The Online Pathfinders

Winners Make Connections in the Internet Age

he winners of Government Executive's ninth annual Government Technology Leadership Awards are adapting to new roles as administrators in the Internet age. Federal agencies are doing everything from building online relationships with their suppliers to accepting fines and licensure payments via Internet storefronts. The states and localities have also gotten in on the game this year. The City of LaGrange, Ga., has given Internet access to all its residents, while Virginia has created a government services portal for its citizens.

Twenty-two programs were chosen from 67 nominated this year. The awards were to be given out in Washington at the Government Technology Leadership Institute in late November. The corporate sponsors for the event are Cognos Inc., BMC Software, Litton PRC, Logicon Inc., ProcureNet Inc., SAS Institute Inc. and Veritas Software Corp.

For more information on these programs, visit www.govexec.com/tech/award on the Web.

Innovating on the Internet

Federal Reserve Board

Geocoding/Mapping System

The Federal Reserve Board knows a bargain when it sees one. Officials in the Information Technology Division invested about $100,000 in an electronic mapping system that the Fed expects will save taxpayers and financial institutions about $700,000 a year.

The Geocoding/Mapping System, a Web-based tool that allows financial institutions to accurately report information on mortgage, business and farm loans as required by law, benefits both financial institutions and the Fed, says Butch Easton, project manager for the system. The reporting burden and expense for financial institutions have been greatly reduced, since they no longer need to invest in high-cost geocoding software and paper maps, or contract the arcane work out to specialized geocoding contractors-a savings of $675,000 a year, the Fed figures. The Fed also estimates it will save about $20,000 a year in data processing costs. By entering a street address into the system, officials at financial institutions can electronically compile the information they need based on Census reporting. The system provides demographic information including income, population and housing data. Institutions also can use the data to assess whether they are meeting the credit needs of the communities they serve.

The Fed's savings aren't just financial. "The burden on our staff is much lower," Easton says. Previously, about a dozen people answered queries from financial institutions in the course of a workday. With the new system, those queries have been dramatically reduced. "Those people can focus on other work now," Easton says. -Katherine McIntire Peters

Education

Direct Loan Servicing

Thanks to the Education Department's Direct Loan Servicing Web site, borrowers can access and manage their loan accounts online, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The secure site, www.dlservicer. ed.gov, serves customers who have borrowed more than $63 billion through the direct loan program and enables them to access account information and download forms. The site even features a question center that helps users navigate the ins and outs of loan consolidation, deferments and interest rates.

In 1998, the Office of Student Financial Assistance invested $500,000 for the development and integration of the site's technology and boasted savings of $545,000 in postage expenses and other operating costs as of April 2000.

The site attracts 200,000 visits from borrowers a month, reducing the telephone talk time of customer service representatives. Less paper and faster processing of borrower requests also give SFA more bang for its buck.

-Kellie Lunney

FAA
Aviation Weather Research Program

The Federal Aviation Administration might not be able to tame Mother Nature, but its high-tech weather forecaster is helping the agency predict her wicked ways.

In 1996, the agency's Aviation Weather Research Program developed interactive software featuring accurate weather forecasts on winds, turbulence, icing and thunderstorms. According to the FAA, the Aviation Digital Data Service (ADDS) makes flying safer and reduces delays.

Before ADDS, weather information was available in a text format that was not user-friendly. Now, users can log on to the ADDS Web site at adds.awc-kc.noaa.gov and check the stats on adverse weather conditions. They can even track the weather patterns along their flight routes.

Operated for the FAA by the National Weather Service, the ADDS project cost $1.4 million to implement. However, the savings in efficiency and safety have been well worth the investment: the FAA says it has saved more than $34 million a year on a feature that maps out icing patterns across the country. Although the site is available to the public, the majority of users are pilots and dispatchers. The customer feedback on the Internet-based service has been enthusiastic. It has even made one user proud to be a taxpayer: "This is great. It makes me glad to pay my taxes. Finally, something worthwhile."

-Kellie Lunney

Army

Acquisition Knowledge Center

As the U.S. Army transforms the way it wages war through its massive effort to digitally link troops on the battlefield, the support personnel behind the effort have been undergoing their own transformation. The Acquisition Knowledge Center, an Internet portal for the 6,000 people associated with the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications Systems, has dramatically changed the way work is coordinated and performed. The center is charged with coordinating the Army's digitization efforts.

"You've got to live it and breathe it if you're going to sell it," says Emerson Keslar, director of the center. The portal incorporates the latest news and reference documents, collaborative team tools and applications that allow instant messaging, virtual meetings and application sharing. As a result, business processes are more efficient and cost much less in terms of reduced travel time and expenses. Before the center was established, for instance, 70 officials on one team, based worldwide, had to meet twice a month at Fort Monmouth, N.J., for two or three days at a time. Since the center has been operating, the meetings have been replaced by weekly virtual meetings. In the first year alone, more than 605 virtual meetings were conducted at a savings of more than $6 million in travel and time costs. When other savings are calculated, including reduced staffing and training costs, the total annual savings have been more than $23 million, vastly offsetting the $2.5 million investment in the center.

-Katherine McIntire Peters

Navy
Common Problem Reporting System

Until recently, when sailors and submariners encountered software engineering problems at sea, they had to document the problems on paper, mail the documents to shore-based trouble-shooters, and wait for a response by mail-which sometimes came months later.

With an investment of $660,000 over a four-year period, the Fleet Readiness Branch of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division turned a cumbersome, paper-based reporting system-a system that U.S. Navy officials estimate cost nearly $3 million to operate from 1997 through 1999-into a secure, easy-to-use, Web-based reporting system. The Common Problem Reporting System replaces multiple platforms and data-management systems with a commercially available database system. The system is so much easier to use that the Navy has been able to reduce the number of people needed to enter and track problems.

Besides being a lot less expensive to operate, the Common Problem Reporting System creates an electronic record of problems as they are reported and solved-something that didn't exist previously. And instead of waiting for the U.S. Postal Service to deliver solutions, sailors can find answers to their queries posted on a Web page, says Sandra Rosario, project manager for the reporting system. "It's a much better system, no question about it," she says.
-Katherine McIntire Peters

Security

Army

Computer Crimes Investigative Unit

For years, agency computers have been vulnerable to attack from hackers inside and outside government. And the threat is becoming even greater as more and more agencies take their critical operations online. The U.S. Army, for example, has been prey to a number of hacking attempts that have had varying degrees of success. As a result, the Army's Criminal Investigation Command created the Computer Crimes Investigative Unit (CCIU) at Fort Belvoir, Va.

Hackers scanned or attempted to penetrate the Army's networks more than 3,000 times between January and July 2000. Known intrusions number 49. "The CCIU investigates computer intrusions worldwide," says former Computer Crimes Investigative Unit commander James Smith. "The CCIU provides technical assistance to CID elements and assists in forensic media analysis."

This means the CCIU has the ability to find hackers and collect physical evidence of computer crime. "The CCIU is working cases everywhere," Smith says.

Because almost all the CCIU's cases cross jurisdictional boundaries, tracking down hackers can be tedious. The investigators have to be part gumshoe, part system administrator, with a strong dash of white-hat hacker thrown in. They are "geeks with guns," says Smith.

-Joshua Dean

Lawrence Livermore National Lab

SafePatch

Some of the biggest information security threats target weaknesses in computer operating systems. When they become aware of such weaknesses, software companies regularly offer updates for their products.

But busy system administrators can't keep up with the numerous releases of such patches. The Information Operations, Warfare and Assurance Center at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has created a solution-SafePatch.

"Configuration errors and uninstalled system patches are two of the most common weaknesses hackers use to exploit computers," says Marcey Kelley, the SafePatch project leader. "There is an enormous amount of [vulnerability] and an enormous amount of patches for Solaris, a widely used Unix operating system produced by Sun Microsystems Inc. Systems administrators just don't have time to patch their systems." Solaris 7, for example, has been out for only about a year and has offered more than 120 patches.

The SafePatch team can go to the Sun Web site to download and test the patches. With SafePatch, system administrators can set their software to automatically check for and install new patches on a regular schedule. For now, SafePatch collects updates for versions of Sun's Solaris as well as Linux from Red Hat Inc. The Air Force Information Warfare Center and the Energy Department are the only agencies using the software, but it is available to all government organizations and contractors. For more information on SafePatch, go to ciac.llnl.gov/cstc/safepatch.

-Joshua Dean

Licensing

Do-It-Yourself

The Transportation Department is one of the first departments to get serious about electronic government. In 1999, Transportation created its Do-It-Yourself Web site, an Internet storefront where businesses regulated by DOT can pay fines and register for operating licenses.

"What we wanted to do was provide a common utility to take in the funds that came in from the public," says David Kleinberg, Transportation's deputy chief financial officer.

Do-It-Yourself offers services provided by DOT agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Motor Carrier Administration, Federal Railroad Administration, the Maritime Administration, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the Research and Special Programs Administration and the U.S. Coast Guard.

"The idea grew out of the finance office's desire to reduce the transaction costs," Kleinberg says. "We saw the opportunity to reduce paperwork and introduce efficiencies. This makes sense to do. We are mimicking the private sector."

Using Do-It-Yourself, truckers can get drivers' licenses or permits to transport hazardous materials. And true to the site's paperwork elimination goals, most of the transactions are paperless. The site is also tightly interwoven with the DOT's financial management system, which keeps transactions electronic.

-Joshua Dean

USDA

Import Authorization System

The import of a single diseased plant from abroad can wreak havoc among farmers from California to New Jersey. Working to prevent such disasters, the Agriculture Department's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) requires import permits for foreign plant and animal products. A new Web-based Import Authorization System has dramatically simplified the process, allowing permitted fruits, vegetables and other agricultural products to move more easily into the United States.

A team of APHIS staffers working with IBM developed the new authorization system last year. Before the advent of this system, importers had to fax or mail in application forms. Permitting clerks then ensured that the right officials reviewed the applications. "On the fruits and vegetable side, that was a totally manual process," says Tim Dye, project manager for APHIS' Integrated Systems Acquisition Project in Fort Collins, Colo. The animal product side was partly automated.

Now, permit seekers apply online. Clerks then forward those applications electronically to the appropriate reviewers. What used to take upwards of two weeks can now be done in as little as 10 minutes. Moreover, applicants can now check the status of their permit requests online.

-Susannah Zak Figura

PTO

Trademark Electronic Application System

The Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Electronic Application System has dramatically cut the time it takes to collect information and to review trademark applications. The system is the first step toward a fully electronic process for trademark applications.

The new system, through which applicants can apply online, allows more accurate information to be recorded, says Craig Morris, manager of PTO's trademark business process reengineering. "We can directly upload whatever the applicant has entered," he says, thereby reducing typing errors. Electronically filed applications are ready for an attorney's review in just 20 days, vs. the 103 days needed for paper applications. Officials expect the system will allow them to handle growing workloads without hiring more staff.

-Susannah Zak Figura

Logistics

Army

Document Imaging Systems

At Fort Hood, Texas, the U.S. Army's III Corps logistics directorate had rows and rows of filing cabinets holding everything from personnel reports to supply contracts. Finding a file sometimes took days, and even then there was no guarantee someone could find it if another person else had signed it out.

"You used to need a clerk to help find a contract. Now, you can pull it up online by contract number," says Marion Dilley, deputy director for the logistics directorate at the Texas base.

Two years ago, the logisticians left the paper age for the digital age. Through a partnership with Imminent Technologies Inc., the logistics directorate developed a system for electronically scanning documents and putting the information in a computer database. Now, users can tap into that database online and sort through millions of records in minutes. Converting the records and building the database cost about $68,000, while saving $437,000 through reduced personnel and reduced floor space. But the real advantage of the new system will be more efficient operations. Using the online system, employees in the directorate now receive travel disbursements in a week to 10 days-compared to six weeks to two months with the paper system.

-George Cahlink

DLA

Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service Web Site

Until 1994, federal agencies and other customers seeking Defense Department surplus equipment found their search about as easy as finding one's way around the Pentagon. Now, thanks to a new online system, getting a spare computer from DoD is almost as easy as buying a book from an online store.

The Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS), the branch of the Defense Logistics Agency charged with disposing of $21 billion in excess DoD inventory, launched a Web site in 1994. It offers online catalogs of surplus items ranging from old office furniture to Army tents. Users can search for specific items and get updates on newly available items in real time at www.drms.dla.mil.

"Prior to our developing the Web site, it was a very manual and paper-oriented process," says Scott Riddle, a DLA computer specialist who manages the site. "We did a lot of faxing, but the best way to find out what we had was to travel from site to site."

In 1999, the site recorded an average of 5.5 million hits per month, helping the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service save $9.6 billion by disposing of excess equipment between 1996 and 1999. Purchasing hardware and developing the software to run the site has cost DRMS $4.1 million since 1994.

-George Cahlink

DLA

Catalog Workload Tracking Database

Until 1998, a soldier in the field trying to order a spare part would send paperwork-to the Defense Logistics Agency's Logistics Information Service (DLIS)- and then wait for as long as two months just to get the stock number needed to place the order. Today, soldiers can submit stock number requests online, track the status of their requests via the Web and generally get their orders filled in a few weeks.

"There really wasn't a system before. The improvement was the ability to receive and distribute information in a single consolidated system," says Dennis Shipe, a supply specialist for DLIS who updates DoD supply catalogs. In 1998, DLIS moved several of its offices to Battle Creek, Mich., and at the same time developed an online service and database, known as the Catalog Workload Tracking Database. DLIS built the system at no cost by developing the software in-house and using existing hardware.

DLIS has saved $5.6 million by eliminating 39 full-time jobs through automation. While improving customer service, the new system is providing improved internal tracking of orders and response times, Shipe says.

-George Cahlink

Procurement

USDA

Domestic Electronic Bid Entry System

Picking apples used to leave a sour taste in the mouths of staffers at the Agriculture Department's Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS). The two agencies buy more than $1.2 billion worth of food each year for schools,

Indian reservations, prisons and the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Feeding program. They deal with more than 1,000 vendors. In the past, vendors had to submit their bids by fax. Agency employees filed them until the closing date and then walked them over to keypunchers who entered the data into a mainframe computer.

"The market specialist who knew the commodity would sometimes have to sit there and talk the key-punch person through the forms so they knew what they were looking at," says Paul Luke, computer specialist and programmer at FSA.

Between filing and keypunching alone, USDA staffers were spending nearly 1,000 hours a year handling bids. The department was shelling out almost $12,000 for keypunchers and another $7,000 for filing and logging in the bids.

Vendors weren't happy with the system either. With every fluctuation in price, they had to fax in changes to their bids.

Then programmers developed the Domestic Electronic Bid Entry System. Solicitations are posted on a Web site, and vendors submit their bids online. Additionally, vendors have access to their bids any time up to the closing day, thus allowing them to submit real-time information.

By streamlining filing, keypunching and other administrative procedures, the agencies shaved more than 5,000 staff hours from the process and saved $240,000 in time and administrative expenses. The project is such a success, says Luke, that USDA wants to apply it to systems used to export food to Third World countries.

-Matthew Weinstock

National Institutes of Health

IntraMall

Thanks to the online IntraMall, scientists and other employees at the National Institutes of Health can buy everything from paper and pencils to computers and test tubes at their desktops. NIH launched the effort in 1996 in response to employee concerns that the process for ordering supplies was complex, expensive and inefficient.

No longer do employees need to browse through paper catalogs and submit written purchase requests, then wait for purchasing agents to process orders to get the supplies they need. Now, they can find more than 1 million products available for sale through the IntraMall. When selecting merchandise to include on the IntraMall, "we focused on any and all products [employees] might use," says MaryAnn Guerra, deputy director for management at the National Cancer Institute, which pilot-tested the system before it was extended departmentwide.

The IntraMall provides online product information and allows for direct ordering using government-issued charge cards. NIH officials estimate savings of up to $56 million a year because of reduced processing costs. Previously, individual transactions cost between $18 and $108. IntraMall transactions cost only $5, and employees often can get their orders filled within 24 hours.

-Susannah Zak Figura

Application Development

SSA

Inmate Project

An electronic reporting system that identifies and suspends benefits for prisoners has reduced the Social Security Administration's paper trail in New York.

In 1996, SSA made suspending Social Security benefits for ineligible inmates a top priority through its Inmate Project, which automated reports on prisoners through standardized software.

Bob Ievers, manager of the Inmate Project, knit together software that takes different files from each jail and reformats them into a standardized computer program. This saves time and money for SSA and the 42 participating jails in upstate New York.

Electronic reporting gives jail personnel and SSA field office staff more time for other tasks, and the jails receive incentive payments of up to $400 for timely reports-virtually guaranteed by the automated system. Before making the leap to 21st century technology, SSA employees had to type information from paper documents into the Prisoner Update Processing System. The system processes reports on approximately 5,000 prisoners a month.

Considering that one service representative earns an average of $17 per hour and manually processes data on about 25 inmates an hour, SSA estimates it has saved $163,000 in labor costs using the electronic system.

-Kellie Lunney

Customs

Automated Commercial System

If laws that dictate tariff rates expire, they can revert to higher default rates. When Congress creates new tariff laws, the Customs Service must refund all excess fees to importers with interest.

This refund process, or reliquidation, has kicked in four times since 1994 and requires Customs to reprocess every import entry into the country. "In the past, what we have had to do is take all the entries and send them out to field locations for the workers there to put the new information into the system," says S. Nick Anderson, operations team leader at Customs. "That would take us months to finish and all that time interest was accruing on excess fees-the longer it takes, the more money it costs." To ease the process, a Customs Automated Operations team was able to reprogram elements of the agency's Automated Commercial System, which border sites use to log in transactions. The reprogramming essentially created "virtual people," Anderson says, by reducing the work hours needed to reprocess the transactions.

Anderson and his team created the automation in less than a week, with development costs totaling $7,200. When the program began, it ran so fast that the people who created the refund checks couldn't print them fast enough, Anderson says. "Within a couple of weeks [the reliquidation] was done."

Customs has saved $1.6 million in work hours and $28 million in accrued interest with the new process.

-Joshua Dean

Veterans Administration
Computerized Medical Record Systems

The problem was as old as medicine itself: Clinical staffers at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington were hampered by an old-fashioned paper medical record system. That meant a provider didn't have access to a patient's complete medical record when needed. An X-ray clinician, for example, could not immediately get medication information because those paper records were frequently incomplete and hard to retrieve.

The solution was not the result of a medical breakthrough, but rather the miracle of modern technology.

The Veterans Affairs Department's agencywide goal is to make all patient records fully electronic, portable and readily accessible. The Washington VA Medical Center is ahead of the curve. The facility set up a computer network to integrate all sections of a patient's record, including such things as lab work, medication, diet, X-ray results and progress notes. Patient safety is enhanced because a clinician can now view the patient's entire medical record at one of the 1,000-plus computer stations throughout the facility. The system also automatically alerts clinicians to such things as allergies.

Computer stations in doctor's offices and near patient wards allow clinicians to fully review treatment options with their patients. Hardware, software and building the network infrastructure cost $13.3 million. According to the VA, savings are difficult to project at this time, but patient safety and quality of care have improved.

-Matthew Weinstock

Medical

Veterans Administration
Bar Code Medication Administration

During the past four years, nurses at Colmery-O'Neil Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Topeka, Kan., administered 5.7 million doses of medication to patients. They did so without a single mistake. That is no small feat. Consider this: Between June 1998 and December 1999, VA hospitals recorded 171 medication errors. Twenty-two patients died as a result.

One of the main problems stemmed from the fact that patient medication information was all recorded by hand.

"The manual method is subject to all kinds of vulnerabilities," says Marilyn Hodge, program director for clinical ancillary systems at the VA. "There is no check between the drug being administered and what is on paper."

The VA needed a system of checks and balances. Officials looked for a computerized system that kept track of the patient, the type of medication, the dosage and the time it was to be administered. Colmery-O'Neil VA Medical Center had been testing such a system-bar code medication administration-for a couple of years.

The personal computer-based system uses a wireless network and relies on bar codes printed on the patient's wristband, medical chart and medication dispenser. With the swipe of a bar code reader, the software logs a patient's vital statistics. Nurses carry personal computers on their carts and can get to patient records.

"It makes sure you have the right patient, the right drug, the right dosage at the right time," says Hodge.

The VA plans to implement the system in all of its 172 hospitals to the tune of $35 million. Based on conservative estimates, if the VA prevents one medication error per month per hospital, it will stop 2,040 errors nationwide at a savings of up to $12 million.

-Matthew Weinstock

State and Local

Virginia

"My Virginia"

If you live in Virginia and want to know only what's happening in your city or county without weeding through layers of Web links, "My Virginia" can give you the personalized information you want.

"State and local governments have a tremendous amount of information, as well as services, now available," says Rodney Willett, general manager of Virginia Information Providers Network, a state entity that helps governments design Web sites. "What we're trying to do here is simplify the citizens' access to that information."

So at the prompting of Donald Upson, Virginia's Secretary of Technology, Willett's staff developed "My Virginia," which was launched in late July. The site is linked to the state's main Web page, www.state.va.us, and is free

"We are moving to more of a second generation approach where you don't just get a bunch of hyperlinks to the information, you actually are getting the content that you requested," Willett says.

-Tanya N. Ballard

New York

Electronic Case Folder

There was a time when caseworkers at the New York Workers' Compensation Board measured their paperwork progress in inches. At the end of the day, a stack of paper less than 10 inches thick meant employees were current. Then along came the Electronic Case Folder. "We needed a way to take back control of the process," says Barrett Russell, deputy executive director of the board.

In 1997, the board converted all the paper case folders to digital images and filed them in the Electronic Case Folder. The folder is part of the new Claims Information System, which links the board's nine district offices and 30 customer service centers. Two years and $44.3 million later, the electronic folder was up and running.

"It eliminated the need for cases to be single-threaded through the system, [and] it allowed parallel processing of issues," Russell says. "It also lets us measure things more accurately; performance measures are [now] based on quality rather than quantity."

-Tanya N. Ballard

LaGrange, Calif.

Internet TV Initiative

For city officials in LaGrange, Ga., bridging the digital divide meant strengthening community ties. So city leaders offered free Internet access to all 27,000 city residents.

Now, residents in this southern town can turn on their televisions and surf the World Wide Web without a computer or a modem. "Rarely does a government have an opportunity to impact the lives of its citizens in such a dramatic way," Mayor Jeff Lukken says.

LaGrange spent millions of dollars creating a 150-mile, broadband hybrid coax cable network that enables every home and business within the city limits to have two-way high-speed Internet service.

With free Internet access, LaGrange residents can pay utility bills online and e-mail the city council and the mayor with concerns about the community. A direct link to the school system will soon enable teachers to communicate with parents and students about grades and homework.

-Tanya N. Ballard

This Year's Judges

Judges in the Government Technology Leadership Awards program this year include Jack Arthur, Forest Service; Sandra Bates, General Services Administration; David Borland, Army; Daniel Chenok, Office of Management and Budget; Timothy Clark, Government Executive; Dennis Fischer, Visa U.S.A.; Edwin Levine, Environmental Protection Agency; Elizabeth McDaniel, National Defense University; George Molaski, Transportation Department; Alan Paller, SANS Institute; Gloria Parker, Department of Housing and Urban Development; Frank Reeder, Reeder and Associates. The judges are indebted to GSA's Cheryl Ward and her team for screening dozens of nominations for the award.