Tech Insider: Those who get it

For months, technology executives have lauded their products' abilities to help agencies share and analyze information about terrorists. They've made very big promises about how their wares could prevent a replay of the Sept. 11 attacks. But there are wide gaps in the private sector's understanding of the challenges the government faces in the homeland security arena and how it will use technology to address them. At the E-Gov conference in Washington in late June, Michael Capellas, president of Hewlett-Packard and the former CEO of Compaq, sat down to discuss his views on government technology. In the process, he demonstrated that those who know this market best are the ones who understand its limitations. Capellas has a better grasp of the government's particular needs than most corporate executives. As the CEO of Compaq, he was often directly involved in its federal sector business, which was among the healthiest in the computer manufacturing industry. Capellas characterized the government's main challenge today in simple terms. "The good guys need better stuff than the bad guys," he said. The government is less equipped than its adversaries because its thousands of information systems and applications aren't connected. So they can't be harnessed together to analyze data, share information and, ultimately, predict when and where attacks might occur. But Capellas also noted that the government's technology infrastructure is very weak, so it can't support the sophisticated technologies that firms are offering today to address the data-sharing problem. Many corporate executives fail to recognize this problem, and are urging agencies to adopt technologies they're not able to use. Consider the systems of the FBI, for instance, which are so antiquated that many of its agents lack Internet access. The bureau is slowly modernizing its crippled computers under a three-year program known as Trilogy, but there's still much groundwork to be done. Mark Tanner, the FBI's information resources manager, says he receives "probably 10 to 15 calls or e-mails a day from [vendors] who have solutions to these problems that we have… [But] we're unable to really implement them…because we don't have the infrastructure." Capellas said the biggest challenge a new Homeland Security Department would face would be deciding what to do with the enormous quantities of information its agencies now hold in their databases. Officials shouldn't try to link them all together, but rather extract just the information they need from each repository and store it in a secure place, he said. That goal could be accomplished through a series of short-term projects, such as integrating the many terrorist watch lists that various agents currently maintain. (Such an initiative is, in fact, under way.) "If we try to do everything, we'll do nothing," Capellas said. That approach is the opposite of what many of the firms that have rushed into the federal market since Sept. 11 have advocated. And agencies are growing tired of hearing about companies' "solutions" to their problems when the companies don't understand what those problems are. In the 10 months since the Sept. 11 attacks, the homeland security market has shaken out somewhat. The revenue-starved technology firms that headed east from Silicon Valley seeking a quick boost from Uncle Sam have either packed up and gone home or recognized that doing business in the federal market requires Zen-like patience. Those who stay around-and pay attention-will learn about the government's real problems, and then build their businesses around solving them.