Y2K's Wonder Woman

On what Y2K has taught federal executives: I think it's been a great example of how agencies can use resources across government to really leverage solving a problem. We really took advantage of the concept of looking for best practices. We learned it doesn't all have to be re-created independently at different agencies.

The unique thing about 2000 was that we're only really going to be successful if everybody's ready. It's the greatest example I've ever seen of people really pulling together to help each other try to solve something. As we look at how to move to the Internet and solve security and privacy issues, if we can use some of the models that were used in Y2K of working together across government to solve something, then it's going to add a lot of value.

On the federal technology world after Y2K: I think there are two big growth areas. One is providing services electronically. When you look at agencies like SSA, IRS and a number of the others, we have focused a lot on putting technology in the hands of our employees so we can provide better services to the public. The next big breakthrough is going to be making those systems available to the public so the public can interact with us directly-providing services over the Internet.

That gets to the second growth area, which [involves] the security, privacy and critical infrastructure issues. These are tied to the Net. As we break through and are able to guarantee the public that the transactions they do over the Internet are secure and that we have good customer authentication, then there's no limit to the ways in which we can provide services to the public, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from their home or office. I think people are going to expect their government to do business with them that way, because it's more and more how the private sector is doing business.

On security and privacy: Security and privacy are used interchangeably but they really are different things. Security is your firewalls and protection from hackers. Privacy is more about disclosing information to the right person. We went all around the country and talked to privacy experts and we talked about people's expectations. We actually learned that people had a higher set of standards for the government than for the private sector in terms of privacy. The reason for that, privacy experts say, is people don't have a choice about giving data to the government. You've got to give us certain personal information to get a Social Security number, and you pretty much have to get a Social Security number.

On the business case for offering services electronically: It's a much less expensive way of doing business because you're basically dealing computer to computer. You don't have a human being who has to sit on the telephone or in the office. The business case is money.

You can't continue to do business the way you're doing it today and get increased workloads and have either the same amount of staff or less staff and the same amount of money or less. You can't do it.