Editor's Notebook

ood news about government graced the front page of The New York Times, for a change, one early September morning, when the Social Security Administration announced reinstatement of its World Wide Web-based benefits information service.

By the end of the year citizens once again will be able to visit www.ssa.gov to obtain an electronic estimate of the Social Security benefits they will receive upon retirement. SSA abruptly withdrew this service last spring in reaction to concern that confidential information, including personal earnings records, could fall into the wrong hands. Having examined the privacy issue in more detail, SSA has taken steps to safeguard the most sensitive information, but has announced a continuing "strategic commitment to electronic services." It was an important decision which will influence the advancement of electronic services in both government and the private sector.

The agency describes its Web-based service as "the beginning of where the government will be in the next century in allowing consumers to serve themselves." Such self-service is increasingly necessary as government's resources continue to shrink.

The Sultan of Shrinkage, of course, is the Defense Department, whose headcount of active-duty military and civilian workers is far lower today than it was at the beginning of the decade. As the workforce has diminished, what columnist Paul Light this month describes as a "virtual DoD" has developed through growing reliance on electronic communication. Military leaders are gaining a better-integrated understanding of battlefield conditions through a new Global Command and Control System, for example. Intelligence assessments are now more accessible across organizational boundaries thanks to the CIA's Intelink, the first global secure intranet.

Many other agencies are stretching resources by electronic means. The FBI and the Immigration and Naturalization Service have made strides in effective law enforcement through deployment of sophisticated information systems. The Air Force, the General Services Administration and the Commerce Department all have made big advances in electronic communication with the corporate suppliers on which government increasingly relies. The National Science Foundation is now online with thousands of scientific researchers, and the Social Security Administration is preparing for automated enrollment of 20 million people who, Congress recently decreed, must be receiving their benefits electronically by 1999.

Advances in use of information technology are vital if government is to keep up with demand. That's why Government Executive has, for the last six years, sponsored the Government Technology Leadership Awards program (from whose list of 1997 finalists some of the examples above are drawn).