Lisa Corbin — Sat, 01 Mar 1997 00:00:00 -0500

When asked about their biggest challenges, a group of information resource managers participating in Government Executive's 1996 IRM Roundtable spoke about the difficulties of having to do more work with fewer people and less money. Many lamented that information technology projects were not keeping pace with advancements in the private sector and that reduced funding could have detrimental effects on computer and communications infrastructures.

What a difference a year makes. The 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA), which took effect in August, swiftly converted federal information technology from a technical issue to a management issue. The law-nicknamed the Clinger-Cohen Act after its congressional sponsors-mandated that agencies replace IRMs with chief information officers responsible for rationalizing IT investments across enterprises.

So instead of waxing poetic about bits and bytes, agency IT chiefs these days are talking about "capital planning," "investment portfolios," and "corporate perspectives."

Starting this year, the $26.6 billion the federal government spends on information technology-plus another $25 billion of unreported Defense Department IT spending-will be linked to agency missions and budget plans. Technology investment strategies employing activity-based costing are being devised to make the most of reengineered organizations. IT projects will compete against non-IT projects for agency dollars. Over time, performance metrics will evaluate the success of IT investment strategies and inefficient projects will be denied funding.

In many cases, the executives chosen to devise IT investment strategies are not technologists but budget and finance people. Some of the CIOs are in "acting" positions while the Office of Management and Budget evaluates them, or until permanent candidates can be recruited. Others are former senior IRMs who simply changed job titles. A few were already CIOs before chief information officers were mandated by law.

The ideal CIO, according to the Office of Management and Budget, should possess a combination of technical, financial and communications skills. John Koskinen, OMB's deputy director for management, advises CIOs to ask three "pesky" questions:

Should the agency be doing the work at all?
Could another agency or outside contractor do the work better and cheaper?
Is the work being performed in the most efficient manner or do processes need to be reengineered?

Helping chief information officers assess and plan IT investments are the deputy CIOs and other members of the CIO Council. The council, with Koskinen at its helm, provides a forum for sharing best practices in information technology management. Subcommittees are studying issues such as vendor relations and training.

The new CIOs and their staffs will spend a lot of time this year seeking solutions to a wide range of IT problems, such as how to locate and correct six-digit date fields in computer programs so that agency software will continue to operate in the new millennium. In addition to the Year 2000 problem, CIOs will be looking at security issues that threaten the confidentiality, integrity, reliability and availability of government information. They also will be devising ways to make most effective use of the Internet and internal intranets.

In addition to technology concerns, CIOs will be exploring the best ways to implement the ITMRA. As they set up methodologies for analyzing business processes and benchmarking progress, many CIOs also will be fighting internal power struggles at their agencies. At some organizations such as the Defense Department and NASA, program managers and IRM staff have more real control over IT spending than the CIOs. At other agencies, CIOs still have not been welcomed into policy-making circles. Several executives featured on the following pages talk about the need for CIOs to establish credibility with senior management.

"The single most important issue facing CIOs is whether they have a seat at the table," says Robert J. Guerra, CIO program chairman for the Industry Advisory Council, an association representing companies serving the government marketplace. "CIOs have to position themselves as peers of senior executives or else they'll simply have responsibility without authority and will never gain the respect they need to get the job done."

The Office of Management and Budget, in its oversight role in the ITMRA implementation, has maintained that chief information officers must have direct access to agency heads. "CIOs have an important mission, which is to demonstrate agency information needs and account for their use," says Koskinen. "To be successful, they have to be part of the senior management group that is making the decisions."

For this special report, Government Executive talked to 23 of the 27 statutorily mandated CIOs. (Some agencies were unable to participate due to timing conflicts or because they had an acting CIO who was about to be replaced.) The CIOs speak frankly about hot technologies, upcoming projects and their approaches to management.

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Getting a Seat at the Table

Lisa Corbin — Sat, 01 Mar 1997 00:00:00 -0500

So instead of waxing poetic about bits and bytes, agency IT chiefs these days are talking about "capital planning," "investment portfolios," and "corporate perspectives."

Should the agency be doing the work at all?
Could another agency or outside contractor do the work better and cheaper?
Is the work being performed in the most efficient manner or do processes need to be reengineered?

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Data Warehouses Hit the Web

Lisa Corbin — Sat, 01 Feb 1997 00:00:00 -0500

ife was relatively tranquil for the Environmental Protection Agency's information systems staff until the 1988 Superfund Reauthorization Act prompted a reengineering frenzy that radically altered how the agency handles data. That legislation contained a provision requiring the agency to make toxic release reports from more than 675,000 companies available to the public on a regular basis.

"Suddenly, everyone from the Sierra Club to the Boy Scouts wanted timely inventories about the amount of toxic substances released into the environment," says Pat Garvey, deputy director of EPA's information management division. "At first, we tried putting the data on CD-ROMs but that media wasn't conducive to monthly updates. We even photocopied thousands of pages and faxed them out to people."

At about the same time, EPA management began a reorganization campaign to make the agency less vertically focused. Instead of having divisions studying specific categories such as air, land, waste and water, EPA decided to focus on geographic regions. Researchers in the Chesapeake Bay division, for example, would study all elements affecting the environment in that area.

The only problem was that information about those elements was stored on numerous databases, each containing its own special account number, programming language, security codes and protocols. Especially troubling were the different nomenclatures used on the databases. One division, for example, would use the term "sites" while another would use "facilities" and yet another would use a numerical designation.

"We had to create a standard data structure so that someone other than [information systems] experts could access the information," says Garvey. "That's when we got the idea to build a centralized data warehouse and link it to the World Wide Web so that information could be made available to the general public and to EPA's 17,000 employees."

Using a relational database management system from Oracle Corp., Garvey and his team of seven computer specialists replicated information from six EPA databases onto a Web site called Envirofacts (www.epa.gov/enviro/). Reports on everything from air pollution levels and water-discharge permit compliance to hazardous waste site assessments can be retrieved quickly and easily. Instead of memorizing complex database languages, users can send queries by completing online forms requesting facility names and addresses.

The Envirofacts site is averaging about 125,000 hits (the number of times information elements within the site are accessed) per month. Internally, EPA employees use the site to closely track hazardous waste and a variety of air, water and ground pollutants. External users rely on the site to keep up to date on regulatory data.

"Envirofacts has empowered environmental groups to get the information they need to educate themselves and others in their communities," says Garvey. "It also has been an excellent way for EPA to fulfill its right-to-know requirements. Since building the data warehouse and linking it to the Web, most of our Freedom of Information Act requests have gone away."

Data warehousing is revolutionizing the way federal agencies access and use information. Government organizations are consolidating disparate databases running on incompatible computer systems and forming centralized data repositories that enable quick information retrieval. Specialized tools are being used to manipulate data in those repositories to reveal patterns that can help executives make decisions and ultimately boost efficiency and cut costs.

Best of all, data warehouses make a variety of information readily available to a variety of people. Budget analysts at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, for example, used to wait weeks for financial reports to be generated from three separate databases. Information retrieval via mainframes was so complex that only about 150 analysts had access to the data. But with the lab's new data warehouse, reports can be generated in about 20 minutes and made available to more than 1,000 people.

"In the past, project and line managers were always a little bit in the dark," says Charles Lee, database administrator at the computing information and communications division at Los Alamos. "Financial reports-if they were able to be seen at all-were always at least a month old. Now the information is always up to date and can be manipulated and customized in a way the old reports couldn't."

Agencies are using data warehousing to do everything from detect fraud and abuse (Agriculture, Health Care Financing Administration and IRS) to analyze statistics (Census Bureau, Education and Labor) and monitor public safety (Federal Aviation Administration and Justice). The CIA has a data warehouse to interpret and compare intercepted communications, while the Social Security Administration employs the technology for multidimensional analysis. And the Army and Air Force Exchange Service's data warehouse of point-of-sale information recently uncovered inaccuracies in product bar codes.

The Data Warehousing Institute, a research and education group in Bethesda, Md., predicts the federal data warehousing market will be valued at about $1 billion by 2000. Roughly a quarter of all federal organizations own or are building data warehouses, according to the institute.

"Many organizations, including government agencies, have been technologically condemned to be informational wastelands, structurally incapable of providing useful business intelligence to management," says Ramon Barquin, founder of the Data Warehousing Institute. "But data warehouses offer a way out of that situation because they can deliver integrated information about organizations. They are knowledge delivery machines."

More Sophisticated Warehouses

Despite huge success stories at companies such as MCI, United Parcel Service and Wal-Mart, data warehousing was initially slow to catch on in the private sector. Part of the reason was cost. With price tags running from $100,000 up to $5 million, data warehouses were not exactly impulse buys for agencies. The 1990 Chief Financial Officers Act, however, put pressure on agencies to do a better job analyzing data. Soon thereafter, warehouse pilots began to spring up all over government.

First generation data warehouses were generally experimental projects built for internal use with products obtained from existing contract vehicles. These early efforts involved specialized query "engines" that were added to prevailing databases. Some integrated information from various platforms but few did heavy-duty analysis of relationships between data sets.

Second generation warehouses, by contrast, are generally larger and enable complex queries and forecasting. Some of the more sophisticated warehouses, such as those at the Defense Department and NASA, hold as much as a trillion of bytes of data-the equivalent of more than a billion business letters.

"The [1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act] has helped to further drive the federal data warehousing market because every agency now must be able to measure performance," says Barquin. "And to do that you have to be able to integrate information sources."

Some of the new data warehouses, like the one at EPA, are linked to the Web so non-sensitive information can be made available to Net surfers around the world, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Makers of database programs have added Web gateways to their platforms so users can mine data warehouses with Web browsers. And many decision-support software products now offer Web protocols. Internet firewalls and encryption devices are being used to safeguard data warehouses from cyberbandits.

The Housing and Urban Development Department's Web warehouse integrates community planning and housing project information from various sources and arranges it on maps so that it can be easily understood. The data is available (www.hud.gov) to city planners, community residents, architects, builders, schools and libraries.

The Transportation Department uses its Web warehouse (www.bts.gov) to share information with other government agencies. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes wage, price and employment data obtained from various sources publicly available via www.stats.bls.gov.

Tools of the Trade

The key to a successful data warehouse, on or off the Web, is the proper integration of products. The most critical components are servers, from companies such as Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp., Hewlett-Packard, NCR and Sun Microsystems, and relational databases from suppliers such as Informix, Oracle, Sybase and Microsoft. Middleware, a type of software from firms such as Information Builders and Trinzic, aids warehouse management by pulling information from database engines and delivering it to client computers.

Middleware links query tools to multiple databases working on different platforms. Informix's new product, DataBlades, lets users analyze relationships between data from disparate sources without having to use special applications.

Extraction tools from companies such as Carlton and IBM work to "scrub" data so that it is consistent. Reporting tools enable users to pull the data and drop it into specific formats such as charts. Data mining products from firms such as Cross/Z International and Information Discovery use algorithms to refine raw data. These products use inductive-as opposed to deductive-reasoning to identify patterns and predict trends.

Online analytical processing products from suppliers such as MicroStrategy, Oracle and Pilot Software take data mining to its highest level. These tools, which do multidimensional analysis in separate relational databases, can answer complex queries and discover otherwise elusive data associations.

Visualization products, such as the latest tool kit from Advanced Visual Systems, help users create three-dimensional graphical images of data extracted from warehouses. Those images and other data can be stored on disk arrays and other media from companies such as Data General and EMC Corp.

Some firms now offer packages that combine a variety of products for data extraction and mapping. SAS Institute, for instance, has a tool kit that helps users both build and maintain warehouses. And those interested in smaller warehouses, known as data marts, can use tools from companies such as IBM and Microsoft to create simple applications quickly and inexpensively.

Lessons Learned

All sizes of data warehousing projects can run over budget and fail to meet objectives unless thought out carefully. Agencies must outline clear objectives and anticipate rapid expansion by reserving adequate storage capacity and skilled personnel. Experts recommend starting with small, manageable applications.

"Do a pilot first and remember to target your audience," says Charles Lee at Los Alamos. "Initially, don't put anything critical on the warehouse and don't turn it loose to everybody."

Security is another consideration, as is maintenance. As executives dream up new applications, warehouse staffers must maintain the ability to integrate data from multiple sources. One of the toughest problems is the conversion of metadata-detailed information about the data itself-because companies use different standards. But a newly formed consortium of vendors, known as the Metadata Coalition,

is hoping to solve problems associated with the integration of software tools.

Possibly the most daunting obstacles to data warehousing are the cultural problems that result during the building phase. Some employees may put up resistance to reengineering required before warehouse construction. Others may raise questions about which departments own data.

"At the outset, it's critical to put together an interdisciplinary team involving everyone from the systems folks to the program managers," says EPA's Garvey. "Clear definitions must be established about who owns the data and controls the warehouse. The turf wars soon disappear once people see the warehouse in action-then they all fight to get their databases on it."

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Data Warehouses Hit the Web

Lisa Corbin — Sat, 01 Feb 1997 00:00:00 -0500

More Sophisticated Warehouses

The Transportation Department uses its Web warehouse (www.bts.gov) to share information with other government agencies. Tools of the Trade

Lessons Learned

"Do a pilot first and remember to target your audience," says Charles Lee at Los Alamos. "Initially, don't put anything critical on the warehouse and don't turn it loose to everybody."

is hoping to solve problems associated with the integration of software tools.

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Superhighway Growth and Gridlock

Lisa Corbin — Wed, 01 Jan 1997 00:00:00 -0500

s Government Executive discovered six months ago when carving its own niche in cyberspace, Web site construction is not for the faint-hearted. Staking a claim in cyberspace requires skill, patience, dedication, secure financial backing and lots of Chinese takeout. Within two years, dozens of federal agencies have risen to the challenge and produced lively Web pages that, in some cases, outshine the best in the private sector.

Many of these sites-usually created by skeleton staffs working with bare-bones budgets-feature stimulating content and snazzy designs. Some, such as the IRS' home page (www.irs.ustreas.gov), are downright amusing while at the same time informative. And unlike the static, first-generation sites that contained little more than mission statements and photos of key officials, many of today's government Web sites are fully interactive. They offer access to sophisticated databases for on-line transactions and contain small applications programs, called applets, that users can download and use locally.

Net surfers can do everything from conduct two-way discussions on nuclear power plant regulations (www.nrc.gov) to monitor near-real time satellite images of hurricanes (goeshp.wwb.noaa.gov) and buy products from an electronic shopping mall (www.gsa.gov). They can obtain the latest information on international cancer research (cancernet.nci.nih.gov), scan federal help-wanted ads (www.usajobs.opm.gov) or request estimates of Social Security benefits (www.ssa.gov).

The Census Bureau is working on a $30 million Data Access and Dissemination System that will make all Census data available via the agency's Web site. The system will enable site visitors to create customized reports on line.

In an effort to publicize information on more than 2,000 federal Web sites, the White House has added links from its home page to various agency on-line services (www.whitehouse.gov/WH/Services). The General Services Administration recently introduced its Government Information Exchange site (www.info.gov), which supplies an overview of all federal, state, local and foreign government programs. Developed in conjunction with the National Performance Review, the site serves as a shortcut to government on-line services by providing menus that link users to federal directories.

In addition, agencies are using inexpensive and user-friendly Internet technologies such as browsers and servers to create internal agency networks. These intranets are enabling workers to quickly tap into enterprise computing systems and share data or applications as easily as they would surf the Internet.

But several problems plague developments in the world of cybergovernment. Hackers and spies continue to threaten the integrity, confidentiality and availability of on-line data. Although many webmasters are routinely installing firewalls and encryption devices, most transactions involving credit cards or private information such as Social Security numbers are being postponed until more advanced technology becomes available.

Another major problem is congestion as user demand outstrips bandwidth capacity of the Internet's backbone networks. Blackouts, such as the one that recently shut down America Online for 19 hours, and more frequent brownouts have earned the World Wide Web the nickname the World Wide Wait.

User volume is causing chronic busy signals and long waits for data. Despite persistent efforts by companies such as AT&T and MCI to update switches and routers that direct Net traffic down pipelines, bottlenecks are developing and data packets are being lost. And with the number of Internet hosts expected to double this year from 4.8 million to 9.4 million, according to researcher Network Wizards in Menlo Park, Calif., some are predicting the collapse of the information superhighway.

The Office of Management and Budget and the new Federal Webmasters Information Management Working Group are busily studying possible solutions to data security problems and Net gridlock, along with a host of other issues such as how to archive electronic documents. Fresh guidelines, along with new products detailed on the following pages, should help travelers avoid at least some of the potholes along the superhighway.

The General Services Administration's Government Information Exchange site, developed in conjunction with the National Performance Review, provides menus that link users to government programs.

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Electronic Commerce Strategies

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Dec 1996 00:00:00 -0500

ext month is the deadline for federal agencies to comply with a presidential mandate to use electronic commerce for all routine procurements. Although dozens of pilot electronic commerce projects have been launched since the executive order was issued three years ago, few have been converted to permanent programs.

Many government organizations did not anticipate the radical business-process reengineering and up-front expenses required to do paperless procurements. They also were unprepared for the numerous hardware and software problems that have plagued transactions. And recent technological developments have forced some agencies to reexamine their electronic commerce strategies and even abandon initial projects.

The 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act called for a governmentwide Federal Acquisition Network (FACNET) to help agencies meet President Clinton's January 1997 deadline for electronic commerce compliance. The technology behind FACNET is electronic data interchange (EDI), the computer exchange of business data between organizations over telephone lines in a standard electronic format. By enabling computers to "talk" to each other, EDI allows agencies to generate, receive and process data with little or no human intervention.

Inventories can be updated automatically, material releases can be issued against open purchase orders, customers can be invoiced, suppliers can be paid and concerned parties can be advised on shipping. Instead of being mailed or faxed, documents are passed from one computer to another-thus eliminating re-keying and data-entry errors.

Some federal organizations have enjoyed enormous success with EDI. The Defense Personnel Support Center in Philadelphia, for instance, has used the technology to lower operating costs, boost productivity and deliver supplies to DoD mess halls, commissaries and hospitals within 72 hours instead of the average 60 days under the old system. EDI has enabled Walter Reed Army Medical Center to reduce its pharmaceutical inventories by 89 percent and eliminate six warehouses-thus saving more than more than $6 million a year.

The Environmental Protection Agency uses EDI for small purchases and regularly posts requests for proposals and discharge monitoring reports on the FACNET. Both the Patent and Trademark Office and the Census Bureau use the FACNET for collecting and disseminating data. And the Health Care Financing Administration uses EDI for Medicare claims, remittance advice and related transactions, saving an estimated $332 million in administrative costs this year alone.

The Office of Naval Research has saved more than $300,000 in check production and postage costs by using an EDI subset known as electronic funds transfer (EFT) for paying grant and contract vouchers. EFT enables funds to be transferred quickly via a nationwide automated clearinghouse network. Vouchers now are paid within five days instead of an average of 57 days under the paper system.

The Veterans Affairs Department uses EDI to pay invoices at 170 hospitals. About 90 percent of VA's small purchases are made electronically via the government's IMPAC credit card and paid within 24 hours. For every $1,000 paid on the same day, the VA receives a $6.50 rebate from the vendor.

"We are anticipating savings up to $28 million this year thanks to the rebates," says Nada Harris, deputy assistant secretary for information resources management at the Veterans Affairs Department. "That's a real incentive for us to use EDI and the FACNET."

But despite these success stories and those at private sector organizations such as Eastman Kodak, General Motors and Wal-Mart, EDI still has not found its way into the mainstream. Agencies find the technology difficult and expensive to implement. It requires dedicated computer servers, full-time maintenance staff and a value-added network that acts as a third-party clearinghouse by furnishing electronic mailboxes, tracking capabilities and storage/forwarding services.

EDI also requires special translation software to reformat data and convert it to the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) X12 EDI standard. Mapping software is used to rearrange incoming data into individual user formats. Some of these complex packages can cost as much as $100,000 each.

"Early on, we tried to use FACNET and found out that it was not very reliable or user-friendly," says Woody Hall, chief information officer at the Energy Department. "The other problem was that not very many vendors were using it either."

Only about 100 federal suppliers out of a pool of more than 300,000 have registered as FACNET electronic trading partners. Companies, particularly small businesses, say they cannot afford to pay the fees for value-added networks and build the appropriate network infrastructures for routing transactions. They also are discouraged by the lack of business opportunities, noting that only about 30,000 requests for quotations are posted to the FACNET each month and that approximately 80 percent of FACNET transactions are for procurements of $2,500 and below.

To help vendors become FACNET-compliant, the Small Business Administration has proposed a single value-added network that would offer low introductory rates. SBA wants to establish a FACNET services program for vendors, but some in government are dubious as to whether these efforts would boost registration.

"Many companies are deciding to avoid all the trouble and expense and go with the Internet and electronic bulletin boards instead," says Alan Balutis, director for budget, management and information at the Commerce Department.

Some agencies, responding to what the General Accounting Office describes as FACNET's "ill-defined" architecture, are opting for the Internet as well. New transaction and payment products from companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Premenos Corp. have made the World Wide Web a user-friendly vehicle for government procurement activities. In addition, every vendor within the federal buying community has access.

Agencies such as NASA regularly route bid and evaluation procedures through the Internet. And more government buyers are cruising through on-line shopping malls such as the Air Force's Country Store (http://www.hanscom.af.mil/Orgs/Spo/AVC/Cstore/) and the Federal Supply Service's GSA Advantage (www.gsa.gov).

"It turns out that industry was not as EDI-compliant as we thought," says William Gormley, assistant commissioner of the Federal Supply Service's Office of Acquisition. "Many companies are turning to GSA Advantage because we already have the infrastructure in place and as a result we are doing $1 million a week in electronic procurement transactions."

The changing dynamics of electronic commerce are being studied by the Chief Information Officers Council and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. A big complaint about the FACNET architecture is that it is designed to work best in one-on-one applications involving an agency and a vendor. The Internet, by contrast, enables one-on-many applications and does not route transactions through designated network entry points in order to maintain a uniform government appearance.

"FACNET requires a governmentwide commitment to doing things the same way, but not all agencies want that because they have autonomous bureaus and business lines," says Energy's Hall. "That's why a lot of organizations are turning to the Internet."

But the Net has its own problems, namely a lack of security and privacy. Financial and other sensitive data still are vulnerable to hackers and spies. Some recent developments, however, are expected to make electronic commerce transactions on the Net more secure. Sun Microsystems has introduced its Simple Key Management for Internet Protocol (SKIP), which encrypts data at the network level. Future applications created with the company's Java programming language are expected to incorporate secure transaction software based on SKIP.

The Office of Management and Budget, meanwhile, is looking at the Secure Electronic Transaction (SET) protocol jointly developed by Visa and Mastercard. The SET standard is designed to be used in credit-card transactions involving smart cards, which can contain digital signatures and other encrypted information.

Some agencies are hoping to get the best of both worlds by running EDI messages over the Internet. This new technology application is substantially cheaper than standard EDI because users do not have to pay value-added network messaging fees, which can run as high as $1 a message if sent during prime time. EDI messages sent over the Net, by contrast, can cost as little as a penny a piece and can be delivered to trading partners that cannot afford standard EDI.

Another advantage of sending EDI messages via the Internet is speed. Messages can be delivered in minutes instead of hours because they do not have to travel through value-added networks, which often delay transmissions until off-peak hours when rates are lower.

Refusing to be left out, several leading value-added network service providers have jumped on the EDI/Internet bandwagon. General Electric Information Services is teaming with X-Change Software to help companies access GSA Advantage via EDI software. Harbinger Corp. offers an EDI-translation product that enables EDI transactions over the World Wide Web. And Sterling Commerce has made its COMMERCE:Network value-added network accessible via the Internet.

The Energy Department, lacking confidence in the FACNET, Internet or EDI/Internet alternatives, is running its electronic commerce through the proprietary Government Acquisition Through Electronic Commerce (GATEC) network. The system, created by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is seen by some as more secure and stable than the other technologies, plus it provides gateways to FACNET entry points for eventual migration down the line. GATEC lacks development support, but Energy is confident that interest will pick up during the next year.

"What's perceived by some as chaos in the world of federal electronic commerce is really creativity on the part of the agencies to come up with the right solutions for their organizations," says Wayne Wittig, special assistant for electronic commerce to Steven Kelman, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy. "At this stage of the game, electronic commerce still means different things to different people."

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Icons of Information Technology

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Dec 1996 00:00:00 -0500

ne of the first jobs for the chief information officers currently being installed at 27 federal agencies is to analyze information technology projects and determine if adequate returns are being made on investments. Tight budgets and personnel shortages have caused government organizations to heartily embrace new computer and telecommunications projects in recent years. But the papers are full of stories about failed systems strung together willy-nilly without strategic planning, budgeting and performance measurement.

Some agencies, though, are getting it right. Though they have received considerably less media coverage, these IT shops have crafted innovative, cost-effective solutions that are making significant differences in the way government serves its citizens.

The Federal Technology Leadership Awards program is designed to recognize these groups and their accomplishments. Created five years ago, the awards serve as inspiration to all aspiring to excellence in information technology. This year's 24 winning projects, selected from a field of 157 nominations submitted by government and industry, show what agencies can achieve if they are willing to scrap conventional work methods and try something different.

Programs were judged on their degree of difficulty, innovative use of technology, real cost savings and cross-agency impact. The winners range from a biometric identification system that "reads" hand prints and a magnetic source imaging technique that creates maps of brains to database management systems, bar-code scanning devices and networking efforts. Many of the projects involve making information available over the Internet. Project costs ranged from $210,000 to $26.5 million, with most falling at the low end-indicating, perhaps, government downsizing and acknowledgment that smaller plans are more manageable.

For the first time, five Federal Technology Leadership Awards went to state information technology projects. These were nominated by the Intergovernmental Enterprise Panel (IEP) in partnership with the National Association of State Information Resource Executives. IEP was chartered by the Government Information Technology Services Working Group, a federal interagency group, to improve intergovernmental service delivery to the public.

Judges for this year's Federal Technology Leadership Awards were: John B. Arthur, assistant director for administration at the Office of Management and Budget; David Borland, the Army's vice director of information systems for command, control, communications and computers; Timothy B. Clark, editor and publisher of Government Executive; Cynthia Kendall, research director at International Data Corp.'s government division; Alan Paller, president of the CIO Institute (a nonprofit organization); Anne F. Thomson Reed, acting chief information officer at the Agriculture Department; and Robert J. Woods, commissioner of the General Services Administration's Federal Telecommunications Service.

Special thanks for prescreening the nominations goes to the 1996 Executive Potential Program Cluster Group 1. The program trains promising people at the GS 13-14 level for management posts. Group members were Sharyn M. Abbott, management analyst at the Education Department's Literacy Foundation; Gary M. Campbell, civil engineer at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; David Eisenstark, financial analyst at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; Rebecca M. Dean, telecommunications management specialist at the General Services Administration's Federal Telecommunications Service; Robert P. Gordon, contract specialist at the Energy Department; Nicholas Leivers, meteorologist at the Commerce Department's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Sheryl L. Mears, contract specialist at the Transportation Department; and Lurrie V. Pope, budget analyst at the Interior Department's National Park Service.

The teams who worked on the 24 winning projects were honored at an awards ceremony on Nov. 6 at the Washington Convention Center. Following is a summary of the 1996 Federal Technology Leadership Award winners.

EDUCATION AND TRAINING

TEACHING INSPECTORS

The Winners: Federal Aviation Administration

Three years ago, the Federal Aviation Administration's Academy for Flight Standards Service embarked on a project to provide standardized, cost-effective technical training to aircraft inspectors at decentralized locations. The goals were to reduce travel expenses associated with centralized classes and increase the flexibility of training so that inspectors could schedule it when convenient and, once involved, could proceed at their own pace.

The result was a computer-based instruction program that can be accessed via FAA's wide-area network, which is maintained by a program office in Oklahoma City. In addition to saving more than $4 million since 1993, the program has reduced training time by 30 percent and significantly raised test scores. (Deborah Wilcox, program manager, Programs & Contracts Management Branch, FAA Academy; 405-954-6790)

PREPARING FOR YEAR 2000

The Winners: Year 2000 Interagency Working Group

On Jan. 1, 2000, six-digit date fields in computer programs will read 01-01-00-causing machines to interpret the date as Jan. 1, 1900, instead of Jan. 1, 2000. This misinterpretation could cause computers to crash or, at the very least, to make costly and potentially dangerous miscalculations.

Nowhere will the so-called Year 2000 problem be more prevalent than in the federal government, where thousands of mainframes are operating on COBOL computer code written in the 1960s. The inability of that code to recognize the new millennium will affect all time-sensitive computer programs. If not addressed immediately, the Year 2000 (commonly known as Y2K) problem could have disastrous consequences.

The Year 2000 Interagency Working Group, chartered by the Office of Management and Budget, is raising awareness of the problem and helping federal organizations find the right approaches to analyzing source code, converting date fields and testing applications. The year-old group has recommended adoption of a standard for interagency date communication and has written contract language for acquiring Y2K-compliant technology. The group has sponsored several conferences in which best practices for addressing the problem were shared. (Kathleen Adams, chairperson, Y2K Interagency Working Group; 410-965-6294 www.itpolicy.gsa.gov)

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION

IMPROVING COMPLIANCE

The Winners: Energy Department

Within the last two years, the Energy Department's Office of Environmental Policy and Assistance has released two innovative information technology products for helping government agencies, businesses and the general public comply with environmental laws. Development costs for both were about $250,000.

The first product is RQCalculator, a user-friendly computer program that provides a fast way to calculate the "reportable quantity" of hazardous substances released into the environment. The software, which was developed using hypertext programming techniques, is available free over the Internet at www.eh.doe.gov/oepa.

The second product, EnviroText, is an on-line environmental library (available at tamora.cs.umass.edu/info/envirotext) containing more than 3 million pages of federal laws and regulations pertaining to the environment. This resource, which uses search-engine technology, has enabled the Energy Department to cancel costly contracts with private information vendors. (Gerald DiCerbo, environmental protection specialist, Office of Environmental Policy and Assistance; 202-586-5047 gerald.dicerbo@eh.doe.gov)

PROTECTING WATER

The Winners: Environmental Protection Agency

The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Underground Storage Tanks is to protect the nation's groundwater from more than 2 million underground storage tanks containing petroleum or other hazardous substances. The office is responsible for giving information, training and technical assistance to states on effective tank-management programs.

EPA became aware that downsizing had seriously affected states' ability to manage millions of pieces of data, such as names of tank owners and contents, leak detection methods, tank construction materials, contamination details, cleanup technologies, types of permits issued and fee calculations. Last summer, the agency spent $580,000 to develop and implement a user-friendly relational database system called UST-Access, which has 982 data fields in 103 tables.

The system helps states manage data on tanks efficiently and cost-effectively by integrating information, eliminating redundant data entry, simplifying reporting and analyzing data. It has made it easy for states to determine levels of compliance with requirements for leak detection, corrosion protection and overflow prevention. (Lisa Lund, acting director, Office of Underground Storage Tanks; 703-603-9900 lund.lisa@epamail.epa.gov)

INFORMATION GATHERING AND PROCESSING

DETERMINING ELIGIBILITY

The Winners: Veterans Health Administration

Responsibility for determining who is eligible for medical benefits under the Veterans Health Administration's CHAMPVA program used to be divided among more than 200 VA medical facilities. This decentralized system led to inadequate eligibility and authorization controls, mainly because data was not being shared between facilities. Consequently, beneficiaries who no longer qualified for entitlements were rarely purged from enrollment files.

Administrative costs escalated because commercial firms were performing all claims processing. In 1987, VHA moved to centralize CHAMPVA functions by spending $7 million on integrated information systems designed to maintain program integrity, boost service and cut costs.

VHA created a database that incorporated an applications processing system supporting automated reviews and updates. It was designed to interface with VA's Master Veteran Record File and the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Recording System database. Enrollment soon was trimmed from 230,000 to 90,000, saving $62 million.

The agency integrated a document-imaging and distribution subsystem, and used artificial intelligence to create a sophisticated benefit-calculation module. These systems have saved an additional $53 million. (Charles DeCoste, director, Health Administration Center; 303-331-7500)

EASING REPORTING BURDENS

The Winners: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Since 1986, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics has spent $3 million employing new technologies to collect monthly payroll data from 400,000 companies. The information is used to compile the Current Employment Statistics survey, which provides information about the U.S. economy.

Instead of collecting data via paper forms mailed by employers each month, the BLS now uses several automated data collection techniques. A data entry/voice recognition system enables company representatives to call a toll-free number and respond to recorded questions using their keypads or voices. Electronic data interchange technology enables large multi-unit firms to reduce their reporting burdens by filing directly from corporate databases. Responses also may be filed on-line via the Internet at www.bls.gov.

These automated data-collection techniques have cut BLS mailing costs and freed agency employees from labor-intensive mail handling and keypunch activities. Response rates have increased from 50 percent to 80 percent and revisions (as a result of late reporting) have been reduced by 39 percent. (Richard Clayton, branch chief, Monthly Industry Employment Statistics Division; 202-606-6520 clayton_r@bls.gov)

EXPEDITING INSPECTIONS

The Winners: Immigration and Naturalization Service

In order to streamline the inspections process for people entering the United States, the Immigration and Naturalization Service developed the INS Passenger Accelerated Service System (INSPASS). The $7 million program provides speedy, automated inspections for frequent travelers considered low security risks.

Under the program, information from traveler application forms is entered into a database and checked against a multi-agency lookout system. Each applicant's hand print and fingerprint is electronically captured and stored. Approved travelers are issued INSPASS cards, which may be used to conduct automated inspections at kiosks located at ports of entry. Passengers can run their cards through a computer, which will open the gate if they are cleared to leave the airport. Immigration inspectors do periodic compliance checks on passengers.

Almost 80,000 travelers have enrolled in INSPASS since it began three years ago. The program has reduced the average inspection time from one minute to less than 30 seconds, giving inspectors more time to spend with high-risk travelers. In addition, the program has eliminated long immigration lines for many travelers. (Stacey Day, INSPASS Technical Manager; 202-307-6106)

VERIFYING INCOME

The Winners: Veterans Affairs

In order to verify each veteran's eligibility status, the Veterans Affairs Department has to compare reported income to IRS and Social Security Administration records. Four years ago, in an attempt to improve the integrity of VA databases, the agency began using customized software and electronic data interchange technology to check reported earnings against government records.

The $26.5 million project, which consolidates two of the agency's income verification programs, centralizes collection of income data. A sophisticated imaging system places bar codes on all incoming correspondence, which is then scanned and stored on optical disks. Demographic and eligibility information is constantly updated and sent electronically to all VA medical facilities.

Results of the program have been dramatic: More than 40,000 veterans were found to have higher eligibility status than entitled. Subsequent downgrading of their positions resulted in a savings of $23 million. Approximately 24,000 veterans were identified as having insurance coverage equating to more than $26 million, which the government could collect from insurance companies. Almost 5,000 deaths were discovered and shared with other databases, and nearly 415,000 incorrect Social Security numbers were identified and are being corrected. (Alan Begbie, director, Income Verification Match Center; 404-235-1300 g.it1@ivm.va.gov)

LAW ENFORCEMENT

PATROLLING BORDERS

The Winners: Immigration and Naturalization Service

In early 1995, the U.S. Border Patrol instituted its Intelligent Computer Assisted Detection system, which automatically tracks those suspected of illegally crossing into U.S. territory. The system uses seismic, magnetic and infrared sensors to detect movement at U.S. borders. Alarm signals generated by the sensors automatically notify agents and provide information on where suspects are located. Sensor path analysis incorporates artificial intelligence to help identify and track intruders.

The system also collects information about the name of the responding agent and whether drugs or other contraband were seized. A real-time database provides instantaneous graphical analysis of illegal border crossings.

Within the last year, the system has helped INS agents apprehend 1.2 million people illegally crossing U.S. borders. (Fernanda Young, INS Assistant Commissioner for Data Systems; 202-514-4517)

MEDICAL CARE

ANALYZING BRAIN FUNCTIONS

The Winners: Veterans Affairs

The Magnetic Source Imaging Facility of the Joint Imaging Service at the Albuquerque Veterans Affairs Medical Center, in conjunction with the University of New Mexico and private industry, has created a new technique for measuring the magnetic signals generated by the brain's electronic activity. Magnetic source imaging (MSI) helps create a map of a patient's brain that shows where activity occurs. Such a map enables a neurosurgeon to remove as much unhealthy tissue as possible without compromising a patient's functions.

MSI is used before operations for brain tumors and epilepsy, and in the treatment of strokes, Alzheimer's disease, multiple sclerosis and other disorders. It costs less $2,000, compared to as much as $75,000 for other techniques. MSI results in shorter hospital stays, reduced physical therapy and fewer follow-up visits.

The technique is performed with a biomagnetometer, which looks like a large hair dryer and contains 122 superconducting sensors for performing analysis of brain functions. The Magnetic Source Imaging Facility is the only center in the country with a biomagnetometer. Since the facility was created as a joint venture, roughly a quarter of the $7.7 million required to develop MSI was obtained from outside of government. More than 1,500 brain studies have been performed at the facility during the last five years. (Dr. Michael Hartshorne, chief, Joint Imaging Service, Albuquerque VA Medical Center; 505-256-5711)

PREVENTING ERRORS

The Winners: Veterans Affairs

To prevent errors in administering medications to patients at the Colmery-O'Neil VA Medical Center in Topeka, Kan., a group of nurses, pharmacists and computer programmers teamed up to develop the Wireless Point of Care Medication System. The $350,000 system automatically checks that the right dosage of medicine is being given to the right patient at the right time.

Nurses now use lightweight, hand-held wireless terminals containing bar-code scanners to read identification badges on both patients and medications. Warning sounds and "alert" messages on computer screens indicate when medicine is about to be given to the wrong patient, or if some other mistake is about to be made.

Since implementing the system last year, the medical center reports that overall medication errors have been reduced by 60 percent. (Edgar Tucker, director, Colmery-O'Neil VA Medical Center; 913-272-3111)

PUBLIC ACCESS

PLANNING COMMUNITIES

The Winners: Housing and Urban Development Department

With the help of public housing authorities across the country, the Department of Housing and Urban Development set out two years ago to create a communications system that would make community planning and housing project information readily available to city planners, community residents, architects, builders, schools and libraries. After consolidating four major programs into one, HUD spent $300,000 to create a software package that handles complicated data and arranges it on maps so that it can be easily understood.

The maps, which are available on the World Wide Web at www.hud.gov, show where local governments plan to make investments using HUD funds. More than 150 data elements are included, such as income levels, unemployment rates and the number of homeless people.

The project has eliminated duplication of effort by various governments and neighborhood organizations. It also has reduced paperwork and increased efficiency at HUD's Office of Community Planning and Development. In 1995, for instance, the office administered 82 percent more program funds with 20 percent fewer staff members. (Richard Burk, director, HUD's community connections division; 202-708-2504)

PROVIDING TAX INFORMATION

The Winners: Internal Revenue Service

One of the most innovative sites on the Internet's World Wide Web belongs to the IRS (www.irs.ustreas.gov). Developed in just four months with a budget of about $400,000, the site offers an easy way for taxpayers and tax preparers to get information 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The home page looks like a retro tabloid newspaper and offers electronic links to regulatory information, tax publications and IRS press releases. About 600 different kinds of tax forms are available, in addition to a section on frequently asked questions and summaries of more than 150 tax topics. Net surfers can obtain everything from disaster-relief assistance to tax kits for new businesses via the Web site. E-mail queries are answered quickly by IRS staffers standing by at the other end.

The IRS Web site was developed last year using SGML (standard generalized markup language), a powerful data format available with three types of customized user interfaces. Within its first six months of operation, the site had more than 66 million "hits," or visitors, and about 2.5 million forms were downloaded. (Linda Wallace, IRS electronic information services team leader; 202-927-4288 linda.wallace@ccmail.irs.gov)

COMMAND AND CONTROL

STANDARDIZING DATA

The Winners: Defense Mapping Agency

Three years ago, the Defense Mapping Agency set out to provide integrated, electronic views of battle spaces that could be shared in near-real time by war fighters, planners, policy makers and supporting groups. The agency accomplished this goal by standardizing the geospatial data required to mount joint military exercises.

Using IDEF (integrated CAM definition languages) methodologies, DMA created data models that were consistent with all databases in the DoD community. The result was a suite of standard data elements that describe significant geospatial objects. Such standardized data helps minimize confusion, errors and casualties during military operations. (Jacob Teller, project manager, interoperability division, Acquisition and Technology Group; 301-227-2771)

PROCESSING OCEAN DATA

The Winners: Navy

The Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVOCEANO) at Stennis Space Center in Mississippi is responsible for collecting and interpreting a vast amount of data about the world's oceans. The information is used for navigational purposes and to predict the effects of oceans on naval weapons systems.

Four years ago, NAVOCEANO began developing an $11 million integrated database management system to store and analyze 150 years worth of ocean information. A collection of commercial, off-the-shelf networked servers was combined with database management software to produce a repository of digital information that is used by all the military services. Data categories include gravity, water depth, geomagnetics and acoustics.

Data requests that used to take weeks now can be answered in hours. In addition, the database management system has enabled NAVOCEANO to save about 90 percent of the money it used to spend on software development. The system is the cornerstone of the Hydrographic Source Assessment System being developed to couple NAVOCEANO's data with information from the Defense Mapping Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (Robert Starek, IDBMS program manager, NAVOCEANO; 601-688-5189 rstarek@wpo.navo.navy.mil)

COMMUNICATIONS

CONSOLIDATING NETWORKS

The Winners: Interior Department

In response to a National Performance Review initiative to consolidate networks and meet increasing demand for more interconnectivity and bandwidth among federal agencies, the Interior Department established the Alaska Regional Telecommunications Network (ARTNet) last year. The wide-area network project, which thus far has cost $210,000, enables organizations to eliminate expensive and redundant dedicated data-communications lines and modem connections.

ARTNet, which is open to all government agencies in Alaska, connects Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage to each other with the Interior Department's DOINet high-speed connections. Participants include the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service and the U.S. Geological Survey.

Communications costs for participants have been cut an average of 44 percent as a result of bandwidth being consolidated on a large backbone network. Network capacity and interconnectivity, meanwhile, have improved substantially. (Daniel Healey, ARTNet project coordinator; 907-271-4444 daniel_healey@ios.doi.gov)

PROCUREMENT

SIMPLIFYING PURCHASES

The Winners: Federal Supply Service

As part of its reinvention program, the Federal Supply Service opened an Internet site designed to make it easy for federal purchasers to buy goods from GSA schedules. The 1-year-old GSA Advantage site (www.gsa.gov) is an on-line shopping mall offering 4 million products from 7,000 vendors on 130 government schedules. Buyers can use the point-and-click ordering system to purchase everything from copiers to cars.

Shoppers can quickly search for products, compare prices, obtain billing history and document all transactions. Many products ordered electronically can be shipped within 24 hours, thus enabling agencies to keep low inventories and eliminate warehouses. Customers can pay for purchases with GSA Activity Address Codes, IMPAC credit cards or EDI purchase orders.

GSA Advantage has reduced the average cost to issue a purchase order from $30 to less than $9. In addition, Federal Supply Service employees no longer have to deal with orders submitted with illegible handwriting, transposed product numbers or out-of-date catalog data. (William Gormley, assistant commissioner, FSS Office of Acquisition; 703-305-7901 william.gormley@gsa.gov)

HELPING THE DISABLED

The Winners: Defense Department

The Defense Department's Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program (CAP), started six years ago, procures adaptive computer and telecommunications gear for employees with disabilities. Such equipment includes voice-recognition systems, Braille printers, screen-magnification software and scanners with voice output.

Before 1990, Defense agencies had to purchase adaptive equipment with their own money. But now that the equipment is centrally funded, DoD says costs of accommodation are no longer a factor in deciding whether to hire disabled workers.

CAP's large-quantity purchasing has significantly reduced DoD spending on accommodations equipment.

CAP has fulfilled more than 9,000 requests for accommodations. Workers' compensation claims have dropped because fewer disabled employees are taking time off. The program even has helped employees avoid disability retirement. (Dinah Cohen, CAP director; 703-681-3976 cap@ha.osd.mil http://www.ha.osd.mil )

BENEFITS DISBURSEMENT

REPLACING PAPER STAMPS

The Winners: Agriculture Department

More than 25 million people are eligible for $2 billion worth of food stamps each month. These coupons must be printed, placed in booklets and distributed across the country. In the process, some are lost and others are stolen. Food stamp recipients redeem them at one of 200,000 participating food retailers. After that, the coupons are processed by more than 10,000 banks and then destroyed by the Federal Reserve.

The process is time-consuming and cumbersome. To streamline the Food Stamp Program, the Agriculture Department's Food and Consumer Service has been working for the last decade to replace paper coupons with an electronic benefit transfer program. Using a subset of electronic data interchange technology known as electronic funds transfer, USDA links communications networks to point-of-sale terminals, retailers, financial institutions, automated clearinghouses and government offices.

Such links enable food stamp recipients in five states to redeem benefits electronically. All states will participate by 2002. The collaborative effort between USDA, state governments and the private sector is relieving administrative burdens and reducing fraud and theft. (Joseph Leo, deputy administrator for management, Food and Consumer Service; 703-305-2030 a30jleo@attmail.com)

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States Show Technological Prowess

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Dec 1996 00:00:00 -0500

he five Federal Technology Leadership Awards that were given to state information technology projects were nominated by the Intergovernmental Enterprise Panel (IEP) working in a partnership with the National Association of State Information Resource Executives. IEP was chartered by the Government Information Technology Services Working Group to improve intergovernmental service delivery to the public by removing barriers and developing incentives for excellence. Here are five such examples:

PROCESSING CLAIMS

The Winners: Pennsylvania

In response to Social Security Administration research predicting a 60 percent increase in the volume of disability claims by 2000, Pennsylvania's Bureau of Disability Determination agreed to become part of a national demonstration for network automation. From 1992 to 1994, the bureau received $7.4 million to implement a local-area network (LAN) architecture linking branch offices in Harrisburg, Wilkes-Barre and Greensburg.

Development of the 200-node network involved a mainframe, 486 workstations, a LAN operating system and special software. After conducting business process reengineering, the bureau modified commercial claims-processing programs to adapt to the new processes.

The LAN provides access to e-mail, CD-ROM reference libraries and desktop faxing capabilities. It also provides on-line access to the Social Security Administration's eligibility files. Last year, the LAN enabled the bureau to process 25 percent more claims than the previous year without having to increase staffing. (Gil Intrieri, information systems manager, Department of Labor and Industry; 717-783-3620 gilbert.intrieri@ssa.gov)

DIGITAL SIGNATURES

The Winners: Utah

Utah's Department of Commerce recently embarked on a program to implement technology for digital signatures, which are encrypted data digests only accessible via special electronic keys.

Digital signatures help certify that participants in electronic commerce programs are who they say they are.

In addition to implementing the technology, the state also enacted legislation that eliminated legal hurdles blocking the use of digital signatures. As a result, 16 other state governments and many private-sector organizations have enacted similar legislation. Utah's Digital Signature Legislation has been adopted as the national model by the American Bar Association, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and several international trade organizations. (George Danielson, legal counsel, Utah Commerce Department; 801-530-6701)

ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS

The Winners: North Carolina

Until recently, North Carolina's Office of the State Controller had a labor-intensive job trying to pull together all the appropriate financial information required to draw a clear picture about the state's economy. Workers did not have access to automated reporting tools and consolidated statewide views of data were assembled manually.

In an effort to improve management of its accounting system, the state migrated to a client-server system in which a mainframe serves as a central repository for financial data that can be easily accessed from desktop computers. The system is used for a wide variety of applications, including purchasing, accounts payable, project tracking and inventory control.

By last summer, client-server technology had been implemented at 66 North Carolina agencies supporting more than 3,500 users. It has resulted in better access to information and more effective management of financial activities. The controller's office estimates that the system enabled the state to avoid a one-time charge of about $42 million by implementing the technology on a statewide basis instead of agency by agency. In addition, the standardized technology is expected to save the state about $20 million annually. (Chuck Cooper, assistant state controller; 919-715-2858 ccooper@controller.osc.state.nc.us)

IMPROVING CASH MANAGEMENT

The Winners: Massachusetts

The 1992 Cash Management Improvement Act requires that states measure and pay interest to the federal government on funds drawn prior to disbursement and clearing. Shortly after the law was enacted, the Massachusetts State Treasury began reengineering its business processes to create an automated drawdown of funds from the federal government.

All state programs using federal funds were registered in a database that automatically calculates the amount of federal financial participation. At the end of each day, the State Treasury executes a single, comprehensive drawdown for all departments and programs. Upon receipt of the draw, confirmed accounting information is automatically posted to the system.

This centralized system has eliminated a significant amount of manual labor and data-entry errors. Cumulative interest from Massachusetts to the federal government has been less than $150,000 in the three years the program has been operational-compared to what the state projects would have been $2 million a year without the system. The state estimates the return on investment on the project-measured as interest expense and labor saved as a result of the centralized draw-is 818 percent. (Kathy Sheppard, director, Payee/Payments and Operations Bureau, Office of Comptroller; 617-727-5000 ksheppard@state.ma.us)

REGISTERING CONTRACTS

The Winners: California

Bidding opportunities for contracts handled by the state of California used to have to be advertised in the California State Contracts Register, which was published twice a month and mailed to 7,000 subscribers. Two years ago, California's Department of General Services replaced that publication with an Internet version called the Electronic California State Contracts Register (www.dgs.ca.gov).

The electronic version of the register reduced lead times for placing bid advertisements from an average of five weeks to two days. It also eliminated printing and distribution costs, and significantly reduced the publishing workload.

Bid advertisements on the Electronic California State Contracts Register can be updated daily and accessed by anyone with a computer and a modem. (Susan Hogg, manager, electronic commerce, California Department of General Services; 916-324-0544 shogg@dgs.ca.gov)

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Client-Server Perks and Pitfalls

Lisa Corbin — Fri, 01 Nov 1996 00:00:00 -0500

onitoring the accuracy of radar and other navigational aids used to guide aircraft through U.S. airspace is a data-intensive task for the Federal Aviation Administration's Aviation System Standards group. Computer labs on board a fleet of 30 FAA planes compare transmitter information, such as latitude and longitude readings, against databases to verify whether deployed aids are reading within tolerance levels.

Computer tapes of data obtained in flight are transported from the planes to FAA field offices and then back to Aviation System Standards headquarters in Oklahoma City. Database information is manually entered onto the office's mainframe via a batch-processing system-meaning accumulated data from several flights is held and processed together instead of being input individually. The workload is so heavy that most of it has to be handled by an outsourcer.

"Since processing is not done in real time, it's impossible to get precise updates on which transmitters are giving false readings," says Travis Ray, leader of the operational systems development team at the Aviation System Standards office. "Our people are always working from a historic view rather a current one."

That will soon change, however, when the office completes its migration from a mainframe system to a distributed computing environment in which powerful file-server computers will send data and applications to PCs and workstations known as clients. The shift to client-server computing-to be completed by October 1997-will enable the Aviation System Standards group's 122 field offices to download database information to mobile computer labs while planes are parked in hangars.

"It will no longer be necessary to download the databases to tape and transport them out to the field to fly missions," says Ray. "Further, the new system will provide real-time processing capabilities that will provide a clear picture of all data."

FAA's Aviation Standards Information System will be composed of 11 Sun Microsystems workstations running on a Solaris operating system and using an Oracle relational database management program. A wide-area network will make data sharing easy between the field offices while rapid application development (RAD) tools using graphical-user interfaces will speed the writing of customized applications.

"RAD software will enable us to quickly alter computer logic and respond to changes such as new regulations being issued," says Ray. "But by far the biggest advantage is that we will be able to maintain the file servers ourselves and will not have to rely on an outsourcer."

FAA is about to join a host of federal agencies who are singing the praises of client-server technology. Spurred by the National Performance Review's recommendations on empowerment, government organizations are migrating to distributed computing in order to save money, boost productivity and give lower-level workers access to a wide assortment of data and applications. The federal client-server market has grown 7 percent over the last year, to 650,000 computers worth $2.3 billion, according to researcher International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.

One of the main appeals of distributed computing is the ability to move decision-making down to lower levels within enterprises. Instead of being dependent on centralized mainframes, which are difficult to learn and use, many government workers now rely on networked PCs and workstations. These "clients" provide easy access to data, printers and modems without all the headaches associated with mainframe computing.

Clients depend on messages sent to them by servers, which are powerful machines that hold applications and manage all computing functions. Servers can be everything from souped-up PCs-usually Pentium or Pentium Pro machines-that store files and move e-mail to workstations and minicomputers that handle databases and dedicated applications such as records indexing, inventory management and Internet Web pages.

High-end servers such as symmetric multiprocessing systems are used to host groupware, software that enables many users to work on the same computer applications at the same time. Other types of high-end servers, called massively parallel processors, are used to host data warehouses or to do scientific visualization and engineering tasks.

Server prices range from about $2,500 to more than $1 million, depending on the level of sophistication and the configuration of the network. Cost is linked to the amount of hard-drive space and the number of peripherals added to the system. Leading providers include Compaq, Data General, Dell, Digital, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Zenith Data Systems.

One of the biggest trends in client-server computing is the move to machines incorporating powerful 64-bit chip architectures. Some agencies are using these workstations to consolidate smaller servers purchased several years ago.

Unix continues to battle Microsoft's Windows NT operating system in the server market. Unix is an open operating system that enables dissimilar computers to exchange information and run on each other's software. But it can be difficult to configure and use, leading some federal organizations to pick user-friendly Windows NT instead. NT supports machines running Intel or RISC (reduced-instruction set computing) chips-such as PowerPC from Apple/IBM/Motorola, Alpha from Digital and MIPS from Silicon Graphics-but is plagued by a dearth of software applications.

Despite all its advantages, client-server computing is not without its problems. The technology can be significantly more expensive than mainframes by the time agencies buy all the machines and pull them together into networks. Ownership costs for client-server systems run three to six times higher than for comparable mainframe systems, according to the Gartner Group, a market researcher in Stamford, Conn.

In addition, distributed architectures are much more difficult to manage than centralized mainframes. Some of the early client-server systems were built willy-nilly, without attention being paid to standards or adequate communications links between departments. This has resulted in problems with reliability and security.

"We want all the advantages of client-server without having to give up central manageability and the bulletproof dependability of our mainframe," says FAA's Ray. "Since our systems are mission critical, corruption of our applications or databases would be catastrophic."

FAA plans to solve the problem by installing BMC Software's application management program on all its Oracle databases. Other agencies are relying on middleware-customized software that patches together disparate systems.

Still other agencies are moving to what some believe is the next level of client-server computing: intranets. These internal networks use Internet technology to link workers and provide access via Web browsers to databases and various applications. This "network-centric computing" enables users to work on the same applications at the same time. It also makes it easy to integrate agency data with external information.

Intranets are much cheaper than conventional client-server networks because Internet technology does not depend on standardized computers or operating systems. In addition, many application-development tools can be obtained free over the Internet. But as the CIA recently discovered when its Web page was rearranged by Swedish hackers who changed the title to read "Central Stupidity Agency," Internet technology is still vulnerable to a variety of security threats.

"Intranets are susceptible to 'record locking' in which two people update the same file at the same time," says Ray. "Whoever puts the file back first gets overwritten by the second person-a chance we just can't take when flight safety is at stake. For that reason alone, we'll stick to traditional client-server technology."

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FSS Business Lines

Lisa Corbin — Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 -0400

he Federal Supply Service was established in 1949 to provide federal agencies with a variety of products and services. Since last year, the agency has begun weaning itself from appropriations by charging a 1 percent surcharge on all sales to cover administrative expenses. Total FSS sales volume for fiscal 1996 is expected to top $13 billion from the following four business lines:

Supply and Procurement ($6.4 billion). The government buys everything from forklifts to flak jackets via the Multiple Award Schedule program in which FSS negotiates and awards contracts to multiple vendors of comparable products and services at varying prices. More than 130 supply schedules are currently available. FSS also procures specific supplies or services based on agency requisitions. Small-purchase procedures have been simplified since the introduction of the IMPAC government credit card program, which FSS manages.
Travel and Transportation Mgt. ($3.4 billion). FSS contracts with scheduled air carriers and Amtrak for reduced fares. It sets up agency accounts for the centralized purchase of airline tickets and provides cash advances through automated teller machines. Federal travelers receive charge cards.
Property Management ($2.3 billion). FSS is responsible for transferring federal excess personal property to other agencies. In some cases, surplus personal property is donated to eligible recipients or disposed of through competitive public sales.
Fleet Management ($705 million). The Federal Supply Service is the government's source for obtaining all types of vehicles, which are leased from GSA. In addition, the agency supervises a fleet of 147,000 vehicles via a nationwide network of management centers.

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Trailblazers of Acquisition Reform

Lisa Corbin — Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 -0400

he Federal Supply Service has been recognized as one of the leading innovators in the acquisition reform movement inspired by the National Performance Review and legislative initiatives such as the 1994 Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, the 1996 Federal Acquisition Reform Act and the 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act. The agency's reinvention efforts were highlighted at a recent acquisition reform conference organized by Government Executive and the Council for Excellence in Government, and sponsored by BDM, Informix and Northrop Grumman. Here are four other agency case studies examined at the conference:

Air Force. When the Joint Direct Attack Munitions program set out two years ago to obtain a tail kit that converts "dumb" gravity bombs into "smart" bombs, it tested a new acquisition process. Instead of giving contractors detailed military design specifications, the Air Force issued a simple, two-page request for proposals that listed only a few general performance objectives. (It stated, for example, that the bomb "must perform in all weather to within 13 meters or less.") The adversarial government-industry relationship was replaced by cooperative work teams that jointly decided which nonessential performance factors to drop in order to reduce the price of the project. As a result, development costs were slashed by 25 percent while the price of each tail kit was cut by 67 percent. Performance-based contracting also trimmed production and delivery time by 33 percent. In addition, about 60 percent fewer staffers were needed.
Federal Aviation Administration. In a recent procurement for a digital voice-recording system, the FAA used an integrated product team to do a low-cost review of commercial documentation. Formal RFP solicitation was replaced by a sequential screening in which vendors were "down-selected" by virtue of their technical merit, with no focus at that stage on price. Frank discussions about target requirements were substituted for written communications of mandatory requirements. The statement of work was rewritten to conform to bidders' actual equipment, and "smart" product testing was done during the competition, instead of operational testing after the award. One price evaluation was done after the down-selection process, without any best and final offers. FAA believes this approach lowered acquisition costs by 75 percent and minimized the risk of post-award modifications. In addition, procurement time was cut from 11 months to seven months, while deployment time was reduced from two years to one year.
NASA. In an effort to save money and preserve NASA's mission after severe budget cuts, Goddard Space Flight Center recently merged two existing cost-plus-award-fee contracts and contractors into a single performance-based contract. The consolidation was built on a partnership between Goddard and two in-place contractors. A shared cost savings clause provided the prime contractor with the discretion and flexibility to cut operating costs and reassign agency personnel. NASA expects full-time employees on the project to be reduced from 3,500 to 700. As an incentive, the contractor received 20 percent of the savings. Service level agreements were used to set performance requirements and specifications. NASA estimates $40 million will be saved during the remaining 18 months of the contract.
Veterans Affairs. To save money on large-volume buys of commercial products, VA set up a program last year to standardize purchases. Competition for single-source award contracts has resulted in significant price discounts. During the next two years, the program will cover approximately $200 million worth of goods ranging from sutures to IV solution and wheelchairs. More than $1 billion worth of products are expected to be covered over the next eight years. Partnerships with health-care professionals have resulted in product descriptions agreeable to all concerned parties. A computerized ordering system helps the VA identify targets for standardization and monitor savings.

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Slaying the Paper Tigers

Lisa Corbin — Tue, 01 Oct 1996 00:00:00 -0400

ederal imaging and storage systems used to be exclusively comprised of customized, proprietary products that were not only expensive but incapable of operating with other systems. Those solutions generally were reserved for high-end, stand-alone applications. But the government's push toward purchasing commercial, off-the-shelf (COTS) products, combined with the adoption of several imaging standards and the popularity of key technologies, has moved imaging into the information technology mainstream.

The Internet and internal intranets have made a cornucopia of information readily available. Data from agency repositories can be quickly obtained and disseminated via the Web or client-server networks. The problem is getting that information into the repositories in the first place. That is where electronic imaging comes in.

Imaging systems can quickly scan all types of documents and convert them to electronic formats so they can be read by computers. Such systems not only lower operating costs and boost productivity, but reduce dependency on paper and eliminate the possibility of documents becoming lost or damaged. Once images are processed, they can be sorted and cross-referenced in a way that paper cannot. Electronic documents can be located in a fraction of the time required by paper filing systems, and the data can be accessed by more than one person at a time. Best of all, images from an entire warehouse of papers can be stored on a few optical disks or magnetic-tape reels.

Agencies are using imaging products to do everything from process personnel files and financial records to sort mail, store archives, license exports and document scientific research. Defense Department imaging systems conduct telemedicine operations, track supply shipments and store more than 17 million pages of Gulf War documents. And the FBI now can electronically match fingerprints from a database of 40 million sets, thus reducing the average search time from several months to several hours.

The biggest development in the federal imaging market is the $100 million ImageWorld procurement in which the National Institutes of Health awarded contracts to 20 vendors. The procurement, announced in August, is one of the largest government imaging deals ever. It is also one of the most revolutionary because of its emphasis on commercial products. The task-order contracts offer a wide variety of off-the-shelf products to handle data conversion, document management and storage.

ImageWorld differs from previous federal imaging contracts in that it provides an opportunity to obtain complete solutions, instead of piecemeal applications that then have to be woven together. The indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle offers one-stop shopping for NIH research organizations and all other federal agencies.

ImageWorld and other large contracts will help the federal imaging market grow at a compound annual rate of 15 percent, from $970 million this year to $2 billion by 2001, according to market researcher Input Inc. in Vienna, Va. Driving the market will be government downsizing schemes and business-process reengineering initiatives.

New imaging systems from companies such as BTG, Electronic Data Systems, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Unisys and Wang, will feature faster access times, improved character recognition, better compression ratios and cheaper storage. Specialized applications handled by back-office workers will be replaced by broad, agencywide imaging projects using COTS products purchased through GSA schedules or contracts such as ImageWorld.

Although imaging products are on their way to becoming commodity items, they still remain fairly difficult to install. For that reason, agencies will continue to depend on professional integrators to help them design and build the more complex systems. This buyer's guide also provides help in the form of insight into the latest trends in scanners, monitors, compression technology, search and retrieval software, workflow programs and other products designed to help agencies slay those paper tigers once and for all.

Top Federal Imaging Deals of Fiscal 1996

Almost $1 billion will be spent this year on government imaging projects. Following is a list of some of the largest deals that have been or will be awarded this year. On some of the contracts, imaging is just one of several information technology components.

Agency	Contract	Estimated Value (millions)
DOT	Information Technology Omnibus Procurement	$1,134
Justice	Information Technology Support Services	152
DoD	OSD Office Automation Service	115
FBI	Automated Fingerprint Identification System	109
HHS	NIH Image World	100
FAA	Electronic Document Management System	20
NASA	Information, Imagery, Media & Public Affairs Support Services	15
Army	Rocky Mountain Information Handling	9
NASA	Photographic Image Support	3

Source: Federal Sources Inc. ]]>

PC-Workstation Gap Narrows

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 -0400

hen NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland began its Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) project in 1989, scientists typically relied on several hardware platforms for their computing needs. A mainframe crunched numbers obtained from satellite readings every half-second at more than a billion data points. Information was shared among researchers via a network of dummy terminals. Macintosh computers were used for scientific plotting and other graphics applications while word processing and general administrative duties were handled on personal computers.

"It was a crude and clunky automated system but we were limited by available technology," says Gary Hinshaw, principal scientist with Hughes STX Corp. and a member of NASA's COBE team of researchers. "At that stage, no one machine could manage everything." The team measures the universe's microwave radiation in an attempt to discover more about how the galaxies were formed.

Goddard recently consolidated most of its computing power into a network of 64-bit workstations based on a RISC (reduced instruction set computing) architecture. The Alpha machines, manufactured by Digital Equipment Corp., contain central processing units (CPUs) that can rapidly process small sets of computer instructions. Now each scientist can simultaneously process eight bytes of information on a single desktop unit.

"I can do elaborate statistical simulations and analyze the results with sophisticated graphics tools while at the same time running Internet applications and e-mail," says Hinshaw, glancing at the nine windows open on his computer screen. "I never could have envisioned the type of tasks we're doing today with the kind of machines that were available at the outset of this project."

Many of the federal government's scientists and engineers are having similar reactions to the rapid advances being made in desktop computing. Technical workstations that used to be reserved for high-end applications such as database modeling and three-dimensional scientific visualization now act as network servers and Internet hosts. These "personal workstations" also perform more mundane tasks traditionally done by PCs, such as word processing and spreadsheets.

Conversely, high-end PCs are handling challenging imaging projects and other applications once done exclusively by workstations. The merging of these desktop technologies not only helps close the gap between PCs and workstations, but creates an unprecedented functionality that is boosting productivity.

Never before has so much speed and storage capacity been available for so little money. Part of the reason is that manufacturers of semiconductor chips-the brains of computers-have been doubling processing power about every two years. Industry experts estimate that by 2000 some desktop machines will be as robust as today's supercomputers.

Dynamic random access memory costs have dropped to about $6 per megabyte, compared to more than $30 per megabyte just a year ago. That price decrease has prompted both PC and workstation manufacturers to increase memory in machines, which has provided government users with more storage capacity than they ever anticipated.

"Our computing memory has grown one-and-a-half orders of magnitude in four years," says Hinshaw. "And our follow-on project to COBE-the Microwave Anisotropy Probe-will have a thousand times the volume, yet cost half as much. We're definitely getting more bang for the buck."

Embracing 64-bit Computing

About 160,000 workstations were sold to government users last year, according to market researcher Federal Sources Inc. in McLean, Va. Most were used for high-end applications involving science, engineering, logistics, intelligence, and command and control. Roughly half of all federal workstations are made by Sun Microsystems. Other leading manufacturers include Digital, IBM, Intergraph, Hewlett-Packard and Silicon Graphics. Some of the larger contract vehicles are the Army's Workstations I, the Air Force's Workstations and Desktop V awards, the Navy's Tactical Advanced Computer 4 and Supermini contracts and NASA's Scientific and Engineering Workstation Procurement.

Video- and graphics-intensive applications such as telemedicine, computer-aided design and geographical information systems have created more demand for 64-bit chip architectures. Although twice as expensive as their 32-bit predecessors, 64-bit machines provide significant performance improvements-especially for computer-intensive functions such as data warehousing and World Wide Web searches.

In 1992, Digital became the first workstation manufacturer to offer 64-bit machines. Since then, most vendors have either released their own 64-bit models or have plans on the drawing board.

The majority of federal workstations run on Unix-an open operating system that enables dissimilar computers to exchange information and run on each other's software. Unix is powerful enough to handle several tasks at once, making it ideal for multimedia applications or any jobs involving multiple business processes.

Microsoft's 3-year-old Windows NT operating system has started to challenge the Unix operating system in the workstation and server markets. The multi-tasking system is significantly easier to configure and use than Unix. NT supports machines running Intel or RISC chips, such as PowerPC from Apple/IBM/Motorola, Alpha from Digital and MIPS from Silicon Graphics.

The problem with Windows NT is a dearth of software applications-about 1,500 compared to more than 10,000 for Unix. While PC users graduating to workstations may prefer the user-friendliness of Windows NT, those running sophisticated applications probably will want to use Unix. Some companies such as Digital offer workstations that run both operating systems.

Government users not ready to upgrade to workstations are opting for high-end personal computers instead. Federal demand has never been greater for PCs, partly because the Air Force's massive Desktop IV procurement-open to both Defense and civilian agencies-exhausted its limit of 300,000 machines almost a year before its expiration date. The follow-on Desktop V contract is expected to satisfy some of the pent-up demand.

Nearly 500,000 PCs were supplied to the federal market last year, mainly from leading vendors such as Compaq, Dell, IBM, Gateway 2000, Micronics and Zenith Data Systems. The market was primarily fueled by the closing of federal data centers and the subsequent migration to client-server networks. The popularity of data warehouses and Internet applications also boosted demand.

Personal computers have come a long way since their introduction almost 15 years ago. Pentium and Pentium Pro processor chips have made machines faster than many early workstation models. Some new units are offering as much as 50 percent more disk storage space and twice the power of last year's PCs.

And designs are significantly more flexible. Many models now feature user-friendly casings that enable motherboards to slide out so that users can quickly upgrade processor chips and memory. Everex Systems even offers a compact, all-in-one CPU/monitor unit for offices with little room to spare.

Technological advances have helped to cut PC prices to record levels, with many models in the $1,000 range. Prices may drop even lower as competition increases and manufacturers try to eliminate bloated chip inventories.

Industry analysts are predicting that the $500 PC is not too far away. That scaled-down unit will be a type of Internet appliance that attaches to high-speed networks linked to centralized computers where processing will take place. Although this "network computer" will not contain a floppy-disk drive or other common PC features, it will be capable of doing rudimentary functions such as accessing Web pages, e-mail and other applications downloaded from the network.

A variety of companies-including Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NEC, Oracle and Sun-have announced plans to release Net PCs later this year. The jury is still out as to whether this new network-centric device will provide any competition to PCs and workstations on the desktop.

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Tools of the Trade

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 -0400

usiness process reengineering tools have come a long way since the Air Force invented the Integrated CAM Definition Languages (IDEF) methodology 20 years ago. That methodology eventually became the government standard for systems documentation and requirements specifications, and it subsequently defined the market for modeling and simulation software.

First generation BPR tools from the 1980s were little more than basic flowcharting instruments that mapped out existing business processes. Second-generation reengineering software is providing much greater empirical analysis-helping users answer the what-ifs. By identifying critical paths and bottlenecks, new software is reducing many of the risks associated with business redesigns.

Another big change is that dozens of consultants and systems integrators have entered the reengineering market, helping federal organizations rank metrics such as cost, productivity and customer satisfaction. Companies such as American Management Systems, Andersen Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand, D. Appleton, SRA International and Wizdom Systems are working with agencies to redesign mission-critical operations to meet strategic goals. Andrulis Research, PRC and others even have opened BPR groupware centers in which local-area networks run special software that enables users to quickly prioritize objectives and get BPR projects rolling.

One of the keys to successful reengineering is to identify crucial areas for improvement. New modeling software packages are helping users analyze the dynamics of existing processes. Greater insight can lead to redesigned processes that better meet business goals.

New simulation software containing advanced financial analysis tools can accurately predict how proposed changes will affect business processes before federal organizations embark on expensive and time-consuming reengineering schemes. But buyers beware: These programs are only as accurate as the data plugged into them. In other words, "garbage in, garbage out."

Business process reengineering tools range from $500 to more than $50,000 per package, depending on the sophistication of the software and individual needs. Some companies offer comprehensive software that takes users through the entire BPR process, while others focus on certain market niches. The following is a sampling of some of the commercial BPR tools currently available to government buyers:

WorkFlow Analyzer. Meta Software Corp.'s flagship tool addresses the entire BPR life cycle, including data capture, process modeling, simulation, implementation and continuous improvement. Graphical language is used to express complex data sets pertaining to budgets, staffing and equipment requirements. The software enables users to test assumptions, analyze alternatives and measure results. The company, headquartered in Cambridge, Mass., also provides training and other services. Recent federal clients include the Defense Information Systems Agency, Energy Department, Internal Revenue Service, NASA and the Social Security Administration.
SIMPROCESS. CACI International's hierarchical simulation tool is designed for business process modeling and analysis. When used in conjunction with the company's object-oriented simulation languages, SIMPROCESS can help reduce the time spent on mapping reengineering components. The Federal Aviation Administration is using the software to analyze how it enforces regulations and certifies pilots.
ReThink. Gensym Corp. in Cambridge, Mass., has combined object-oriented technology with interactive graphics to produce a BPR tool that provides user-friendly modeling and simulation. The software helps users monitor process performance and manage real-time operations.
Extend+BPR. This 8-year-old software package from Imagine That! in San Jose, Calif., includes 90 pre-built blocks to help users create reengineering models. The program, which supports five types of operating systems, features drag-and-drop modeling, animation, spreadsheet connectivity and customized reporting. It has been used by numerous federal organizations, including the Air Force, Energy Department and NASA.
Optima! Process improvement software from AdvanEdge Technologies in Tualatin, Ore., is an easy-to-use Windows application that features process modeling, simulation and reporting capabilities. The program, designed for the front end of reengineering projects, helps users quickly create and edit presentation-quality process maps.
SA/BPR Professional. Popkin Software's comprehensive integrated tool supports the Federal Information Processing Standards for function and data modeling. The package analyzes what controls the execution of a function, who performs the function, and what objects or data are produced by the function. It features a built-in reporting language with a graphical-user interface for creating customized reports. The New York-based company is helping the FBI reengineer its fingerprint imaging operations.
Composer. This tool from Texas Instruments enables organizations to use model-driven development to rapidly design, build, test, install and maintain reengineering applications. Composer supports a variety of computer platforms and databases.
BPwin. Activity-based costing metrics are the major feature of this business-analysis tool by Logic Works in Princeton, N.J. The software package interfaces with the company's family of database design tools.
ServiceModel. This Windows-based simulation tool from ProModel in Orem, Utah, enables users to test the behavior and prove the benefits of redesigned processes before committing to change. Animated applications include statistical variability, workflow analysis, logistics and facilities planning.
Integrated Modeling Framework. Ten-year-old Knowledge Based Systems has helped to create industry standards for BPR modeling and analysis. The company's software distributes information into a central data repository that can be simultaneously accessed by a suite of eight modular BPR tools. Those tools enable users to tailor the Framework program to individual reengineering needs. Integrated modeling helps identify redundancies and non-value-added activities, and creates a better understanding of relationships. Knowledge Based Systems, headquartered in College Station, Texas, also offers a variety of consulting services.
Process Charter. This user-friendly process management software program from Scitor Corp. in Menlo Park, Calif., is designed to help managers visualize flow paths through a process. Resources can be defined and assigned to different steps of the process, and color animated simulations can identify key constraints. Statistics are presented in both spreadsheet and graphics formats to help users quickly determine activity-based costs and under-used resources. The Marine Corps recently used the package to help it reengineer eight core enterprise-level processes and more than 50 sub-processes. The software also was used by the Veterans Benefits Administration to reengineer its claims-processing operation.
BPSimulator. This software package from Technology Economics International in Rockville, Md., provides activity-based analysis by enabling users to track cycle times and costs of multiple business processes.
Framework. Ptech, based in Cambridge, Mass., offers an integrated set of object-oriented tools that enable users to create interactive blueprints of business processes. Software code can be generated from the hierarchical layout, providing rapid and consistent application development. The Advanced Research Projects Agency is using Framework to help transfer commercial software methodologies to the defense sector.
FirstSTEP. This business-process modeling and simulation tool from Interfacing Technologies Corp. in Quebec, Canada, incorporates object-oriented technology. The software provides reporting and analysis on static and dynamic states of BPR models. Also included are export and import capabilities, in addition to workflow connectivity.

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TurboBPR Speeds Pentagon Projects

Lisa Corbin — Sun, 01 Sep 1996 00:00:00 -0400

hen the Defense Department's Corporate Information Management initiative was redirected in 1990 to focus on improving business processes, a group was chartered to help DoD managers reengineer their organizations. Soon they discovered that the average process-improvement analysis project could take up to 20 weeks and cost $1 million. In an effort to reduce the time and money needed for agencies to get the ball rolling on reengineering projects, DoD worked closely with Systems Research and Applications Corp. of Arlington, Va., to develop a software tool known as TurboBPR.

Designed to consolidate about 140 of the Pentagon's reengineering tools, TurboBPR makes it easy for managers to identify goals and performance measures, develop business plans, project costs, document activities, relate investments to performance changes and measure achievements. It incorporates requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act and contains modules for doing improvement analysis and building alternative strategies.

The Pentagon claims the software is capable of trimming process-improvement costs by as much as 30 percent while reducing reengineering start-up time from months to days. The software already has achieved positive results in major DoD medical, communications and transportation programs. More than 1,200 copies have been distributed to civilian and Defense managers, and that doesn't include the number of copies downloaded from the World Wide Web (http://www.dtic.mil/c3i/bprcd).

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Going Commercial

Lisa Corbin — Thu, 15 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

ncle Sam is in the process of a major
transformation. After months of budget battles that caused repeated government shutdowns and employee furloughs, agencies have gone into survival mode. With the help of accounting firms and various consultants, federal organizations have spent the year examining ways of doing more work with fewer people and less money. Recent legislation and White House initiatives such as the National Performance Review have forced them to consider whether they should be doing the work at all.

Current thinking on the subject goes like this: Why should we drain our labor pool doing jobs that the private sector does equally well-or even better-for less money? Why not shift non-mission-critical work to commercial firms and free up resources to focus on core competencies vital to agency objectives?

The Office of Management and Budget reports that agencies already spend $114 billion a year on five categories of services: research and development, construction, automatic data processing, architecture/engineering tasks and miscellaneous work covering everything from janitorial services to consulting. Outsourcing will likely continue to grow as agencies respond to pressures to eliminate more jobs. Austerity will remain the order of the day while Congress and the White House work to cut more than $900 billion in projected government spending over the next seven years to eliminate a federal budget deficit that has lingered over two decades.

"The challenge for public officials today is to provide essential services in a cost-effective manner," says William Eggers, privatization center director at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank in Los Angeles. "Privatization increases competition and competition increases productivity and lowers costs."

Contracting Outlays Flat

Lowering costs is certainly a goal for every federal organization these days. Although overall contracting appears to have increased from $173 billion in fiscal 1994 to $179 billion last year, according to data compiled for Government Executive by Eagle Eye Publishers Inc., actual spending has remained relatively flat. The discrepancy is due to late filing of procurement data by some agencies and improved reporting techniques by others. The Tennessee Valley Authority, for instance, went from $1.7 billion in total purchases in fiscal 1994 to more than $4 billion last year. But the increase is a result of more accurate reporting, not additional buying. (Also, the $179 billion covers only contracts worth $25,000 or more; smaller contracts bring total federal contracting outlays to about $200 billion.)

The year's top 10 government contractors earned $54.2 billion (30 percent of total spending on prime contracts), down almost $1 billion from the previous year. Among the biggest moves in Government Executive's roster of top contracts was made by Tenneco, which jumped from 41st in last year's rankings to 5th place this year. The surge from $508 million to $3.7 billion in sales was due to delivery of a new Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.

Flat agency budgets have prompted more industry consolidation. In the past year, the trend toward mega-mergers and acquisitions among federal contractors continued. The largest deal was Lockheed Martin's $9.1 billion purchase of Loral's defense electronics and systems integration businesses. Northrop Grumman bought Westinghouse's defense electronics unit for $3 billion while Litton Industries picked up PRC, a systems integrator, for $425 million.

Spending at civilian agencies rose 6 percent to $60.6 billion from $57.4 billion in fiscal 1994, with the Energy Department and NASA purchasing a combined total of $28.6 billion (47 percent) of the civilian total. Rankings of civilian agency contractors remained about the same, with the exception of TRW, which catapulted from 19th place in fiscal 1994 ($430 million in contract awards) to 8th place last year ($690 million in awards)-a gain of 61 percent. TRW, which derives about 30 percent of its income from civilian agencies, attributes the gain to a Treasury Department communications contract.

Of the $179.1 billion the government spent on products and services last year, $118.5 billion, or 66 percent, went toward Defense Department procurements. This is a different picture from a decade earlier when, at the height of the Reagan-era defense buildup, DoD procurements accounted for 80 percent of total federal purchases.

President Clinton has worked to cut the defense budget to one of its lowest points since before Pearl Harbor. Reshaping of the military-industrial complex has resulted in increased emphasis on training, simulation and C3I (command, control, communications and intelligence). The Pentagon's goal is to build a smaller but more lethal military with the strategic tactical thrust to go after aggressors in places like Iraq, Syria, North Korea and Libya.

Flexibility seems to be the key to DoD's goals. Future defense procurements will seek weapons systems with open systems architectures that make upgrading easy. But the budget for modernization of weapons systems has declined in real terms by 59 percent since 1985-and has fallen from 43 percent to 29 percent of DoD's budget, according to figures published earlier this year by the Defense Budget Project.

Since future DoD budgets are expected to decline, funding for modernization efforts will have to come from savings in support operations such as depot maintenance, base services and health care-areas defined by some as ideal for privatization. The Electronic Industries Association recently predicted that DoD's procurement budget actually will actually increase in the next decade while the overall defense budget continues to fall. EIA attributes the predicted rise to privatization of support operations.

The Defense Department has spent the past year examining which areas could be privatized without compromising military readiness. A Coopers & Lybrand study commissioned by the Pentagon showed how DoD could save $1 billion alone by farming out data-processing operations during the next 10 years. That and other research has created high-level support for privatization within certain DoD sectors.

"Outsourcing and privatization can provide a critical means of obtaining increased funding for the modernization of the DoD's military equipment and systems," Deputy Defense Secretary John White said at a briefing earlier this year.

Bipartisan Crusade

Federal outsourcing initiatives began as far back as Revolutionary War days when the Navy needed help building the USS Constitution. With the project behind schedule, the government summoned shipbuilding companies to Boston from as far away as Georgia. Work was done in such haste that oak and pine used on the vessel's hull and masts was still green, thus causing cannonballs to bounce off and earning the frigate the nickname "Old Ironsides."

Modern-day outsourcing reached a peak in the 1980s during the Reagan defense buildup. But a flurry of scandals, coupled with audits revealing cost inefficiencies, prompted many agencies to think twice about contracting out work to the private sector. Congressional hearings and subsequent newspaper headlines made outsourcing a dirty word during much of the 1980s.

Then several events turned the tide. The private sector got outsourcing fever. Xerox farmed out all its information-technology operations to Electronic Data Systems in a $3.2 billion contract. Hughes Aircraft gave Computer Sciences Corp. its data-processing business for $1.5 billion. And IBM's Integrated Systems Solutions Corp. struck a 10-year, $3 billion outsourcing deal with McDonnell Douglas.

State and local governments soon jumped onto the bandwagon, privatizing everything from prisons to road systems. Before long, outsourcing pilot projects began to spring up in the federal government as well. These have been fueled by the second part of Vice President Gore's National Performance Review, which urges agencies to evaluate all programs and determine whether work should be performed by the government.

Before making a decision to farm out services, agencies are required to perform lengthy cost-comparison studies to see if it is economically advantageous. OMB recently revised its A-76 Circular-the federal rulebook on contracting out-to ease administrative burdens and encourage competition between agencies and the private sector.

Recent legislation also has helped to boost support for privatization efforts. Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle see outsourcing as a way to reduce employment while cutting costs and improving government services. Laws such as the Chief Financial Officers Act and the Government Performance and Results Act have forced agencies to tie strategic plans to budgets and to set up qualitative performance measures for those investments.

Procurement-reform initiatives such as the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, the Federal Acquisition Reform Act and the Information Technology Management Reform Act also have forced agency managers to rationalize investments. Contracting officers are being encouraged to take prudent risks and to base procurement decisions on what delivers the best value to the agencies.

"The only way for the contracting profession to survive is to reinvent our own image," said Steven Kelman, administrator of OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, at a recent acquisition-reform conference organized by Government Executive and the Council for Excellence in Government and sponsored by BDM, Informix and Northrop Grumman. "We have to show that we can add value to the process. Acquisition reform is not simply an issue of streamlining but freeing resources so we can put our energy into how to obtain results for our missions."

Saving Money, Gaining Flexibility

Outsourcing is simply the only way to go for some cash-strapped organizations. By contracting out work that they otherwise would do themselves, agencies can save time and money while gaining flexibility to deal with future growth or decline. New projects can be added without increasing employment or retraining workers and others can be scrapped without worrying about where to reassign workers.

Privatization's most vocal defenders believe outsourcing efforts could trim federal spending by as much as 40 percent. The Reason Foundation argues that an aggressive, governmentwide privatization campaign could produce more than $350 billion in one-time proceeds from the sale of federal assets. The Defense Department reported to Congress that in programs it managed to outsource last year, operating costs were cut by an average of 31 percent.

Civilian organizations also are reporting big savings from outsourcing. Amtrak, for instance, says that a data-center outsourcing contract will enable it to save $170 million in operating costs and capital expenditures. And the Federal Aviation Administration estimates its Computer Resources Nucleus contract with Electronic Data Systems will save the agency more than $100 million-despite a workload increase of 900 percent.

"In-house support staffs have little incentive to improve productivity levels," says management consultant Peter Drucker. "But an outside contractor knows that it will be tossed out and replaced by a better performing competitor unless quality is improved and costs are cut."

Types of Privatization

True privatization means transferring organizations or projects from the public to the private sector, whereas outsourcing implies that work is contracted out but that the government maintains an oversight role. NASA is transferring all space-shuttle operations to the United Space Alliance, a Rockwell/Lockheed Martin joint venture. In addition, NASA will pay Lockheed Martin almost $1 billion to develop a prototype of the new generation of re-useable spacecraft. The X-33 rocket will be owned and operated by Lockheed and leased to NASA.

"More managerial responsibilities will be transferred to the private sector as NASA consolidates its technical and bureaucratic processes," says NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin, a former TRW executive who believes privatization is key to cutting the cost of space travel. "Contractors will be leading the way with future projects as the agency continues to downsize."

Divestiture is the cleanest form of privatization, of course. Examples are rare so far, although the Energy Department is actively seeking to sell the Alaska Power Administration, the Elk Hills Naval Petroleum Reserve in California, part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and the National Institute of Petroleum and Energy. The Office of Management and Budget has concluded that federal entities are candidates for divestiture if it can be proven that they no longer serve a public purpose and are able to compete in the private sector.

A kind of half-way, perhaps even half-hearted, means of moving toward privatization is the so-called "privatization in-place" scheme in which the government says it is closing a facility but then farms work out to many of the same workers now employees of the private entity to which the facility is transferred. This is what's been happening with Pentagon efforts to privatize major maintenance depots in California and Texas.

Government work also can be transferred to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The Office of Personnel Management recently converted its investigative services branch into an ESOP. Work at the newly created private company, known as the U.S. Investigations Services, will be performed by 700 workers from OPM's Office of Federal Investigations.

"This will move us toward the smaller, flatter, more efficient, more market-driven government of the future," OPM Director James King told a House subcommittee earlier this year. "We expect to save about $25 million over the next five years."

GSA, the government's central purchasing agency and real estate owner, also is considering an ESOP structure. The agency has asked Arthur Anderson & Co. to examine its holdings and devise a strategy for selling off buildings it can lease back for federal use.

Clearing Hurdles

Outsourcing initiatives can be difficult to implement in the public sector because of the government's security concerns and unique agency requirements, such as DoD's limitation on contracting out depot maintenance and repair work. Before proceeding down the privatization path, agencies are advised to conduct due-diligence reviews that can determine compliance with applicable regulations and eliminate any hurdles.

One of the most anticipated obstacles-union opposition-has not materialized as predicted. With the exception of a suit recently filed by the American Federation of Government Employees to stop privatization efforts at Kelly, McClellan and Newark Air Force bases, opposition to on the part of federal unions has been muted. ESOP schemes and other privatization initiatives are seen as plausible alternatives to layoffs.

Another potential problem, corruption, is being guarded against with the help of close monitoring. New outsourcing contracts are carrying shorter terms that make them easier to manage than the mega-deals of the 1980s. And more agencies are expected to follow the trend of selective outsourcing, whereby separate companies each handle small components of an operation, instead of one company doing an entire program.

"Contract management is more important than ever now that more of the private sector is delivering services," says Allan Burman, who was administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy during the Bush Administration. "With the right amount of oversight, commercial ventures can pay off handsomely."

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Contractors Suffer Blows in Budget Battle

Lisa Corbin — Thu, 15 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

he 13 continuing resolutions federal agencies endured during the budget battle earlier this year took their toll on information-technology contractors as well. For the first half of 1996, IT acquisitions ran at about 70 percent of their normal rate as government organizations postponed or even canceled all but mission-critical technology purchases. Shutdowns that furloughed almost 300,000 federal employees also forced systems integrators to put hundreds of workers on leave. All told, the budget battle cost companies thousands of dollars a day in lost revenues.

Now that the omnibus budget appropriations bill has been passed, companies are gearing up for a bustling fourth quarter as agencies rush to spend money before the fiscal year concludes at the end of September. By the time the buying spree is over, the Office of Management and Budget predicts 1996 information-technology purchases will total $25.6 billion. (That number excludes about $25 billion for non-reportable IT items such as Defense Department command and control system components.)

Although federal spending on computer and telecommunications products this year will total roughly the same as in 1995, in real terms spending will be slightly lower. Part of the reason is that more than 30 current IT programs have been funded at 1995 levels. However, some of the biggest IT spenders-the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, NASA and the departments of Energy, Health and Human Services, Transportation and Treasury-actually reported moderate increases in spending.

Prospects are brighter for 1997, due in large part to pent-up demand and the release of new procurement-reform regulations. Although industry analysts differ on exact numbers, most agree that federal IT spending will reach at least $26 billion next year as agencies use computer systems to compensate for downsizing.

"With the number of federal employees declining and resources more scarce, there is certainly a significant incentive for the government to become a world-class user of technology," says John Koskinen, deputy director for management at OMB. "In some ways we just don't have any choice but to keep on spending money [on information technology]."

Recent initiatives have made it easier for agencies to procure commercial, off-the-shelf hardware and software. Changes in the General Services Administration's Multiple-Award Schedule (MAS) program, for instance, have enabled vendors to treat government buyers the same as private customers. Companies no longer have to obey 30-day price freezes and are allowed to offer spot pricing and special discounts to agencies. In addition, tedious review and justification procedures have been eliminated.

Contractual mandatory-use provisions are being eliminated as individual schedule periods expire and new contracts are awarded. GSA also is moving to convert all MAS contracts from one-year agreements to five-year deals with five additional one-year options. Longer-term contracts are expected to help agencies reduce administrative costs and provide continuity with the vendor community.

Maximum order limitations have been removed so that contractors can accept orders of any size. The lifting of these barriers has prompted some large systems integrators, such as PRC, to get on GSA schedules for the first time.

Government organizations now can use the MAS program to conduct indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) procurements by negotiating blanket purchase agreements with multiple-award schedule vendors-thus eliminating the costs and time-consuming procedures associated with open market buys. As a result of this rule change, organizations such as the Federal Aviation Administration and the IRS recently decided not to recompete large IDIQ technology contracts. Instead, those agencies will obtain goods via the MAS program.

GSA is using multiple task orders for several IT support service procurements known as multiple award, indefinite quantity (MAIQ) contracts. Eight contractors are competing for $840 million worth of IT services on the MAIQ contracts, which are open to all federal organizations.

"Agencies doing large volume buying now can maximize discount opportunities and negotiate the best deals for their needs," says William Gormley, assistant commissioner of the Federal Supply Service's Office of Acquisition. "Blanket purchase agreements and MAIQ contracts are making procurements easier so that agencies can devote more of their resources to primary missions."

But despite significant improvements in the MAS program, agencies are still awarding sizable IDIQ contracts for computer and telecommunications products and services. Some of the larger procurements this year include the Defense Information Systems Agency's $2.5 billion Defense Enterprise Integration Services II contract, the Social Security Administration's $1 billion Intelligent Workstation/LAN award, the Air Force's $1 billion Desktop V deal and NASA's $825 million SEWP II procurement.

More IDIQ contracts are expected once GSA's Board of Contract Appeals cedes its jurisdiction over IT bid protests to the General Accounting Office's procurement law group. That change, which will occur this month, was one of many dictated by the 1996 Information Technology Management Reform Act. Some agencies-hoping to avoid lengthy protest disputes-are waiting to award big contracts until the torch is passed to GAO, which is seen as a less hostile forum because it omits the type of extensive discovery procedures used by GSBCA.

Introducing CIOs

Another development delaying some IT acquisitions this year is the reengineering of the federal information resources management infrastructure. New procurement-reform legislation dictates that all Cabinet agencies must replace senior IRMs with chief information officers, who will be responsible for rationalizing information-technology investments across enterprises. Some agencies who fear program overhauls are postponing big IT acquisitions until CIOs are named. Although all CIOs are supposed to be in place this month, more than half of the posts were still vacant in early July.

Part of the problem is that the government is still trying to define the role of the federal chief information officer. Should CIOs should be career civil servants or political appointees? Is computer knowledge a necessity or will good management skills suffice? And should the post be combined with other positions such as chief financial officer?

The interagency Chief Information Officer Council recently developed a methodology for helping agencies recruit CIOs. Duties of a CIO, according to the council, should include strategic planning, budgeting and development of performance measures for information-technology programs.

Responsibility for reviewing those performance measures now falls to OMB, which took over IT oversight responsibilities from GSA when the 30-year-old Brooks Act was repealed earlier this year. Although agencies still have to comply with governmentwide technology and security standards, they are largely free to buy what they want without getting permission from a central authority. The only catch is that agencies now must tie strategic plans to budgets and set up qualitative performance measures for those investments. Projects that fall more than 10 percent behind performance targets may be halted by OMB.

Many observers inside and outside government predict agencies will have a tough time learning to treat IT budgets as if they were capital investments-especially after decades of centralized oversight. Few federal organizations have experience in designing performance measures for gauging the impact of information technology on core missions. The consensus, however, is that the time has come for agencies to be accountable when it comes to IT spending.

"Although federal information-technology obligations now total at least $25 billion annually, what the government is getting in return for these expenditures in unclear," says Christopher Hoenig, director of GAO's Information Resources Management/Policy and Issues Group. "Real opportunities exist to boost organizational performance, but the risk of failure is ever present and must be vigorously managed to ensure success."

GAO has called for disciplined management processes combined with a shift to procurements involving more off-the-shelf commercial products. The agency also favors smaller projects, since they cost less and are easier to monitor. Some agencies even are moving to fee-for-service programs, which provide fresh revenue to supplement dwindling appropriations.

Efficient IT Procurement

The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act (FASA) of 1994 encouraged agencies to try innovative procurement methods such as "best-value" source selections, which have been heartily endorsed by the National Performance Review. Instead of awarding contracts solely on the basis of low price, agencies now are considering other factors such as past performance, management capabilities and technical superiority. They also are using performance-based specifications instead of detailed specifications that designate exactly the type of technology to be used.

"By letting vendors define requirements, agencies are getting cost-effective solutions for their mission-critical systems," says Gary Murray, chief executive officer of Sylvest Management Systems Corp., a federal systems integrator. "After all, the success of companies is predicated by the success of agencies."

Results from FASA-based reforms have been promising. Agencies are procuring IT products and services faster and more efficiently, with more emphasis on customers and less obsession with risk. The Transportation Department's new $1.1 billion Information Technology Omnibus Procurement, for instance, was awarded in only four months.

Both the Air Force and the Social Security Administration have been experimenting in recent IT buys with a new procedure known as "two phase advisory down-select." Using this method, contracting officers rely on vendor qualification statements and site visits. Bid evaluations are based on oral presentations and prototype demonstrations instead of lengthy written reports.

Organizations such as the Environmental Protection Agency and the Navy are doing paperless procurements by processing contracts on-line. EPA completed one complex information-technology procurement in less than nine months-compared to two years under the old system. The agency estimates that electronic procurement saved more than $114,000 in paper costs and postage on that contract alone.

The Federal Aviation Administration is using Integrated Product Teams for its IT procurements. With this innovative approach, contracting officers work closely with planning, program, legal and management staff-as well as users. The FAA predicts the team concept will reduce procurement times by 50 percent and save the agency at least $200 million over the next three years.

Some of the most dramatic procurement reforms are still to come. OMB's Office of Federal Procurement Policy, in conjunction with the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council, is rewriting sections 12 and 15 of the 1,600-page Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), the blueprint for federal procurement. By revising these sections, which cover competitive contract negotiations, OFPP hopes to explicitly authorize innovative source-selection techniques-such as oral presentations-that encourage a more open exchange of information among buyers and sellers.

"We have no choice but to continue to move our acquisition system from an obsession with process to an obsession with delivery of results," says OFPP administrator Steven Kelman. "The best is yet to come, because proposed regulations are very aggressive."

Hardware and software companies are concerned, however, about future procurement reforms, especially in the area of bid-protest procedures. The Industry Coalition on Information Technology recently was created to develop industry positions on new legislation such as the IT Management Reform Act. The group hopes to influence government acquisition procedures.

"The biggest problem from the contractor's point of view is the size of the investments and the time it takes to do government procurements," says Edward Hammersla, executive director of federal operations for Informix Software. "In the federal world, we don't begin solving the problem until the procurement process is complete, by which time the technology could be outdated."

This year Congress will lose two of its biggest champions of information technology and procurement reform when Sen. William Cohen, R-Maine, the head of the Senate Governmental Affairs subcommittee on oversight of government management and Rep. William Clinger, R-Pa., chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, retire from public service. There are no IT or procurement experts in line to replace them, so the next generation of IT overseers faces a steep learning curve.

Consolidating Data Centers

One of the priorities of those overseers will be supervision of federal data center closings. The Office of Management and Budget has directed agencies to cut the number of data centers from 205 to less than 100 by June 1998. Some of the small and mid-size processing centers will be consolidated, while many government mainframe operations will be shut down entirely.

OMB's revised Circular A-76 on "Performance of Commercial Activities" advises data center directors to benchmark their operations with private-sector processing centers. Those cost comparisons are expected to help directors decide which centers to retain. Workloads from closed centers will be handled by interagency service agreements or farmed out to contractors.

GSA's Federal Computer Acquisition Center plans to issue a final solicitation this month for at least three 10-year IDIQ contracts to provide civilian agencies with mainframe round-the-clock processing support. Each outsourcing contract is expected to support about 10 clients.

These "virtual data centers" will represent one more step by the government toward privatization. The Electronic Industries Association estimates that outsourcing accounted for two-thirds of all federal spending on information technology last year. And that trend is likely to continue as lower budgets force agencies to contract out computing operations that are not mission-critical, such as payroll.

Agencies doing the most outsourcing this year include the Air Force, Army, Navy and the Health and Human Services, and Transportation departments. The IRS is hoping outsourcers will help it resuscitate its $8 billion Tax Systems Modernization project, which was the subject of a scathing GAO report recently.

One of the most prevalent outsourcing jobs this year will be labor-intensive date conversions required to solve what's become known as the year 2000 (Y2K) problem. On Jan. 1, 2000, six-digit date fields in computer programs will read 01-01-00-causing machines to interpret the date as Jan. 1, 1900, instead of Jan. 1, 2000. This misinterpretation will cause computers to crash or to make costly and potentially dangerous miscalculations unless dates are re-written on mainframe computer code.

Likely candidates for Y2K outsourcing are small, disadvantaged firms that qualify for the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program. Since the deadline for fixing year 2000 problems is a short time away, agencies will not want to waste time. One way of sidestepping time-consuming bidding practices is to award sole-source contracts directly to minority-owned companies.

Internet projects will also be candidates for outsourcing. As agencies continue to offer World Wide Web sites to the public-more than 1,000 at last count-they will need help setting up home pages and integrating appropriate networking hardware and software. Electronic commerce systems incorporating electronic data interchange and other technologies also will require a high degree of systems integration and outsourcing.

Other hot information-technology areas this year are "intranets"-types of internal Internets-and imaging and workflow products. In an effort to produce performance-based measurements, agencies also are expected to purchase financial-management software that can relate budget numbers to program strategies.

"Agencies will depend heavily on information technology as they reengineer their organizations to become more results oriented," says Robert Deller, director of market-research services at Global Systems and Strategies. "IT is the facilitator for better service at lower cost."

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Contractors Suffer Blows in Budget Battle

Lisa Corbin — Thu, 15 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

furloughed almost 300,000 federal employees also forced systems integrators to put hundreds of workers on leave. All told, the budget battle cost companies thousands of dollars a day in lost revenues.

Introducing CIOs

Efficient IT Procurement

Consolidating Data Centers

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Focus on People, Places and Processes

Lisa Corbin — Thu, 01 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

August 1996

OFFICE PRODUCTS GUIDE

Focus on People, Places and Processes

By Lisa Corbin

ffice productivity is determined by success in three areas-people, places and processes. All must work in conjunction with one another in order to yield performance gains. An ergonomically correct office is worthless if employees are not up to snuff. And talented workers will fall short if forced to rely on overly complicated or malfunctioning office equipment. Likewise, state-of-the-art computer systems will not have much impact on productivity if being used in overheated or poorly lit offices. As Winston Churchill once said: "We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us."

The good news is that some federal agencies are finally beginning to focus equally on people, places and processes. Facilities managers, human resources directors and chief information officers are working together to realize productivity goals. Efforts are being made to enhance employee skills and expand technologies that support those skills while improving the physical facilities that house them.

Office equipment manufacturers are abandoning complex, overloaded machines in favor of user-friendly models that are more sensitive to users' needs. Digital technology has made standard equipment such as copiers and fax machines faster and easier to use; artificial intelligence has made them smarter.

Rising workers' compensation claims resulting from backaches, headaches, throat irritation and other disorders have prompted agencies to make offices more environmentally sound and ergonomically correct. Worker facilities traditionally have been one of the most overlooked areas in the productivity equation. Now agencies are realizing that uncomfortable workers are unproductive workers, and that steps must be taken to eliminate indoor air pollution and all furniture that fails to accommodate different body sizes and work styles.

Physical work environments are not passive settings but active variables that can significantly enhance productivity. To draw attention to the role facilities play in worker performance, the Clinton Administration has joined the American Institute of Architects, the International Association of Corporate Real Estate Executives, the International Facility Management Association and Johnson Controls to support the National Summit on Building Performance. Goals of the summit, which will be held in Washington in September, are to motivate corporations and government agencies to make the same type of investments in facilities as they have in human resources and information technology. It will explore how to quantify return on workplace investments and how to relate those investments to strategic goals. The consortium hopes to educate executives about the impact facilities have on productivity.

This guide serves as an educational tool as well. It is intended to bring managers up to date on trends in office products, furniture and environmental controls so they can boost performance levels.

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Focus on People, Places and Processes

Lisa Corbin — Thu, 01 Aug 1996 00:00:00 -0400

Government Data Under Siege

Lisa Corbin — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

July 1996

COMPUTER SECURITY SUPPLEMENT

Government Data Under Siege

By Lisa Corbin

he confidentiality, integrity, reliability and availability of government information continues to be threatened by amateur hackers, professional eavesdroppers, power outages, natural disasters and human error. Vicious computer viruses are altering and deleting data; spies are entering Internet backdoors and snooping through files; and employees are using stolen passwords to obtain sensitive information that is being sold to outside parties.

The proliferation of data-security threats has been brought on, ironically, by advances in the Information Age. Agencies have been moving steadily from centralized mainframe-processing environments to distributed architectures involving open operating systems, client-server networks and commercial, off-the-shelf software. That migration has increased the vulnerability of information systems because more federal employees now have access to data. And since users on those systems now mingle with the Internet and external trading partners via electronic data interchange (EDI), more outsiders have access to those systems too.

Although no one knows exactly how often security breaches occur, the federally funded Computer Emergency Response Team at Carnegie Mellon University estimates that government computer systems are illegally accessed several hundred thousand times each year. Some of the most recent attacks have been at high-security installations, such as Air Force bases, Energy Department labs and NASA research facilities. Many break-ins are not even reported because organizations don't want to publicize their vulnerability.

Agencies have been slow to defend against security threats because precautions are viewed as annoying. Simple tasks such as copying or sharing files, viewing printer queues or switching directories can turn complicated or may be prohibited altogether on secured systems. The Pentagon's new Defense Message System, for instance, is meeting resistance from users who do not want to wait up to 30 seconds to open each e-mail message. DoD says the lengthy log-on is necessary in order to decrypt messages and check the validity of digital signatures and IDs. But many argue that such cumbersome procedures defeat the speed benefits of e-mail.

Safeguards also are viewed as being too expensive for agencies working on bare-bones budgets. The Defense Department tried to cut costs by centralizing security products and services under one contract. But support for the $1.9 billion Information Security Technical Services contract has been so weak that the Defense Information Systems Agency is expected to stop processing task orders now that the contract's legal minimum guarantee of $6 million has been met.

Instead of attempting to wipe out every vulnerability, some agencies are choosing to reduce risks to reasonable levels. But even that goal is difficult for organizations lacking trained staffs to identify vulnerable areas and implement safeguards. The Office of Management and Budget recently mandated that agencies provide security training to all new employees before giving them access to government systems. OMB is also requiring agencies to establish computer emergency response teams to deal with break-ins and viruses.

The General Services Administration's Security Infrastructure Program Management Office, meanwhile, is helping agencies implement data-security solutions. The office's goal is to encourage agencies to use a standard approach to solving security problems in order to avoid duplication of systems. It is seeking interoperability among encryption devices and is helping to sort out other security obstacles blocking government-wide implementation of e-mail and EDI.

Such efforts will help move security concerns to the forefront and will help clear the way for full-scale electronic commerce within the government. The following pages detail the latest approaches to safeguarding federal data, along with some of the newest products designed to help make computer security an integral part of day-to-day operations.

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Government Data Under Siege

Lisa Corbin — Mon, 01 Jul 1996 00:00:00 -0400

COMPUTER SECURITY GUIDE

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Competition and Technologies Transform Market

Lisa Corbin — Sat, 01 Jun 1996 00:00:00 -0400

he federal communications market is in a year of transition, marked by new competition and technologies. The telecommunications reform bill that was signed into law in January marks the first major overhaul of the industry since the 1934 Communications Act. The law deregulates the market, allowing long-distance carriers, local phone companies and cable-TV operators to invade one another's turf.

The seven Regional Bell Operating companies now are allowed to manufacture equipment and offer long-distance services, while long-distance carriers can service local exchanges. Cable TV firms can provide local phone service and telephone companies can sell video services. Even gas and electric companies are allowed to participate in the construction of the National Information Infrastructure.

The law has generated joint ventures and alliances as companies restructure and consolidate. Bell Atlantic and Nynex plan to merge into a $50 billion powerhouse that will be the country's second-largest telephone company. And SBC Communications intends to acquire the Pacific Telesis Group for $16.7 billion.

Telecommunications reform has been welcomed by federal information-technology shops struggling with lower budgets, fewer workers and growing technological demands. Once the Federal Communications Commission and state regulators implement more than 80 rules governing competition, agencies will begin seeing a broader range of services being offered at a lower cost. And they no longer will be forced to deal with a single supplier in a given geographic area.

Baby Bells already are setting up separate units to sell competitive communications services such as frame relay and asynchronous transfer mode. This means that fast digital technology such as Integrated Services Digital Network finally will be available throughout the country, instead of just select areas. In addition, local phone companies are expected to assume higher profiles in federal procurements.

"The new telecommunications law will mean more price competition, especially in the local federal markets," says Robert J. Woods, commissioner of the General Services Administration's new Federal Telecommunications Service. "Federal customers will be offered improved technology and more choices for value-added services such as electronic commerce and e-mail."

GSA is developing strategies to foster competition in local service. The agency has asked regional telecommunications managers to create competitive environments in areas with emerging alternative carriers. One way of doing this would be to segment contracts so that targeted cities could be isolated.

Further competition in the federal communications market will aid construction of the much-touted information superhighway. Although the private sector and local communities will design and build the superhighway, responsibility for guaranteeing fair access and protecting users will fall on the government's shoulders. In its final report, the Clinton Administration's recently disbanded National Information Infrastructure Advisory Council said the government's role will be to safeguard intellectual property rights and ensure the privacy and integrity of data.

These responsibilities will be added to a growing list of communications concerns, such as how to obtain maximum speed and bandwidth for the lowest cost. The following pages provide a glimpse of some of the newest communications technologies and an examination of whether they can live up to their promises.

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The Year 2000 Problem

Lisa Corbin — Wed, 01 May 1996 00:00:00 -0400

t is being described as a ticking time bomb destined to wreak havoc on millions of computer systems around the world. On Jan. 1, 2000, six-digit date fields in computer programs will read 01-01-00--causing machines to interpret the date as Jan. 1, 1900, instead of Jan. 1, 2000. This misinterpretation will cause computers to crash or, at the very least, to make costly and potentially dangerous miscalculations.

Nowhere will the so-called "year 2000" problem be more prevalent than in the federal government, where thousands of mainframes are operating on Cobol computer code written in the 1960s. The inability of that code to recognize the new millennium will affect all time-sensitive computer programs. If not addressed immediately, the year 2000 problem could have disastrous consequences.

Payroll and benefits checks will not be cut, interest payments will not be calculated, permits will not be issued. Purchase orders will expire long before their issue dates. Inventory programs will think stock is outdated. Hospital records will mistake newborns for the elderly. And weapons systems will malfunction.

"You cannot underestimate the seriousness of the problem," says Kathleen Adams, associate commissioner for systems design and development at the Social Security Administration and chairwoman of the government's Year 2000 Interagency Committee. "The government is so large and has so many billions of lines of code. Locating and correcting all the date references within such a short time frame will be expensive, and yet it must be done."

Agencies are expected to fork out as much as $30 billion over the next four years to solve the year 2000 problem, according to the Gartner Group, an information technology marketing research firm in Stamford, Conn. Much of that money will be spent on software tools for organizations doing date conversions in-house, and outsourcing services for those choosing to contract out the labor-intensive work.

Gartner estimates conversion costs at $1 for every line of computer code, providing revisions begin immediately. That average excludes date conversions on weapons-systems code--these are expected to be significantly more expensive. Costs are expected to escalate as much as 50 percent for every year projects are delayed.

"Many agencies who have not yet started working on the year 2000 problem will discover that the longer they wait, the more expensive it will be," says Adams, who began year 2000 preparations for the Social Security Administration in 1989. "Some organizations already are seeing problems crop up in five-year forecasting programs and other applications."

Approximately 20 percent of all business software will falter this year because of problems involved in computing the year 2000, according to the Gartner Group. An estimated 90 percent of all computer applications will fail by 1999 if date fields in software code are not amended.

"There's a sense of urgency because there is a definite deadline and it cannot be extended," says Sally Katzen, administrator of information and regulatory affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, which is working to boost awareness of the year 2000 problem. "Time is running out."

Best Intentions Blighted

Mainframe programmers in the 1960s and 1970s never anticipated the doomsday scenario now presented by the year 2000 problem. Back in those early days of computing, developers were surprised to see their Cobol programs survive three years--much less three decades. They expected code to be replaced as hardware became more sophisticated. Instead, many agencies chose to patch and update the code, thereby burying the date references. As time passed, the six-digit date fields became standard.

Although programmers were shortsighted, their intentions were good. Computer memory was expensive in those days, so developers sought ways to use as little disk space as possible. By not storing the century as part of the year, programmers could delete two bytes per date. Considering dates may be replicated thousands of times throughout a single program, this translated into millions of dollars saved.

"It may sound crazy now, but we were living in a era when computers did not have keyboards and programmers thought 12K of memory would last a lifetime," says Rick Rineer, special assistant for technology fusion at the Education Department and a former Cobol programmer who is spearheading his agency's preparations for 2000. "Now everyone is realizing that both the principal and interest on the money saved is coming due."

After lying dormant for 30 years, the year 2000 problem is troubling those in data-intensive businesses such as the insurance industry, the financial community and all levels of government. Professional seminars on the topic are playing to standing-room-only audiences, and business school classes designed to help organizations manage computer programming transitions are frequently overbooked. Dozens of home pages on the Internet's World Wide Web offer advice and products for what are becoming known as "Y2K" projects.

The year 2000 problem even has gained the attention of Congress, which is scheduling hearings on the subject. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., has asked the Congressional Research Service to study the issue and report on its implications for the federal government.

"As ranking minority member on the Senate Finance Committee, I am concerned about how the problem will affect agencies such as the Treasury and Social Security Administration, as well as other government and private computer systems," says Moynihan. "This problem may cause widespread errors in computation of government benefits and taxes."

The Office of Management and Budget also is concerned, and has brought up the issue with the President's Management Council. Agencies are being urged to include the cost of Y2K conversions in their fiscal 1998 budget estimates and five-year information technology forecasts. OMB, which recently took over computer-procurement oversight from the General Services Administration, may issue guidelines for estimating year 2000 conversion costs.

"We want to help agencies determine the magnitude of the problem," says Katzen. "By raising consciousness, we hope to give people a better understanding of the solutions available."

OMB may consider implementing governmentwide contracts for year 2000 consulting services and software conversion tools so that agencies do not have to handle their own procurements. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy, meanwhile, is trying to get language put in contracts certifying that new information technology products will feature eight-digit date fields (MM-DD-YYYY). Some organizations, such as the Defense Department, already mandate Y2K-compliance for new purchases.

Convincing the Boss

The Social Security Administration is the government's year 2000 trailblazer. The agency began preparing for the problem seven years ago and expects all 30 million lines of its code to be Y2K-compliant by 1998. About 20 other agencies have appointed year 2000 coordinators who are responsible for drawing up date conversion battle plans.

Many other organizations, however, have not started Y2K projects. Perhaps the biggest challenge for agencies preparing for the new millenium is getting top managers to understand the severity of the year 2000 problem. As with most issues, funding is the major stumbling block.

"Managers are already skeptical about the money being spent on information technology and now they're being told that they have to spend millions on projects that will bring them no added functionality," says Ian Temple, manager of the Gartner Group's Information Technology Executive Program for Government. "It's hard to convince administrators to commit to year 2000 projects because they're not getting any return on their investments."

OMB, in conjunction with the Year 2000 Interagency Committee, is educating senior managers about the Y2K problem so they can earmark funds as soon as possible. Many managers, however, refuse to acknowledge the complexity of the problem and the amount of time, money and personnel involved in converting the date fields.

"The first reaction by senior management is denial, followed by an assumption that the technical people will find a silver bullet," says Robert Molter, computer scientist for the Information Technology Directorate in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications and Intel- ligence. "Trust me, if there was a simple fix, it would have been used a long time ago."

Dates, Dates Everywhere

The main reason there are no simple fixes for the year 2000 problem is because six-digit date fields are present at every level of computing, including operating systems, software applications and databases. Dates even can be found in computer hardware, from mainframes and midrange machines all the way down to networks, PCs and pocket-sized electronic schedulers.

Date fields are used in basic computer functions such as calculating, sorting, comparing, projecting, validating and simulating. Agencies use them in everything from weather forecasting and weapons targeting to inventory management and payment scheduling. Even the smallest federal agency could have thousands of programs requiring year 2000 conversion.

"The problem is complex, both from a management perspective and a technical perspective," says Rear Adm. James Davidson, commander of the Naval Information Systems Management Center. "The sheer size of this problem adds to the complexity because dates are everywhere. That means all program code must be examined to determine if a change is necessary."

Finding the dates can be difficult because they often are embedded in complex encoding schemes. Patches and updates that have been made to software since the 1960s have created what programmers call "spaghetti code" that runs around endless strings of references. These software mazes sometimes can be impossible to decipher.

"Proper data administration has never been done because no one thought it was necessary to keep a record of date stamps that appeared all over the place," says Bruce Rosen, manager of software standards at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. "It represented too much overhead, but now most of the original programmers are gone and along with them went the knowledge of how to safely change some of the source code."

Farming out the Work

Conversion of six-digit dates to eight-digit fields in software code is complicated, time-consuming and repetitive work that involves looking at every single line of code. Many short-staffed federal technology shops may not want to dedicate their best and brightest computer programmers to such mundane work. Other agencies may not have qualified people in the first place.

"There's a real skill shortage when it comes to fixing the year 2000 problem," says Olga Grkavac, vice president of the systems integration division of the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a trade group representing 6,700 direct and affiliate member companies. "A lot of places are suffering from a lack of talent because there just aren't enough Cobol programmers around. Many of them got out of the business years ago."

Some agencies are using outsourcers to help them do date conversions. A recent ITAA survey of federal information technology professionals indicated that 79 percent plan to contract out one or more phases of their labor-intensive Y2K projects.

"We simply don't have the internal resources to do this," says Education's Rineer, who learned firsthand about the Y2K problem when newly issued student loans recently showed up as being in default because the agency's computers thought the notes were due in 1901 instead of 2001. Any manager who has the luxury to "stop what an agency's technology people are doing and devote them to the year 2000 problem should have been fired a long time ago," says Rineer.

Not surprisingly, vendors have risen to the occasion. Many large firms, such as Anderson Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand, Electronic Data Systems, Ernst & Young and IBM, have opened year 2000 divisions and are offering products and outsourcing services. Cap Gemini Sogeti, for instance, has a TransMillennium service in which duplicate tapes of software code can be sent to the company's Renovation Center in Tarrytown, N.Y., where they are analyzed and returned to clients.

Funding Crisis

In order to keep costs lower, some outsourcers are farming out Y2K work to programmers in places like India or the Philippines, where labor costs are substantially lower.

Although offshore programmers can bring software-conversion expenses down to below the $1-per-line-of-code benchmark, costs still can multiply quickly--particularly at agencies with lots of customized hardware and software.

Mitre Corp. estimates that year 2000 conversions for weapons systems, for instance, could be as much as eight times more expensive than Y2K projects at civilian agencies because new microchip production would be required. The Defense Department declines to comment on how much year 2000 conversions will cost but analysts--taking into consideration all the DoD-unique hardware and software--put the figure in the low billions.

"All I can say is that it will cost more than our operational and maintenance information technology budgets combined," says DoD's Molter. "And the worst part is that it's unplanned. No one has projected these costs and we don't expect Congress to give us any new money."

In an effort to fund year 2000 projects, state governments are increasing sales taxes. Nebraska, for instance, recently raised its cigarette tax by 2 percent in order to help pay for software code conversions. The only option for federal agencies, however, is to put new systems-development projects on hold.

"We're all being put in a position where we have to invoke Solomon's law and choose among our children," says Rineer, who estimates his agency will spend about $1 billion on year 2000 software conversions. "We will try to mitigate the damage by focusing on mission-critical areas such as personnel, payroll and procurement."

Choosing a Methodology

Funding is not the only headache involved in the year 2000 problem. Agencies have to settle on methodologies for doing software code conversions and, like so many information technology projects, no single set of rules applies. Strategies depend on how much code an agency plans to be running after the year 2000, and whether customized code can be replaced by new off-the-shelf software.

Hardware may have to be replaced as well. Some legacy systems--mainframes containing original Cobol code--are not expected to survive the transition into the new millennium. IBM has announced that its S/370 line of mainframes cannot be modified for the year 2000. And some Unisys machines can't, either. In addition, the basic input-output systems (BIOS) on older PCs will not be able to accommodate the century change. As a result, some machines will require a date-command execution every time they are booted up.

"On a recent year 2000 test, 97 percent of our computers failed," says Education's Rineer. "We will have to replace the BIOS on all these machines and will end up buying a lot of servers."

Experts recommend starting year 2000 projects by doing a thorough inventory of hardware and software. Source code must be analyzed for all date references. Once the complexity of the required changes is determined, the cost of the conversion project can be estimated.

"Intimate knowledge of your information systems is essential to solving the year 2000 problem," says DoD's Molter. "Without an accurate assessment of what's involved, agencies could face major surprises down the road. Unfortunately, there can be no false starts on this project because the clock is ticking."

A wide variety of software tools and services are available for locating and changing date fields, but even the best products can automate less than half the process. The rest of the work must be done manually either by agencies or outsourcers, or a combination of both.

Experts recommend developing a plan based on the importance of applications and their impact on customers. Then a proper mix of resources can be chosen to conduct the analysis, conversion and testing phases. Agencies not wanting to wait for new governmentwide contracts to be implemented may want to buy year 2000 products off existing task-order contracts, such as the General Services Administration's wide-ranging Federal Systems Integration and Management contracts.

Federal year 2000 projects will succeed to the extent that date fields are identified precisely and conversion methods are accurate.

Quality control will play a major role in Y2K projects because overlooked date references could shut down computer systems or infiltrate "clean" data. Fire walls should be put into place to keep out infected data. "Bad date references from business partners can be every bit as dangerous as computer viruses," says Adams of the Social Security Administration.

Success also will depend on the commitment shown by senior managers and whether service providers deliver year 2000 solutions on time and within budget. Above all, agencies should begin Y2K projects as soon as possible in order to have time to sort out last-minute complications.

"The important thing is to get going because the sooner agencies start tackling the year 2000 problem, the sooner they'll finish," says Adams. "After all, it's less than four years away."

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Year 2000 Resources

Lisa Corbin — Wed, 01 May 1996 00:00:00 -0400

The Year 2000 Interagency Committee is working to define guidelines for how to exchange date references across government. The group will issue its Best Practices Guide later this year. For details, call (410) 965-6294.

The Information Technology Association of America has produced a year 2000 survey, buyer's guide, vendor directory and position paper. Information can be obtained via the trade association's home page or by calling (703) 522-5055.

A Defense Department Internet site reports on how DoD is addressing the year 2000 problem. (Note: Most of the site is open only to users with military or government Internet addresses.)

The Software Productivity Group is sponsoring year 2000 conferences throughout the country this year. For cities and dates, call (508) 366-3344.

A year 2000 quarterly newsletter called Tick, Tick, Tick is produced by 2000 AD Inc., a New York-based consulting company. For subscription information, call (718) 643-8425.

Peter De Jager, an independent consultant based in Brampton, Ontario, runs an online Year 2000 Information Center.

The U.S. Professional Development Institute, a nonprofit training organization, offers a variety of year 2000 seminars. Call (301) 445-4400.

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