[House Hearing, 106 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
GOVERNMENT ONLINE: STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
INFORMATION, AND TECHNOLOGY
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
MAY 22, 2000
__________
Serial No. 106-208
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house
http://www.house.gov/reform
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U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
71-535 WASHINGTON : 2001
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250
Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM
DAN BURTON, Indiana, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
CONSTANCE A. MORELLA, Maryland TOM LANTOS, California
CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut ROBERT E. WISE, Jr., West Virginia
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
STEPHEN HORN, California PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
JOHN L. MICA, Florida PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
DAVID M. McINTOSH, Indiana ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, Washington,
MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana DC
JOE SCARBOROUGH, Florida CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania
STEVEN C. LaTOURETTE, Ohio ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland
MARSHALL ``MARK'' SANFORD, South DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
Carolina ROD R. BLAGOJEVICH, Illinois
BOB BARR, Georgia DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
DAN MILLER, Florida JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
ASA HUTCHINSON, Arkansas JIM TURNER, Texas
LEE TERRY, Nebraska THOMAS H. ALLEN, Maine
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois HAROLD E. FORD, Jr., Tennessee
GREG WALDEN, Oregon JANICE D. SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois
DOUG OSE, California ------
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont
HELEN CHENOWETH-HAGE, Idaho (Independent)
DAVID VITTER, Louisiana
Kevin Binger, Staff Director
Daniel R. Moll, Deputy Staff Director
David A. Kass, Deputy Counsel and Parliamentarian
Lisa Smith Arafune, Chief Clerk
Phil Schiliro, Minority Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Government Management, Information, and Technology
STEPHEN HORN, California, Chairman
JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois JIM TURNER, Texas
THOMAS M. DAVIS, Virginia PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania
GREG WALDEN, Oregon MAJOR R. OWENS, New York
DOUG OSE, California PATSY T. MINK, Hawaii
PAUL RYAN, Wisconsin CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
Ex Officio
DAN BURTON, Indiana HENRY A. WAXMAN, California
J. Russell George, Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Randy Kaplan, Counsel
Bryan Sisk, Clerk
Trey Henderson, Minority Professional Staff Member
C O N T E N T S
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Page
Hearing held on May 22, 2000..................................... 1
Statement of:
McClure, David L., Associate Director, Governmentwide and
Defense Information Systems, General Accounting Office;
George R. Molaski, Chief Information Officer, Department of
Transportation; Donald W. Upson, Secretary of Technology,
Commonwealth of Virginia; Patricia McGinnis, president and
chief executive officer, Council for Excellence in
Government; David Gardiner, vice president, architecture
and technology, Unisys Corp.; Lee Cooper, vice president
business development, U.S. Federal Government Group; and
Kathleen deLaski, group director, editorial products,
America Online............................................. 3
Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:
deLaski, Kathleen, group director, editorial products,
America Online, prepared statement of...................... 76
Gardiner, David, vice president, architecture and technology,
Unisys Corp., prepared statement of........................ 58
McClure, David L., Associate Director, Governmentwide and
Defense Information Systems, General Accounting Office,
prepared statement of...................................... 7
McGinnis, Patricia, president and chief executive officer,
Council for Excellence in Government, prepared statement of 51
Molaski, George R., Chief Information Officer, Department of
Transportation, prepared statement of...................... 30
Upson, Donald W., Secretary of Technology, Commonwealth of
Virginia, prepared statement of............................ 41
GOVERNMENT ONLINE: STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES
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MONDAY, MAY 22, 2000
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Government Management, Information,
and Technology,
Committee on Government Reform,
Herndon, VA.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1 p.m., in the
Auditorium, Center for Innovative Technology, Herndon, VA, Hon.
Stephen Horn (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Horn and Davis.
Staff present: J. Russell George, staff director and chief
counsel; Randy Kaplan, counsel; Bonnie Heald, director of
communications; Bryan Sisk, clerk; Elizabeth Seong and Michael
Soon, interns; Melissa Wojciak, professional staff member,
Subcommittee on the District of Columbia; Barbara Tempel,
community outreach director for Representative Davis; John
Hicks, audio/visual technician, Center for Innovative
Technology; Trey Henderson, minority counsel; and Jean Gosa,
minority clerk.
Mr. Horn. A quorum being present, the Subcommittee on
Government Management, Information, and Technology will come to
order.
New and emerging information technology is revolutionizing
the way citizens communicate with their Federal Government. The
Government's gradual transformation to electronic government--
or e-government--already provides Internet users with access to
more than 20,000 Federal Web sites. In addition to providing
useful information, many agencies have begun offering
interactive, on-line services.
Today Internet users on-line can file their income tax
return, buy coins from the U.S. Mint or reserve a campsite at a
U.S. park. On-line procurement programs, such as the General
Services Administration Advantage program, allow Federal
agencies to buy supplies and equipment with the click of a
mouse button. Other procurement programs provide information on
government contracts. This improved service reduces both the
time and cost of doing business with the Government.
By the end of this year, nearly 40 million Americans will
communicate with the Government electronically. And that demand
will swell as even more people join the information age.
Electronic government offers the potential to reinvent the
way citizens and businesses alike interact with government. The
benefits of this new form of government are plentiful, and the
challenges profound.
To be successful, government Web sites must be well
organized and readily accessible, which is not necessarily true
today.
Citizens and businesses should expect government Web sites
to offer the same quality and service found on many business
Web sites. They must be confident that their on-line
communications with the Government are secure and personal
information is fully protected. Additionally, the large
investment necessary to create the Government's electronic
infrastructure must be carefully planned and managed to avoid
risking the loss of billions of taxpayer dollars.
We must bridge the digital divide so that citizens have
access to this new electronic environment.
With proper education and training the Federal work force
can be up to the challenge. Currently, there is a nationwide
shortage of skilled information technology workers. Over the
next few years, a substantial number of Federal employees will
retire. Others who are skilled in information technology will
leave government service for more lucrative opportunities in
the private sector. Where possible, the executive branch must
find creative ways to retain and retrain this vitally important
work force. If that fails, the new civil servants must gain the
skills needed for the times in which we live.
Today we will hear from a number of experts from both the
public and private sector who will discuss this very important
subject.
I thank the gentleman from Virginia, Representative Tom
Davis, who is a member of our subcommittee, and the Center for
Innovative Technology for hosting today's hearing.
We welcome our distinguished panel of witnesses and look
forward to their testimony. And now I ask if the gentleman from
Virginia, Mr. Davis has an opening statement he would like to
make.
Mr. Davis. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this important statement. I ask that my complete
statement be put in the record.
Mr. Horn. Without objection.
Mr. Davis. I want to welcome all the panelists for being
here both from the private sector and government sector and say
that I have to leave early, so I will keep my remarks brief and
let you proceed.
Mr. Horn. Thank you. We will now start with the
presentations, and let me say we will go down the witness list
in the order you see, and we will swear in the panel, which is
what we do in the Committee on Government Reform, and we also--
the minute we introduce you your complete document is
automatically put in the record. We would like you to summarize
within 5 minutes if you can. If you run over we won't be rigid
about it, but we would like a summary and this focuses your
testimony. We have had a chance to read many of the
testimonies, but not all of them, and some people are missing
today. So if you would stand ready to affirm and swear and take
the oath.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. Horn. We will start with David L. McClure, Associate
Director, Governmentwide and Defense Information Systems, of
the legislative branch's General Accounting Office. They are
usually good witnesses to begin with. They do superb work
around the country in the executive branch. Please proceed.
STATEMENTS OF DAVID L. McCLURE, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR,
GOVERNMENTWIDE AND DEFENSE INFORMATION SYSTEMS, GENERAL
ACCOUNTING OFFICE; GEORGE R. MOLASKI, CHIEF INFORMATION
OFFICER, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION; DONALD W. UPSON,
SECRETARY OF TECHNOLOGY, COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA; PATRICIA
McGINNIS, PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, COUNCIL FOR
EXCELLENCE IN GOVERNMENT; DAVID GARDINER, VICE PRESIDENT,
ARCHITECTURE AND TECHNOLOGY, UNISYS CORP.; LEE COOPER, VICE
PRESIDENT BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT, U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GROUP;
AND KATHLEEN deLASKI, GROUP DIRECTOR, EDITORIAL PRODUCTS,
AMERICA ONLINE
Mr. McClure. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of
the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to be here today
with the panel of experts in e-business and e-government that
you and your staff have assembled.
As you know, e-commerce, e-business and now e-government
are topics of growing interest in the Congress. GAO is
conducting numerous reviews involving on-line or Internet-
related information issues, such as Web site privacy policies,
State taxation of Internet sales, Smartcard and purchase card
use and Internet access competition.
The Internet offers unique opportunities for government
agencies to improve internal operations and provide on-line
public access to information and services. But, as the recent
rash of computer viruses have served to illustrate, this
increased open interconnectivity and convenience comes with
risks that must be mitigated, notably security and privacy.
In my remarks today I will focus on three points: One, the
drivers behind electronic government; two, the opportunities
opening up with the Government agency use of the Internet; and,
third, five specific challenges that are confronting e-
government that deserve increased attention.
First, let me touch on some of the critical drivers behind
e-government.
The Federal Government's movement toward greater use of on-
line service delivery and citizen and business access is being
pushed by market forces in private industry. There are also
great expectations for electronic government that comes from a
diverse statutory and policy framework such as statutes
authorizing agency programs and general management status that
explicitly call for electronic or on-line access. In addition,
the executive branch has issued numerous policies that began as
early as 1993 with the NPR.
All of these actions are prompted in large part by a need
for the Government to tangibly demonstrate an ability to
improve its services and access to citizens and a recognition
that Web-based technologies can provide a friendly citizen
interface over sometimes confusing and suboptimized government
structures, responsibilities and processes.
That brings me to my second major point. The Government's
use of the Internet is evolving. For the most part, there seems
to be a consensus that governments are in the early stages of
shifting to citizen-centered services via the Internet.
However, it is being accelerated by quick advances in Web-based
technologies, improved software applications, and a phenomenal
growth in Internet access and usage. In the interest of
simplicity and time, let me just point out some examples in
three areas that are common across all levels of government.
The first area is interactive communication and information
dissemination such as Access America for Seniors, an entry
portal for seniors to reach diverse government information on
benefits, taxes, health and nutrition and consumer protection.
Second, are transactions and applications such as IRS'
electronic tax administration program, which makes use of the
Web to allow citizens to file taxes via the Internet.
Third are on-line procurement activities such as GSA's
Electronic Posting System, a pilot program that allows vendors
to search for contracting opportunities over $25,000, including
solicitations and awards, as well as GSA Advantage, which
allows agencies to search for products and services and place
orders from GSA's Federal supply schedule contractors.
Now let me turn to the five challenges that really confront
us in making the transition to full electronic service
delivery. These are not insurmountable areas but they deserve
attention.
The first is adequate executive management leadership and
involvement. Given our many hearings with you, Mr. Chairman, I
feel like I am preaching to the choir on this issue. Our best
practices studies at GAO confirm that top management
leadership, involvement, ownership, and vision are the
cornerstone of any information technology initiatives.
Delegating everything to technologists can be dangerous. In our
rush to electronic service delivery, it is important to
remember fundamental principles and practices of good IT
planning and management--they equally apply to effective
customer-centric Web-based applications. For example, using
such things as measurable performance improvement expectations,
risk identification and mitigation strategies, and using
industry standard technology and solutions where appropriate.
Perhaps the most pressing leadership challenge is how to
best use the Internet to deliver services to citizens and
business partners. The administration, through the efforts of
agencies, NPRG, the National Partnership for Reinventing
Government, and the Council of Excellence in Government is
focused on efforts to help bridge this gap. At present we are
confronted with realities of disparities in Internet access
across citizen groups, rural area populations and the disabled
and small businesses also have problems with getting Internet
access as well. How we ensure continued service delivery to
these segments while increasing their ability to participate in
this electronic environment is an important issue. Multiple
access methods to government service, via phone, fax, public
kiosks, may be essential to supplement Internet use.
The second challenge is developing a ``citizen as
customer'' focus in government. The Internet is forcing
organizations to rethink basic business and service delivery
processes. How customers digest information and services in a
viewable electronic format can significantly differ from
traditional ways of thinking. Certainly as Internet usage
matures for government, citizens may expect more consistent
levels of service across agencies, such as highly navigable Web
sites, intelligent search capabilities that go beyond static
posting of information, and interoperable authentication
policies and methods.
That brings me to my third challenge, security and privacy.
Clearly all participants in the Internet age have to feel
comfortable with using electronic means to carry out private
and sensitive transactions, whether it be obtaining a license,
to bidding on a contract, paying taxes, or receiving a benefit
claim. That comfort level varies right now and concerns are
certainly not unjustified. As our work has pointed out,
information security weaknesses persist across the Federal
Government and they are compounded by the openness of the
Internet. The Melissa, ``ILoveYou'' and now the ``NewLove''
computer viruses remind us that the interconnectivity of the
Internet warrants special attention to security and privacy
issues. A big piece of the solution to this problem will be the
continued development and implementation of the Public Key
Infrastructure [PKI], technology.
Stated simply, PKI is a system of computers, software, and
data that rely on specific cryptographic techniques to secure
on-line messages or transactions. There are some 24 PKI pilot
programs in place across the Federal Government. There are some
key questions involving the interoperability of certificates
used in these programs. GSA is leading a governmentwide effort
to facilitate public secure access to government information
and services through its ACES, or Access Certificates for
Electronic Services program. Experience has been limited to
date, with the first vendor authorized to issue certificates
just last month.
The fourth challenge deals with other technology-related
issues associated with e-government that simply cannot be
ignored. Computers and networks allow information and services
to be organized in dramatic new ways. Adequate technical
infrastructure is absolutely essential for the Federal
Government to move in this direction. That means that network
capacity planning and acquisitions to support both the
increased electronic traffic and the diverse voice, data, and
video offerings are necessary. Operating system and software
reliability matters take on a new level of priority when your
transactions move on-line, especially in a 7-day a week, 24-
hour environment. Good business and system architecture
planning are also two areas where GAO has done significant
work, and it must be done well to avoid increased and
unnecessary investment costs, development times, and
performance shortcomings.
The fifth and final challenge deals with human capital
issues. This year it is estimated that employers will seek to
fill 1.6 million new IT jobs, with the greatest demand for
enterprise systems integration and Web development positions.
We have a situation of high work complexity and scarcity of
qualified applicants. The public and private sectors are
competing with each other in these areas and the Federal
Government is increasing its outsourced IT services and
development, it has further increased the demand for
traditional skills like project and contract management.
In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, in the future, the promise of
Internet-based technologies offers exciting new ways for
government to more effectively and efficiently interact with
and provide services to citizens. It is already happening, as
advanced by the examples I have offered and those yet to be
discussed by our other panelists.
The Federal Government is certainly not standing still, and
expectations, if not set by citizens themselves, are clearly
set both by law and Presidential actions. The speed, the pace
and the direction of Internet-based solutions in government
will vary. They must effectively deal with so many of the same
basic challenges that all technology initiatives face in both
the public and private sector. Government executives must work
effectively with their CIOs and they must embrace e-government
proposals and work with Congress to develop effective
investment strategies that will make them realities, and we
must expect that these investments demonstrate their impact by
lowering costs, raising productivity, enhancing service
delivery quality and timeliness, and freeing up resources and
management attention for other problem areas and priorities.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That concludes my remarks. I will
be happy to respond to any questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. McClure follows:]
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Mr. Horn. Thank you, Mr. McClure.
Mr. Molaski, we are delighted to have you with us. He is
the Chief Information Officer from the Department of
Transportation.
Mr. Molaski. Thank you very much, Chairman Horn and
Congressman Davis, for this opportunity to discuss electronic
government.
I am pleased to be making my first appearance before the
subcommittee to address the challenges and opportunities we
face in migrating to an e-government environment. I appreciate
having the opportunity to offer the perspective of someone who
up until last June worked in the information technology
environment as president of an Internet company and now is a
Federal Chief Information Officer and also serving as co-chair
for the E-government Committee for the CIO Council.
As most of us here today realize, we are sitting on the
threshold of a major transformation of government. Industry has
shown the effective use of Intra and Internet companies to
build stronger ties with their customers, deliver information
and services more effectively, and drive costs out of business
processes. Government has made the first steps down the same
operations road, but we must more fully embrace the use of
these and future technology advances to truly transform
government into a customer-centric, interactive, responsive,
results-based entity that prides itself in the effective low
cost delivery of services to its stakeholders.
We have the opportunity to make this vision a reality.
However, we must be willing to change traditional ways of doing
business and learn to operate in Web time. As a start, we could
reduce our dependency on paper processes and make doing
business electronically our modus operandi. Accepting
information electronically instead of requiring multiple paper
copies of documents would improve efficiency and be
environmentally friendly.
While we as a government need to move farther faster, much
has been accomplished. The Government has created over 20,000
Web sites, containing over 100 million Web pages. Citizens can
now buy coins from the U.S. Mint site, students can apply and
find the status of their loan application on the Department of
Education student loan site. Drivers can find the results of
automobile crash tests from our NHTSA website. Computer road
warriors can have better information on the status of a flight
than passenger agents at an airport by viewing an FAA radar
feed available on many travel Web sites.
However, many Federal Government stakeholders do not know
where in the Government to go to get information or
instructions on how to do something. Work is underway to
develop a central access Web site to government that would
serve as an electronic service center/help desk to guide the
stakeholder to the site or the person that can provide the
requested information or answer questions that the individual
stakeholder has. This would be a unique and a valuable
contribution by government to its citizens. This gateway to
government Web site would be more attuned to the information
and service needs of the public and what they are getting from
the commercial sites.
I consider this type of site to have wow factor and by that
I mean when citizens come up there they can say, wow, my
government finally got it right. But to truly take advantage of
the opportunities e-government brings, we must move beyond
providing information and services or doing transactions over
the Web. We need to make them partners in the deliberations on
issues we are wrestling with and be responsive to their
suggestions for improvements, streamlining and providing new
services, or eliminating outdated services.
When we look at the Internet, the Internet was built really
as a Web of communication of individuals out there. It was not
built on just providing information or doing transactions.
Those are really no brainers, but when we get to the point
where we are truly interacting with citizens out there and
stakeholders, then we have really accomplished something.
I have included in my testimony three areas where we talk
about having structural changes, and that is looking at the
CIOs and the authority CIOs have. That is taking a look at the
work force challenge that we have, and that was reported in
June 1999 on ``Meeting the Federal IT Workforce Challenge,''
done by the CIO Council, which is done on the Web site
www.cio.gov, and then finally it is taking a look at what
happens when we get to e-government, and what e-government is
going to reveal is a lot of the stovepipes that we have both in
all branches of government, and we need to think ahead. When
somebody puts in a request for exports and allowing them to
export something and gets multiple Web sites coming up with
multiple sites, how are we going to handle--what process are we
going to put in place to really take a look at how we
consolidate those types of activities within government.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I will be glad to
answer your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Molaski follows:]
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Mr. Horn. Thank you very much. That is a very helpful
presentation. And now I am delighted to see that the Honorable
Don Upson, Secretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of
Virginia, has made it out of the suburban traffic of Richmond
up to the beautiful part of northern Virginia.
Mr. Davis. May I say one word on the Honorable Don Upson. I
had the privilege of working with Mr. Upson in our previous
lives in the private sector and he has been a mentor to me on a
number of these issues, and he used to be a staff member of
this committee. He is the first Secretary of Technology. I am
pleased to welcome you here.
Mr. Horn. And he is a graduate of the beautiful campus.
That was known as the playboy school. However, he did learn
computing along the way.
I have to swear you in, as you know.
[Witness sworn.]
Mr. Upson. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee,
subcommittee, welcome. As a former Republican staff director of
Government Operations, it is a pleasure to be here and it is a
pleasure to be here in this building, which is in the Center of
Innovative Technology. I always welcome people to northern
Virginia, which is the most exciting place on the planet in the
most exciting period of the history of man. Congressman Tom
Davis welcomes people to his congressional district and it is
both the same.
Mr. Chairman, I know my testimony is going into the record.
I would like to talk about a couple of things that I think we
are doing that are special in Virginia and how that might
translate into what you are trying to do at the Federal level.
What I think is special and at the forefront is that the chief
executive walks the talk and Governor Gilmore put in place a
structure of government for technology which I think links the
critical functions of infrastructure with policy. If you look
at what is going on in the private sector today, the chief
information officers are very quickly the heirs to be chief
executive officers in the next generation of leadership in
corporate America.
The infrastructure is the enterprise and as someone who
took this job with a little trepidation, having worked in your
field for a long time, I wasn't sure where this would go, and I
can tell you there is an appreciation in Virginia, time and
time and time again I get pulled aside. If you are doing your
job you are stepping on toes, and I think you know where those
toes are because we need a government that is responsive as an
enterprise to the needs of our citizens.
Our vision for technology in general: Generally, the
Governor views technology as the focus for his administration
to do two things. One, we have an objective to create the best
business environment anywhere. Two, provide all our citizens
access to this new economy. Government should serve those
functions, but I would ask and I think what we have done
special in Virginia is, with the chief executive support,
created an Interagency Management Council which reports at the
right level of government, and I think often that has been the
one of the issues at the Federal level. I have an Interagency
Management Council that meets monthly, and it is that council,
23 members, 17 from each major agency and department, what they
do is meet monthly and they are charged with creating
electronic government, creating a desk top environment that is
standard, fast, and permanently modern, which gets to this
whole notion of leasing versus buying computers, which you will
find often occurs agency by agency, platform by platform. A
digital signature environment. Without a real digital signature
environment, there is no electronic government.
Privacy and security. Now, to us electronic government,
while these individuals have respective close leadership in
their organization, they also meet monthly and are ordained by
the Governor to put in place enterprise systems. It is not good
enough that agencies take their functions and put them on-line.
What is important is that when things go on-line, they are
coordinated, they are in uniform communications.
Our vision is of a citizen looking through a single port
executing multiple transactions across multiple agencies with a
single digital signal. To get there, we have to have a buy-in
from the agencies themselves, and I think that is what we
created through our council.
The Governor has issued one executive order requiring
priorities for each agency, their priorities for electronic
government to be put in place and submitted to the Secretary of
Technology by June 1. He is following that up this week with
what may be one of the most comprehensive electronic government
executive orders anywhere, asking implementation plans for seed
management from every agency of government. Seed management is
not a contract in Virginia. It is an initiative to put
permanent state-of-the-art technology on every desktop.
Digital signatures. It is not important that every agency
puts in place the digital signature plan. We have to have a
single policy that cuts across all platforms, all agencies.
Security of our data, which is one of the biggest concerns to
citizens, isn't about police protecting their data one way and
corrections protecting it another and the tax system another.
That puts all systems at a high level of vulnerability. It is
about a scalable, standardized security environment, and you
don't get there unless you have the buy-in and cooperation of
the participating agencies.
I see my yellow light is on. I would like to end that the
Federal Government, we interact quite regularly with the
Federal Government, especially in the area of procurement. It
has done much in the area of procurement. But I think what is--
and it is great that there is a CIO Council. I think the
questions that you have to ask in your positions, are the
officers that hold those positions at the right level. It will
be a rare Assistant Secretary of CIO that you find at the
Federal level that thinks have not changed much, and it is a
rare Secretary that asks for technology and how does technology
play or not play in this, and it is establishing that link
between the person that controls the infrastructure and the
policy that I think is what we have done in Virginia. I think
it has captured the imagination and interest of our
communication and education community and our Governor, and the
red light went off.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having me.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Upson follows:]
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Mr. Horn. We appreciate you coming and your last comments
get into CIO placement. You are absolutely correct. We now go
to the president and Chief Executive Officer, Council for
Excellence in Government.
Ms. McGinnis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to applaud
your leadership in creating this conversation to imagine the
possibilities of e-government and designing a strategy to carry
it out. The Center for Innovative Technology is a perfect
setting for this hearing, and the conversation is really about
connecting government with the American people, and in this
part of Virginia there is a lot of connecting going on with
very entrepreneurial enterprises not only thinking about
pushing the envelope of technology but focusing on delighting
their customers. Kathleen deLaski from AOL is here and it is
definitely one. There are many others.
My organization is the Council for Excellence in
Government. We are a nonpartisan, nonprofit group of leaders in
the private sector who have served in government and are
committed to improving its performance and also raising the
understanding, participation, and confidence of the American
people in government, so our work is aimed at two audiences:
First, people in government with whom we have worked to improve
results and leadership and actually get results in the public
interest and also the American people, most of whom at this
point say they feel disconnected from government.
According to a poll that was conducted for the council last
year by Peter Hart and Bob Teeter, most Americans, especially
young people, say that government is no longer of, by, and for
the people. They think of it as the Government rather than our
government and we take this as a significant challenge that the
work that you are doing can go a long way to address that.
The good news in our research is that most Americans, again
especially young people, think that in terms of improving
people's lives, government will play an equally or more
important role in the future and they see themselves as an
important part of the solution, even more than elected
officials, by the way. They want to be more involved, and I
think these initiatives are going to provide that opportunity.
So with a mission as important as excellence in government and
an audience as large as the American people, naturally we have
focused on information technology and the Internet as a way of
accelerating change and also as a leadership tool.
Imagine government of, by, and for the people and proceed
that way, hopefully perceived that way, where all Americans can
choose to go on-line anytime, anywhere, not only for the
information they need but also to complete transactions,
receive services, conduct research, interact with their
representatives, and even to vote. Imagine people in government
creatively managing for results, from curing diseases to
regulating health and safety to providing Social Security and
Medicare benefits in a seamless network which crosses agency
and process boundaries and seeks to serve the public interest.
That is the vision of e-government that has been created by
our Intergovernmental Technology Leadership Consortium and a
very substantial e-government initiative that we have
undertaken, involving 100 leaders from the public and private
sector, the research community and the nonprofit community.
We have held two major meetings, one at the Smithsonian, a
historic setting, and the other one here at CIT last March, and
the people involved have organized themselves into four working
groups addressing four issues. First, they are looking at
transformation by addressing the challenge of transforming
rather than simply automating government. Thinking about the
culture, the organization, the processes, how it all works.
Second, they are looking at the roles of the public and
private sector in terms of who should do what, what are the
comparative advantages in creating the e-government that we
seek.
Third, we are looking at infrastructure, addressing the
issues that have been raised this morning and are extremely
important, issues of privacy, security and authentication.
And fourth, we are looking at information. That is the
content, format, architecture and accessibility of information.
The Congress has put a stake in the ground through the
Paperwork Reduction Act, saying that all Federal services and
transactions will be offered on-line by 2003. We have got a
long way to go but I think we can meet that goal and the e-
government initiative that we have put together is aimed at
helping to meet that goal.
We are not at this point ready to offer specific
recommendations. We plan to have a blueprint and release it in
the fall. When you have 100 people working together, you want
to be careful that you consider all of the options and listen
to different perspectives before you end up with specific
recommendations, but there are several principles which will
guide our blueprint and I think will help in your deliberations
as well.
We envision e-government as, first, citizen driven and user
friendly. More and more people are becoming accustomed to using
the Internet 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and information has
to be organized to how people will use it rather than how the
agencies create it. People want one-stop access without having
to go from Web site to Web site. We actually said in our last
meeting ``three clicks to satisfaction'' ought to be the motto
for e-government.
Second, it has to be responsive and results oriented, and
by that I mean not just providing information but allowing
people to actually complete transactions and receive services
on-line. The best example is in Virginia, where citizens can
renew their driver's licenses on-line. This was mentioned in a
conference a couple of weeks ago and the whole room broke out
in applause. There are Federal services and transactions that
occur on-line, you can file for taxes and apply for student
aid, but it is still a very small percentage and it needs to
grow.
Third, e-government has to be universally accessible. You
mentioned the digital divide. It is real and we need to address
it. We need to be careful not to lock into any one technology
in addressing it because it may be through hand-held devices,
cable television, in addition to computers and all of the
efforts that are going on in communities, libraries, schools
and homes. We can't address this, but it has to be done.
Fourth, e-government has to be collaborative. That is the
public and private sectors working together doing what they do
best. And the Federal Government has to play a certain role,
but the private sector has a lot to contribute and we need to
figure out how to harness that in an accountable way.
Fifth, it has to be innovative, not just thinking about
transactions. We gave an Innovations in American Government
Award last year, for example, to the Centers for Disease
Control for an Internet tracking system for DNA fingerprinting
of foodborne diseases so the E. coli breakout of a few years
ago will never have the impact again because it will be tracked
down too fast.
Sixth, it has to be cost effective, and we know that it can
be cost effective. IBM's Institute for Electronic Government,
one of our partners, has indicated that the governments that
they are working with are saving up to 70 percent by moving
services on-line. The Department of Agriculture, as you know,
issued its organic food standard regulations on-line and
received more comments than ever in history and saved money.
The administrative costs were $300,000 less than they expected.
And seventh, it has to be of course secure and private.
There has been a lot of discussion about that. There is no
question that we have to address that issue.
The transformation to e-government will require leadership
at all levels starting at the top, and that has been mentioned
a number of times. It will require significant investments in
technology and people. Even though there may be savings in the
long term, I think we can also look at some up front
investments and, particularly, investing in ways that can cross
agency boundaries that we are all confronted with, and a lot
more flexibility in funding and personnel policies. Perhaps as
we consider what it will take to attract, develop and retain a
high quality information technology work force in the Federal
Government, and we have to do that, we will also discover ways
to invigorate the Federal civil service.
We welcome the opportunity to help you design a system for
e-government which cannot only improve performance but also
help deliver government back to the American people. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. McGinnis follows:]
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Mr. Horn. Thank you. That is very helpful. We will take up
that offer. Our next panelist is somewhere in the midst of
Philadelphia, so David Gardiner did not make it. He is the vice
president, architecture and technology of Unisys Corp., but Lee
Cooper is here in his stead. He is the vice president, business
development, U.S. Federal Government Group. It is nice to have
you here.
Mr. Cooper. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and Mr. Davis, for the
opportunity to share with you my observations on the dynamic
changes taking place in the e-business arena today. My name is
Lee Cooper and I am the vice president of Business Development
at Unisys Corp. I am testifying on behalf of both Unisys and
the Professional Services Council, of which Unisys is a long-
standing member. The Professional Services Council is the
principle trade association representing the professional and
technical services industry. This segment performs more than
$400 billion in services nationally, including over $100
billion annually in support of the Federal Government.
Unisys is a $7\1/2\ billion electronic business solutions
company whose 36,000 employees help customers in 100 countries
build and manage the infrastructure they need to conduct e-
business. Unisys derives about $1 billion of its annual
revenues from business conducted from within the U.S. Federal
Government, from the Federal Government Group headquartered in
McLean, VA.
Let me begin by providing a framework for where Unisys
believes the e-business marketplace to be heading. I would like
to summarize points made in the written testimony submitted to
the committee. These points are derived from our experience at
Unisys as we have strived to become a premier e-business
company.
There are three main ideas. First, we see an emerging 7 by
24 electronic business environment that will require new levels
of computing and network infrastructure. We believe that e-
business will really be about managing the growth of the number
of transactions conducted electronically. As commercial
organizations increasingly interact electronically with our
customers, suppliers and employees, new service standards are
quickly emerging. These new standards will address
efficiencies, speed and value. Governments are serving the same
end users, therefore we believe that these same service
expectations will become the baseline for interactions with the
Government.
Cost efficiencies are part of the benefit accruing to
commercial organizations from electronically serving their
customers. The cost of an electronic transaction is pennies
compared to a direct face-to-face interaction with a customer
service employee. This means that there are cost reduction
opportunities for governmental organizations that adopt e-
business models of operation. It also means that commercial e-
business organizations will increasingly compete to outsource
government services if government computing infrastructures are
unable to handle a constituent's service needs in a similar
manner.
Second, our experiences at Unisys suggest that once the
computing and network infrastructure is in place, organizations
should expect a rapid acceleration of e-mail, voice mail, and
other computer based communications volume leading to vibrant
e-communities. We use that term to describe large groups of
people connected by organizational and other ties,
electronically communicating with each other at high intensity.
We have found once a global e-mail standard was established, we
saw e-mail volume explode. We are now managing over a million
per day and the volume continues to grow. We believe that
government organizations should anticipate similar results as
they interconnect their employees.
Government should also prepare for the challenging
technology resource management issues associated with these
tools. Examples are desk top hardware complexity, network
bandwidth growth and support personnel retention. We see
opportunities to develop information portals which can help
address productivity opportunities and strengthen
organizational culture. Unisys defines a portal as a Web site
that provides a common meeting ground for a population that
shares a common interest or organizational mission. The best
portals provide a means to easily locate information and use.
They also provide access to other internal and external Web
sites and databases. Portals can be equally effective in
attracting customers and constituents with news, general
information and transaction capabilities. Unisys believes that
portal development holds strong promise for progressive
organizations of all types.
Third, computing and networking infrastructure needed for
the e-business environment also facilitates delivery of
sophisticated Web-based tools to improve manager and employee
productivity, satisfaction and loyalty, and allows deployment
of world class business processes. These tools, now in wide
commercial implementation, will quickly become a standard that
commercial and public sector organizations will implement. One
example is the electronic customer relationship management.
Customer relationship management is on-line automation of the
monitoring and management of customer transactions and
relationships. This is a key requirement in the e-business
world. As governments continue their shift to viewing
constituents as customers, the likelihood is that the CRM tools
now transforming commercial organizations will be adopted by
the public sector with similar transformational impact.
Government organizations may find this direction challenging,
especially where incumbent legacy systems are well-ingrained
and process culture and employee acceptance. But over the
longer period, adoption of world class solutions for core
process delivers the best performance results.
In closing, let me underscore one important point. The key
benefits in productivity, communication, speed of operation,
service quality, and value delivery that derive from the e-
business transformation that Unisys and other commercial
organizations are now pursuing are dependent on a robust,
innovative, standards-based computing, and network
infrastructure. Successful deployment of e-business capability
in the commercial and public sector will depend on that
infrastructure.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gardiner follows:]
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Mr. Horn. Thank you very much. We appreciate that. Give Mr.
Gardiner our best. We are sorry that he couldn't make it. You
did a great job.
Our last presenter is Kathleen deLaski, group director,
editorial products, America Online. I hope you have stock
options.
Ms. deLaski. Of course. Welcome to our neighborhood. Thank
you, Chairman Horn, for inviting me to speak and Representative
Davis as well.
In the lobby of AOL, which is just down the road, our
plaque that states our mission statement is that we strive to
make the Internet central to people's lives, as central to
their lives as the telephone and the television and even more
convenient, and nowhere more so in e-government is the
opportunity to reinvent, to borrow another expression, is this
more prevalent than in the government space. We began--we saw
the promise in 1996 and began in the Presidential cycle that
year trying to develop ways that consumers could have on-demand
access to information about the candidates that were running
against each other, to be able to cut through the 30-second
sound bites. We saw even at that early stage hundreds of
thousands, more than a million visitors to that kind of
information, and we saw the promise then.
In 1998, we developed a site called My Government, which
allowed a member--our members; in other words, citizens, to
type in their ZIP Code and up pops the pictures and contact
information for all of the people that represent them down
through the State level so you could e-mail and track their
votes. That also was very successful.
In late 1999, we launched a brand new service, Government
Guide. We saw the explosion coming of services, as we have all
been talking today, on the Web, and we began to try to figure
out what is the best way to present that to the consumer and it
quickly became apparent that you needed to organize it by
consumer needs instead of by agencies. And we are in the middle
of developing a State and local version of this, but the piece
that we launched last December is mainly a Federal site. It is
called Government Guide on AOL. It is also on the Web.
I brought--since we couldn't show pictures of it, I brought
some color copies so you can see what it looks like afterwards.
But it has been very successful and it says to us that the
demand is there, as most of us suspected. But our way of doing
it is to--for instance, we have developed checklists,
government checklists that allow you to answer a series of
questions about paying for college through Federal student
loans, can I file my taxes electronically. We partnered with
the IRS this year to offer that service. How do I get a
passport or visa which walks you through from what types of
forms do I need to fill out to where is the post office that I
can pick this thing up. These have started to become very
popular.
Our government services site is growing 100 percent a
month. We saw 13 million page views last month, which means
that 13 million sets of eyeballs are seeing government
information that didn't have on-demand access to that
information even 6 months ago.
Consumers have come to expect a lot from government. They
want renewing the driver's license in Virginia or paying their
taxes to be as easy as ordering a book from Amazon.com which
has become very easy, and so that is where the bar is. And
while there are some impressive examples in Federal Government,
we feel and I know that many of the government agencies feel as
well that information is still either too hard to find, too out
of date or simply not available in a digital format. So I have
three areas that I would just like to touch on by way of
suggestion in the short to medium term.
First of all, the notion that the Federal Government should
try to be an AOL or a Yahoo, to create portals is I think
valiant but may be very difficult. We believe that it is the
role of government to create the applications on-line, to Web-
enable paying your taxes, to Web-enable getting your passport
or voting, but to try to create the consumer interface across
many agencies is a very difficult job and there are specialists
in this field, and AOL is not the only one but we have enough
trouble hiring people to do this for us and we have stock
options, as you said.
So the examples that we have seen of this at the Federal
Government level, the people involved in these projects are
very up front about how difficult it is, No. 1, to make the
portals work but also to drive traffic to them. This is what
any dot-com will tell you; you can build it but they won't
necessarily come. So where we have been able to help with
government agencies is in driving traffic to the applications
and we recommend a syndication model whereby all of the dot-
coms will drive traffic to the Mint site, for instance, or the
Social Security application forms.
The second thing that I wanted to mention is the whole area
that has been talked about already here, digital security
authentication privacy. I am not an expert on the pending
legislation on digital signature right now, but we do feel that
it will go a long way to Web-enabling government. It is true
that we really have been having to cobble together strategies
in the absence of such legislation whereby digital signature
means that you can bring a lot of the transactions, both
financial and information on-line. What we can't stress enough
is the importance that these applications, these digital
signatures, the digital certificates be handled in a way that
they are not an impediment to the consumer because it has been
very difficult to look at different technologies across the
board and try and make them interoperable. If I have to have
one pin number to renew my driver's license in Virginia and
another one for every other consumer transaction I want to
conduct, that is going to be very difficult and I think an
impediment to progress.
Finally, I want to make one quick point about Members of
Congress as well as agencies continuing on the drive to have
public e-mail addresses. We find that consumers, their No. 1
desire is to be able to communicate with somebody at the other
end and to the extent that we can empower through mail systems
and good back office consumer-oriented service centers at the
individual agencies and on Capitol Hill, that will go a long
way to making feel that there is someone on the other end of
not only the phone but of the e-mail.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. deLaski follows:]
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Mr. Horn. Thank you. We will now start the Q and A, and I
yield 10 minutes to Mr. Davis, the gentleman from Virginia, for
questioning.
Mr. Davis. Let me say that e-mail is the most frustrating
part of the job. The e-mails are messed up half the time and
sometimes they are a couple days late and we can't respond.
Ms. deLaski. Yes, sir.
Mr. Davis. It is all security related. We don't have it
right now.
Ms. deLaski. Right.
Mr. Davis. During the impeachment I was getting 2,000 to
3,000 e-mails a day. People know how to find us; at least they
can find us.
I have a fundamental question.
Mr. Molaski, we are dealing now with a government structure
that is starting to change a little bit in the way that
government is organized. My question would be do we really have
a structure? You see what Virginia has done with the Secretary
of Technology. Don, you had turf fights. Nobody wants to give
up turf. They have created the Technology Committee, but it is
turf fights who is going to have oversight and that means a lot
in fundraising. How does it work having one oversight, and I
get asked at the Federal level, should we have a chief
information officer over all of the other chief information
officers. What is the coordination?
Mr. Upson. My response would be that it is a progress, the
Federal Government is making progress but there is no time to
go as slow as it has been going. I think you need two things in
the structure. The individuals responsible for technology
within an organization, within the departments should have
power. They should be at least Assistant Secretary and the law
exists to do that. You need a position to have authority within
its own organization, and the collective authority reporting to
not only the Federal Government but you have a Secretary of
Technology, but maybe the Director of OMB, monthly meetings
where the Interagency Management Council meets and at the
President's direction are working. I think there has been a lot
of talk. I think $36 billion is spent at the Federal level.
NPR, the GITS committee, the Hammer awards, they are great
things, but I often say they are like well-tuned instruments in
a high school band playing different songs. You need power in
the organization and power in a collective group, and I think
that I would challenge you for the things that have been done.
NPR has great goals. What were the big three
accomplishments? And do the citizens know and what is the
vision for electronic government, and I don't see that
executive leadership coming. I think that Congress has built a
foundation against which you can work. I think you could have
assistant secretaries right now. I think you could make those
assistant secretaries part of an Interagency Management Council
reporting to an OMB Director, and I think you could reform
procurement. You could take GSA and put it--what I think is
interesting, Mr. Davis, you have got every agency of government
putting out contract vehicles to sell computers not only with
themselves but everybody else. NIH should be curing diseases,
not selling computers. I think if you had an independent GSA
along a Postal Service model, try to put together a structure
that empowers and allows the professionals of the
infrastructure to manage not only the infrastructure and build
it, but to connect the bigger policy initiatives.
Mr. Davis. We found in Y2K that you have some CIOs who have
empowerment, and in Y2K we found there are some agencies who
could walk the talk and there are others that didn't. It is
frustrating.
Mr. Upson. The biggest challenge to electronic government
and the reason that it cannot work without that structure is
that government agencies, like bureaucracies in the private
sector, they behave as stovepipes and they want to do things
their own way. As America Online said, everybody will have a
digital signature environment and security environment which
puts at risk all of the databases that we have in the
government. Because--by the way, I would say that the
interagency management council at the Federal level ought to
include some State and local representatives, and maybe some
from the private sector. Everything that we do connects to the
Federal Government. People are not concerned about privacy per
se. If they were, you wouldn't have $1 trillion in e-commerce.
They are concerned about the government. We are the ones with
police records, criminal records, the driving records, health
records. Unless we have that standardized continuum across
government, I don't see it working. I think that the structure
is at the level that needs to be at the Federal level.
Mr. Molaski. I believe that the structure has to be
revamped within the Federal Government at this time. I think
that the CIOs have made long strides since they were first
implemented in 1996, and I think it is time that--as the
Secretary has said, Secretary Upson, that they be given more
power and authority over the information technology structures
and operations within each one of their individual agencies.
We have an organization called CIO council, which is an
organization, an interagency body involving all of the CIOs
within the Federal Government. Unfortunately, it has no teeth.
Any recommendation that comes from it or that comes out of the
CIO council is voluntary for the agencies.
I would suggest that we follow similar cascading-down type
of structures within the CIO community where it starts with the
CIO council, and the council has power to be able to make some
decisions, and especially as it is attuned to infrastructure.
Then each one of the individual CIOs not only becomes an
Assistant Secretary, but also has operations underneath them.
Many of the CIOs are not responsible for the infrastructure
within their own agencies. And for those departments like DOT
that have multiple bureaus and multiple agencies, each one of
those organizations needs the CIO to work with their
administrator and work with the CIO to determine infrastructure
and architecture.
The one caveat I would make is that the program people
still need the budgetary funds and the ability to direct what
information technology they need to be able to perform their
missions, and that decision should be made in concert with the
CIO. For example, I would not want to be in a position where I
make the decision on what flight traffic control systems the
FAA should be using. However, I should be in a position to make
sure that they are spending their dollars wisely in those
areas, and they are following good business practices such as
Clinger-Cohen.
Mr. Davis. Do you want to comment on the structural issues,
Mr. McClure?
Well, fedcenter.com, and several others, those are
commercial sites that are providing citizens and businesses
with access to on-line government transactional services. Do
you think that government should be concerned about these or
should we be applauding these commercial efforts?
Mr. Molaski. I definitely think that we should be
applauding them. I think that part of the beauty of the
Internet is the multiple access sites that we have to the
government. I think what government has to follow is some of
the subscription models, like Kathleen was saying, that we need
to be able to prepare our sites and index our sites and have
our sites available for the rest of the Internet universe to be
able to utilize.
Also, we should be investing Federal Government dollars
where industries are not, and that really works when we start
looking at a help desk. Portals are great providing that
information is connected to the Web sites, but if I am a
frustrated citizen and can't find that information in three
clicks or don't know how to use a computer, where do I go? And
that is, where we need a multi-access help desk to be able to
provide the services to the stakeholders so that they can get
that information.
Mr. Davis. We have two issues. One is where you are
providing for the occasional citizen, but the other is
companies who are dealing with government in terms of
purchasing goods off the Internet, how is the government doing
those endeavors?
Mr. Cooper. It is a significant challenge to interact with
the government in a common standard way. There are several
initiatives, the electronic procurement system and GSA, other
initiatives that have helped. The portals that have been made
available for understanding the services available or the
procurement activities where opportunities that are available
to Unisys and other members of the commercial establishment.
The key is the infrastructure and the standardization of
the infrastructure so that we can communicate in a common way
to a common set of databases and a common methodology. And that
is where we are greatly missing the boat at this point. We are
in the early stages of the second wave, as we call it in our
testimony that was provided to the committee, where you have
the brick-and-mortar companies coming together with the dot-
coms, those who put the pure Internet, such as AOL and the
ability for those two to come together into a blending and work
with the government to provide that full integrated capability
is going to be the key to the future.
Mr. Davis. My time is up. I would note one thing. We had
one level of government that knew the love bug was a problem
and by 4 a.m., they ferreted it out, but it was 11 a.m. before
it got to other agencies. We still have problems within
government because of the way that we are structured in terms
of getting that information out. The more we hear from you all
and hear anecdotes helps.
Mr. Upson. We have a structure, and I think we are building
a stakeholder. That love bug is a good example. We notify the
providers and we used our management mechanisms in Y2K and
across council to set up contacts at every agency, shut down
the servers within State government and literally had no--
people did not communicate until we were able to put the
patches on our servers, but we had a reporting mechanism across
and government and we had a response, and we patched it and 24
hours we were up and running.
Mr. Davis. Thank you. I have to leave, but I am pleased to
be able to join you here today, and I would like to say to all
panelists, we appreciate you for coming here and Mr. Chairman,
thank you for holding this hearing.
Mr. Horn. I am glad to do it. This is a Virginia unlike
what I came to in 1958.
This is terrific to have all of you here. I just want to
ask a few questions. The one that is the question that I ask
frankly to anybody I can see on the street, as well as experts,
and that is, how do we measure Federal programs that are a
success. We had a hearing of this committee about 3 years ago
in Oregon, which is the only State in the union with a guide
for measuring the programs to see if they are working, to see
if the people are satisfied, and I would really like to hear
from you, just going down the line.
What do you think we can do to get the Federal Government
out, and obviously they have done at the local level also, your
excellence in government and that type of thing. But I would be
interested in what your thoughts are.
Mr. McClure? I am sure that GAO has piles of studies on it.
How do we get agencies to say let's use the computer to have
people assess these programs? On the other hand, you have got a
whole group of people that you leave out when you do that. Do
you take a random position that most pollsters would do or how
do you do it? Do you say we did it this way and here are the
data and here is what we are doing on this side on the
noncomputer side.
I think the help desk is certainly a good idea to get all
of these systems that you use and you can use very
constructively to have people look at the agency.
Mr. McClure. Well, Mr. Chairman, the value coming from
investments and technology is always a challenging area. It
requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative
information.
One of the things that you'll see good companies, public or
private, focusing on when they are investing in technology
solutions are metrics that focus on speed, cost and quality. If
you can show how you are improving those kinds of operational
metrics in your organization in investments in technology, you
can show that you are having an impact.
There are other measures that are more soft, such as
enhanced customer satisfaction, that are just as revealing and
important to show that you are moving your business, your
operations and your program outcomes in the right direction. In
our advice to agencies that are struggling in the Federal
Government with measurement issues, we argue that there is a
real need to focus on both quantitative hard ROI-type numbers
and qualitative data that can come from surveys and
interactions with customers to know that you are producing good
results, and I think that is where the heart of the matter
lies.
Mr. Horn. Any thoughts, Mr. Molaski?
Mr. Molaski. Fortunately, when I was appointed 11 months
ago, I joined an agency which was leading the government as far
as performance measures, and that is the Department of
Transportation, and they have been noted for their strategic
plan and performance measures and their performance report this
past year.
That said, it is an evolving process that we have to get
better at. We need to be able to have a dashboard for each
agency not too unlike your grading system in Y2K that indicates
what the agencies are doing as far as around their primary
goals. For example, in the Department of Transportation, one of
our goals is north star safety. We need and have been reporting
internally to each other as far as how are we doing on that. We
need to be able to simplify that to a great extent, to be able
to come up with an index of some sort that we can work with and
show Congress and show the public exactly the good work that we
are doing.
Mr. Horn. Are there other Federal agencies, say the 24 or
so other agencies and departments, are they doing some of this
program analysis work?
Mr. Molaski. I really can't comment on other agencies
outside of DOT because----
Mr. Horn. At the CIO level, do they ever discuss some of
these possibilities?
Mr. Molaski. We are looking at--one of our committees right
now is on the security situation. We are more focused on
technology as opposed to program relevancy. Our security
committee right now is coming up with a security maturity
model, and what that means is that we come up with a model that
agencies can actually take a look at and where they fit within
the maturity model on security so they have some ideas, and so
that the administrators have some ideas of where they fit
within the spectrum.
Mr. Horn. Mr. Upson, in your role as Secretary, does the
Governor say how do we look at some of these agencies I
inherited? And have you used that to some degree and if so, how
have you used it?
Mr. Upson. Not so much in your question in terms of
measurement, but actually, we took, and I meant to commend you,
and I think I did in my written testimony, in the approach that
this--that your subcommittee took with Y2K. What you asked
fundamentally: What do the agencies do and what is important?
We have changed a little of that. We now have a blueprint for
what we think is most important. We use that as a blueprint for
managing our technology now.
But the most important thing to measure when you measure
performance with technology investments, it seems to us, is
that you be able to have a system that is accountable. What is
it you do and how do you use technology to create an
accountable system, and by that, let me give you two examples:
One, there is a building permit process that has the builders
in northern Virginia being up in arms. They are required to
submit a hard copy, very thick application to agencies. Fairfax
County, the Secretary of Transportation and Secretary of
Natural Resources, they never know who has it. They never know
how long it is going to take. They hire lawyers to manage it.
It is never about the technology, it is always about the
management. We put the stakeholders in the room, myself and two
of my colleagues, and we are designing a system in real time
that when you send that application in, it will be registered.
You will know who has it and how long it is. The same thing
with driver's licenses. There is a 90-some-odd percent Virginia
approval rating of people who have been to RD&V in terms of
their experience. Why? Yes, you can renew it on-line, but that
is not good enough today. It is our database, we have the data.
We know who is qualified. We send you the PIN number and you
just simply put in your driver number and your PIN number and
you don't type in name and address, at some point it all pops
up. If you wait until the last minute, when you get to the
transaction page and press click, the police are automatically
notified that your driver's license is renewed and that receipt
is a driver's license.
That is a system of accountability and allows for
measurement. Both of those instances are taking real priorities
that we established through Y2K. It was the first time we
actually have agencies that told us that they didn't have any
priorities. Deal with that in the budget process. But I think
the tools are there to make the technology more accountable,
and I think one opportunity that the Federal Government has is
to build on the discipline system that I honestly think the
Government Reform Committee put in place, because government
has defined what it does agency by agency. It is a great
blueprint to work against and judge your technology investment
against.
Mr. Horn. Another thing I tried 3 or 4 years ago with my
Transportation and Infrastructure Committee membership, we had
testimony from the California EPA that they had turned over to
the people on behalf of whom you had to file those reports how
you can computerize that, and it worked. Somewhat like you are
saying. Let them figure out the codes and all of the rest of it
that you have to go through, and the result is that they saved
a lot of trees for one thing, and they didn't have these
reports where you couldn't find it, and you couldn't find what
part you wanted because they were sitting somewhere in a
warehouse in the paper world. So I asked EPA, which was also
testifying at the time, can you do that. Oh, yes, I think we
could.
Well, they haven't done a darn thing yet, and yet
California has this thing moving. This was under Governor
Wilson years ago.
These are the kinds of things that innovative States do,
and we are sort of behind the cities of America and some of the
counties of America at the State level and the Federal
Government is behind all of you. So we are trying to stimulate
the interest there.
Any thoughts, Ms. McGinnis?
Ms. McGinnis. Yes, I think measurement is very important.
In terms of e-government, we can measure the transactions
completed. We know that a lot of people visit government sites,
but very few transactions are actually completed at this point.
Service is delivered. Satisfactory two-way communications. You
can measure customer satisfaction, whether the customers are
citizens or businesses or universities, in terms of the quality
and the timeliness of the transaction. You can measure cost
savings in the long run and I think return on investment.
Particularly for investments in the short run, access can be
measured.
We know a lot about how many people who are on-line. There
are a lot of projections about that in the future. Knowing that
in terms of specific categories of people who access government
services would be very helpful, and then the security and
privacy measures are also important, and some audits, so that
we understand how government is doing on those dimensions. So I
think there are a lot of measures, and for e-government, those
are measures of how e-government is doing, but for each agency
the most important measures are their mission-oriented measures
like the Department of Transportation and how it is doing on
safety. And I think the e-government networks will contribute
to that. But the most important measures are the results.
Mr. Horn. Mr. Cooper, any thoughts on how you measure
programs?
Mr. Cooper. It is obviously very important to conduct
measurements of Federal programs and the Federal service to the
citizen. We believe that the most important measure is the
value that the government provides to its customers or
constituents. Value, we believe a customer constituent is
looking for, is how effectively does the government operate as
a business? Does it operate like a business that we are all
used to interfacing with, and will we pay our money for that
service?
Along that line, important metrics are needed for maybe
three areas: One, customers or citizen satisfaction, supplier
satisfaction and employee satisfaction. We put all of those
under the first category of satisfaction. And what is happening
in the commercial industry is that customer relationship
management systems and tools and procedures are being built and
being implemented for managing the customer or the constituent,
and there are a few initiatives within the Federal Government
where CRM is being implemented. So looking for the measurement
of customer satisfaction is extremely critical.
The second one is what we call service level agreements,
and that is where you look at technical performance of the
system or solution. The Federal Government is, in many ways, on
a performance-base contracting, which I know that you have
supported in the past, and the government is doing a good job
of implementing service level agreements, and I think we are
well on our way to establishing what a service level agreement
is for an infrastructure or a computer system.
The third, of course, is the financial metrics. We still
have to work on what are those financial metrics, and what will
be the acceptable level of the financial metric, again, in
customer satisfaction and technical performance.
Two more real quick points, in order to achieve either of
these metrics, it is going to require integrative business
processes, and that is where we have the difficulty, the
stovepipes, that Secretary Upson mentioned earlier. We need to
standardize the processes and the tools, the methods which are
going to drive the demand for the common infrastructure, the
standard networking, the standard access, access to data, data
warehousing, data mining, which, again, is going to drive the
need for Web enabling some of the legacy systems. We can't
throw away all of the legacy systems that we have today and
replace them with new whiz bang systems that may or may not be
tailored to meet the unique needs of the Federal Government.
So it is going to be very critical to look at the business
processes and determine which processes can be implemented
through Web enabling at the existing legacy systems and which
ones will have to be removed and replaced.
Mr. Horn. Well, I am sure that Unisys has a lot of
experience with the private sector, and you are sowing a lot of
these systems. As I remember, when I was a little kid in the
thirties, the Standard Oil Co. of California had a separate
organizational group that reported essentially to the chairman
of the board, and that was a group on organization which took a
careful look constantly were we doing the right thing, what are
we achieving and so forth, and helping other people.
One of the things that I am going to be putting in in the
next month is the Office of Management Proposal which is to
separate out from under OMB. When Nixon did that, I thought he
was right on track because he could use the budget to get their
attention in some of the cabinet departments and agencies. It
didn't work out that way.
I remember they had very--when I was in the Eisenhower
administration, they had very fine people in OMB who were
professionals and not political hacks, and they were people who
knew what they were doing, they had served Roosevelt and Truman
and Eisenhower, at which point it went downhill because they
started to politicize Democrats like Kennedy, Johnson, or
Nixon, and they started putting their own people, and you lost
a lot of that professional approach, how you draw up government
organizations.
These are people that had drawn up the TVA, the Tennessee
Valley Authority, and they put together a lot of government
operations. They wrote the Marshall Plan. It wasn't the State
Department, it was this unit. And so the question is where are
these people? They aren't around too much now. This is what we
have to build if the President is going to have choice and
options. Sure, he needs somebody that can worry about the
budget, but they are different skills when you are worrying
about the management style. I am trying to split them off.
Mr. Cooper. One comment, please, you mentioned Unisys's
experience, and I would just like to remind you of the history,
and we can provide more for the record, if you would like.
Unisys came from Sperry and Burroughs in the 1980's, and when
Burroughs and Sperry were formed, there were 51 data centers
around the world. Today, there is one data center in Egan, MN
serving 36,000 employees. Over 22,000 of those employees have
access to Unisys broadcast television, so it is a push of the
information and technology out to those employees in over 100
countries. Nearly all of the 36,000 have access to the same
standard e-mail system. We all have one EHR system.
Every employee has access to his personnel records all over
the world. One system is achievable, it is a little more
difficult when we have the situations that we have over many
years of management, as you've indicated, missions and
responsibilities that has been placed in the various agencies.
We need to get started trying to work them together and across
agency service to the citizen initiative would be very
important.
Mr. Horn. Ms. DeLaski.
Ms. DeLaski. Two quick points. One, some agencies seem to
judge their success by the number of hits to their Web sites.
It is how many tax returns are filed on-line, not how many hits
came to your Web sites. So that is one point.
The other is just a cursory service which we are offering
in government guide which might be of interest to your
committee, your subcommittee, is that we are offering the
opportunity for visitors to each of these government sites to
rate the government site when they go there because we have put
a button at the top of each government site which says, rate
this government site, and up pops the screen that says was the
information helpful? Was this worth my tax dollars? And we have
ratings for 2,200 Federal sites now which we would be happy to
share, and we share with agencies as well.
Mr. Horn. Yes, that sounds very interesting. Does it really
change at the other end when they read that material? Is
anybody doing something about it?
Ms. DeLaski. The agencies have asked us for the
information. I imagine it is being used more for the purposes
of flag waving when they get a good rating than the other way
around.
Mr. Horn. Well, we heard the building offices and the local
governmental jurisdiction. That is one of the key things if you
are trying to get economic development in an area where you can
get access, because time is money and it is taking all of the
time, and we had this in California and I can't say that we
really have done much about it. I think what you are doing in
Virginia makes a lot of sense and to be a model to tie in these
things so that people who want decisions made can get them
made. I don't know how you found that working in other parts of
Virginia or in other parts of the United States.
Mr. Upson. The key too, Mr. Chairman, is I think it is
working in Virginia because we are bringing the stakeholders to
the game, and I think it is about the structure. On the other
hand, I would like to--and it is about the whole supply chain
that I think Y2K showed us. It is not just about what you do at
the Federal level, but State and local government. I would like
to put out one other example where the government can do
something. Part of Governor Gilmore's executive order is going
to call for the uniform project management system of all
projects over X value. We have a management structure so we are
in a position to do that, but the Federal Government is
spending $36 billion a year, and the statistics, I don't know
what they are now, but 2 years ago, 16 percent of all IT
systems projects were successful on time within budget. 84
percent weren't.
I think the reason they weren't is that there is no
accountability. People change requirements. We are putting in
place not only a uniform project management system but a
reporting requirement monthly. Every project in that category,
everyone enters data the same way, and it comes to me and our
council on technology services. Every 3 months it goes to the
Governor and key members of the funding committees of the
legislature. I believe that even the minute parties, both the
public and private sector, managers know that there is
accountability in the system, and the costs will go down. Every
1 percent savings is $360 million. We are trying to build
incentives.
I think those are things that can be done as well. But it
does get back to one of the focuses of your hearing, and that
is the structure, and for me, everything revolves around that.
Mr. Horn. I thought your suggestion was very interesting
and ought to be acted on is to get the States' representatives
of counties and cities in that CIO council, because this is a
partnership deal, and part of our problems in Y2K, even Social
Security said oh, my heavens, we have our partnerships with the
States and we haven't looked at them. They have done a great
job on their situation and they scurried around and brought the
States in. But that is the kind of thing that we need, where
these partnerships are, we need to be working together with the
States, and I happen to be a big fan of revenue sharing, and I
hope that we get back to that one of these days. You know what
we should be doing with the money, and, of course, the other
party and the lobbyists just hate it because they can lose all
of their power and all of their money. So it lasted at least
for 10 years, and regretfully, in the Reagan administration
they stopped it, and that was a mistake.
Mr. Molaski. Mr. Chairman, I would be remiss in not
commenting on working with States that the CIO council is very
much in favor of that, and in fact, has developed a
relationship with organization of all of the State CIOs and had
a joint meeting with them this past June, this past December,
when we had our first government conference. We think that is
one of the things once we get our act together.
Mr. Horn. On that very point in getting your act together,
do you find some of your colleagues who have CIOs, do they have
access to the Deputy Secretary or Secretary? Where are they? We
are going to be looking at that. I am just curious.
Mr. Molaski. They are all over the place. Some are
political appointments with confirmations. Most of them are
career SESs at the present time. It is not so much the access
to the Secretary that really impinges--whether the CIO can
perform the functions. It is really do they have the authority
to impact the budgetary dollars, and even more so, I think it
has been proven again and again, take control of the
infrastructure which is broken out between many departments as
Secretary Upson was saying here, and bring it together into one
single type of activity. I think that has been proven at NASA
where they went from spending $400 million a year to $100
million a year on their telecommunications costs, and most
recently the Treasury, where they are looking at saving $400
million a year.
Mr. Horn. To what do you attribute that? The location of
the individual that could make these decisions?
Mr. Molaski. Right. And in NASA, it was somewhat the lack
of complexity and the drive of the organization to get a common
infrastructure. And I think we will see more and more agencies
doing that.
Mr. Horn. That has been brought up with the CIO council so
they can spread the word?
Mr. Molaski. Absolutely. Again, the CIOs in my opinion want
to do a good job and are engaged in doing a good job, but
really don't have the authority or the funding to be able to
really implement those changes in Web time that we are talking
about. We have to bring a lot of consensus together and spend a
lot of time building coalitions that in industry is handled
more efficiently.
Mr. Horn. Any other suggestions on measurement or
hierarchy? I don't see any, so I will finish up with a few
questions here.
The benefits of the electronic government are numerous, and
there are risks, and, of course, we talked about the love bug
and the virus struck an estimated 45 million computers in 20
countries causing $8 billion in damages is the current
estimate, and as we move toward greater reliance on the
Internet to conduct business and provide services, how can we
ensure the seamless operations in light of such devastating
attacks?
You had a good assistant who shut down the servers. Go
ahead.
Mr. Upson. That is true. Again it goes back to we are
dependent, and the Internet and Web-enabled anything is going
to do nothing but keep coming at us, and the question is how do
we manage both risk and security. Having in place a system that
can get the information shut down and the servers put the
corrections in, and communicate with the agencies and the
enterprise, and that really is the challenge. I don't think
that we will turn back the clock, and what we did in Y2K pales
on what we are going to do in data security and infrastructure
security.
Mr. Horn. One of the things that we want to look at, and we
would like your advice, obviously, all of you, and that is, the
degree to which we should look at a system in agency or
department where they have certain types of things you go
through to try to prevent that happening, and to try to block
it off or divert it or whatever you want to say. Do we have
some good examples of that in the private sector or in some
level of government, because as the Secretary says, we have a
real problem on our hands. They are going to be bombarding us
all of the time. It is not just the 17-year-olds, it is foreign
governments that want to look at things which lead to economic
wealth or deficits.
Ms. DeLaski. We would be happy to link you up with those
folks who are experts and have that conversation. I am not an
expert on that.
What we want to stress is whenever there is a problem, we
can put up in red letters on America Online which reaches 40
million people, we can put up something that says alert, do
this or don't do this, so we can work with the government
agencies, but we often have trouble knowing who is the lead in
what message needs to go out to consumers. So to the extent
that we can identify who those folks are, we would be very
happy to act as a public service address system for those kinds
of things.
Mr. Horn. Fascinating. When GAO goes around and looks at
these models, and what is the high risk and what is the low
risk, and you do a great job on that. We have asked the
Controller General to put a team ongoing through all Federal
employers, all Federal computer people in terms of both the
software and the hardware. And to what degree does Congress and
the OMB face up to new equipment, which should make Mr. Cooper
happy. In other words, we are a few generations behind if we
are still playing with COBOL in the Department of Defense.
Mr. Cooper. We have not been successful in bringing in a
commercial solution. So the customer and the field believes he
is getting access to a very modern system, but it is the old
COBOL code behind the Web-enabled application.
Mr. Horn. That is fascinating.
Mr. Cooper. It is part of a solution.
Mr. Horn. Maybe we better learn COBOL again.
Mr. Molaski. It is not an official administration position,
but I think one of the things that we are going to have to take
a very hard look at in government is that as the United States
becomes more and more dependent on electronic commerce, I
think, likewise, our expenditures at the Federal Government
level need to start being far more reaching as far as the
security effort goes. Right now it is somewhat of a
decentralized effort with GSA playing part of the role.
Something happens at the DOD or CIA or NSA. Somehow we have got
to be able to bring those activities together so that we can
get ahead of the curve, if that is possible at all. Because it
is going to have such a devastating economic impact, actually,
if something like this would occur that would be attacking our
national security.
Mr. Horn. That is a good point. Mr. Cooper, to what degree
is Unisys and other firms, IBM, and all of the rest, looking at
this, how we can create blockages and not have the viruses get
through the network right now?
Mr. Cooper. At Unisys Corp., we have set up a management
structure at the corporate level and policies procedures,
looking for tools, methods. And then we have acted upon those
at the local level, such as, in this case, the U.S. Federal
Government. We have chosen the best tools that are available
today.
Norton Utilities is a good example. There are some modern
virus, antivirus software that we are using, but I would like
to bring in the fact that being a global corporation, we have
to look at what is going on around the world and what we find
in many parts of the world. Even in South America, they are
ahead of us in various aspects of information security.
Part of the reason is that they don't have the Privacy Act
requirements that we have here in the United States, and
recently, in working on a procurement for the General Services
Administration called GSA Smartcard, when we went looking for
capabilities around the company to respond to that program, we
found most of the experience coming out of Venezuela, Portugal,
Canada, Brazil, places that you wouldn't anticipate. There is a
lot going on in the world. We need to continue to work it at
the corporate level, both from a management structure and the
technology investments, and with commercial off-the-shelf tools
to build a corporate-wide strategy that gets implemented at the
local level.
Mr. Horn. That's interesting. We need to look south of the
border.
Mr. Cooper. And north.
Mr. Horn. Are there statutory impediments that you are
aware of to make effective, more effective the e-government
initiatives? What are the statutory gaps that need to be filled
in terms of the Federal Government? And are there other
statutes that are giving you a pain that you would like to
change? Presumably, Clinger-Cohen was designed to help people,
not the opposite. I don't know what the experience has been. We
ask, but sometimes we don't hear an answer.
Mr. McClure. Mr. Chairman, I think there is actually a
great body of law already in place driving e-government. I
think we have an analysis of these statutes that showed that a
lot of what is going on in electronic transactions and on-line
services is driven both by authorizing legislation that
pertains to individual departments and agencies. We find
provisions bearing in law that require agencies to do X, Y, and
Z by a certain date. We have general management improvements
status such as Clinger-Cohen and the CFO Act, which require
agencies to move aggressively toward greater use of information
technology, and particularly through the Government Paperwork
and Elimination Act on-line transactions.
I think there is a very robust framework in place right now
that is moving government in this direction. There is also lots
of Presidential directives of trying to accelerate the
attention and pace of government agencies to the issues. Again,
I think there is a very, very robust framework. As far as
overlapping and duplication, I don't know if our analysis
really dug down that far, but I don't think that you can say
that there is a lack of attention for this from certainly both
the executive and the legislative branch.
Mr. Horn. Has the GAO, in their studies of this, how much
government do we really want to put on-line, and what is the
ultimate goal? Is there any thinking in GAO when you go around
and talk to the people in the executive branch?
Mr. McClure. There are certainly questions that we want to
ask agencies, not necessarily questioning about what they put
on-line, but how they have gone about making decisions on what
are the requirements that they want to put on-line. One of the
challenges that we see at government agencies is oftentimes
they try to do too much without enough capability or skill or
attention to get results in a few areas.
So some of the problems are simply taking priorities,
moving aggressively in certain areas, getting a good track
record, and showing success and moving on, and I think that is
a real challenge for many of the agencies, particularly when
you look at the scope of what they are being asked to do by
some of the deadlines that are now being imposed.
Mr. Horn. Mr. Molaski.
Mr. Molaski. I think a couple of things, Mr. Chairman. No.
1 is that if we are going to allow and use the CIO positions
within government to be the change agent within government, we
have to place the accountability authority and responsibility
in that position as we have been talking about.
I think probably the most critical function for that that
we really need to look at is manpower functions. We are not
getting the young blood. The average age of DOT employees in
the civil work force is 43.7. Over 50 percent of the technology
workers in IRS are over 50. We are not getting challenged from
the bottom. We are not connecting with a whole generation, and
we need to bring this new generation into government and make
government relevant in their lives and get their perspective on
the way that the government has to move. And again, I would
highly recommend that we go into government service in return
for paying for their education or forgiving student loans-type
of scenario, which would bring and cause this to happen.
The last thing is that we have a tremendous opportunity
that is going to be facing us here as we start rolling out e-
government and moving forward. Currently, we are stovepiped
within the executive branch. Congress is also stovepiped and
there is no overarching committee that is looking at e-
government and across government. We need to put some processes
in place so when these opportunities for streamlining and for
consolidation present themselves, that we have a workable
process in place to be able to attack them and give the
stakeholders and the citizens what they deserve.
Mr. Horn. You have eloquently stated the problem, and we
will steal all of your words, but we will attribute them to
you, but we don't pay any royalties. You are right on the mark
on that, and that is one of the euphorias, as a Californian, I
have been trying to upset the community college people and
Silicon Valley, where I had a hearing a few weeks ago and say
look, why can't you people get together. We have to bring all
of these people from abroad.
These are $60,000 jobs, and the community colleges were
designed in California starting back in 1910, 1917, and the
whole purpose which you can never achieve in a State agency is
you just don't have the money, so you are going to train and
educate people. You need to have the people that make the
equipment, hardware, software, whatever, and working with the
teaching profession so you have a decent curriculum that makes
sense to people.
And the military are usually very good at teaching, and
that is where we try to work. The community colleges need to be
working together, and it needs to be continuous. Chico had
audio and television going all over that area in the seventies
and eighties, and we had a statewide nursing education program.
I am trying to think now whether it was the Johnson
Foundation--one of them gave us $2 million to get this rolling.
Nobody ever had a chance to get an education before, and that
is the kind of thing that we need to have, the industry working
with community colleges and people in the agencies, and I would
think that we have got to start in kindergarten.
So we have just got to get together and do it, and if we
have every one of us at this table be a--the private sector
that sells, computing, teachers, and consumers, we have to do
that and focus on and keep at it. You have put yourself on the
mark on that one. The problem is how do we get it done?
Ms. McGinnis. The e-government initiative that we have
underway involving a lot of the companies represented here and
others in government is looking specifically at the barriers to
e-government and computer statutory barriers, so we will give
you the very specific analysis of that when we have it. I think
they will fall in the categories of personnel issues. That is a
big one in terms of recruiting, training, development,
developing; and we are hopeful that you might take a look at
information technology as a special case, think about the
changes that are necessary in computing practices, pay, and all
sorts of things, and then learn from that to look at the civil
service system as a whole.
The other barriers I think will come in the way money
flows, and that gets to the point that George Molaski made
about the way the executive branch is stovepiped, and Congress,
in terms of the appropriations committees and how the money
flows. It flows in such a way that it doesn't allow the
integration, integrated investments and funding for technology,
and we may want to look at something like a working capital
fund, we may want to look at some possibilities, such as
sharing savings, to provide some incentives for savings down
the road.
So there will be very specific, both barriers and
recommendations, that will be offered by fall, and hopefully
that will fit within your timeframe.
Mr. Horn. We certainly welcome it. I can tell you one
thing, and I have seen it work any number of places, it took me
5 years to get our trustees in the California State University
system to collapse all of the civil service positions that were
anywhere near management, if we are going to actually get
something done, get rid of them. And we got down to four basic
things. It went from 10,000 to 100,000. The President could set
the amount anywhere on that scale and we wouldn't have
personnel directors which drove me nuts for 30 years. They were
not created in the Federal Government when I was Assistant to
the Secretary of Labor. He said Steve, you go across the hall
and talk to them. This was a guy who was Secretary and the top
personnel person in the country, he couldn't stand Federal
personnel directors. It was always like that. It is like
Groucho Marx, what is the magic word? If you don't get it, you
don't get the raise. Nonsense.
So what you do is put a contract on that manager. What are
you going to do in 6 months, where are your goals? If something
happens, great. If it doesn't happen, you put the squeeze on
them and you move the money around. Overnight things started to
happen. People said gee, they really care about how we do
things, and that will work again, but you have to fight
personnel people.
So I don't know what degree we have made any progress in
the Federal Government. That is not my bailiwick, so I stay out
of it right now. That is the problem. We do need to reward the
purchasing people that are being stolen off. That I do want to
see happen. Also, we need to get rid of a lot of political
appointees and have professionals. I tried that one in 1975.
Some people said we might be in some time. That is crazy. You
want good professionals who make a lifetime of it.
Mr. Cooper. I would like to add one comment to the
discussion on the community college and the hiring of personnel
with 2-year associate degrees, or even nondegree.
The private sector that is doing business with the Federal
Government believes very strongly that Congressman Davis' bill
that requires the Federal Government to enter into contracting
practices to require opportunities in those labor categories
without--for performance without degrees to be passed. That is
an important piece of legislation for us.
Mr. Horn. We carried that through the House the other day.
Bill Gates couldn't have qualified.
Mr. Cooper. It is extremely important because there is a
large group of personnel coming out of the community colleges,
and more importantly maybe is the people who are leaving the
military service that have 4, 8, all of the way up to 20 years
experience and no degree, and we can't place them on a Federal
contract. That is nonsense.
Mr. Horn. Absolutely. So right there are a few statutory
things that we need to work out and not wait until election
night. Let's get this show on the road.
Any other thoughts on this? Do you have any last questions,
counsel?
He thinks that we have not gone far enough. Secretary Upson
mentioned the digital opportunities program being developed by
Virginia as a way to ensure access to the electronic government
for all citizens. What initiatives are underway at the Federal
level to ensure electronic government for all citizens without
regard to education, geographically or disability? Anything
beyond the statutory initiatives that have been managed
earlier? It is a real problem. Income, little kids have laptops
at 4, not every family can afford that. So are we going to have
a digital operation where you have people that are really
impoverished, and they might be able to make the transition to
buy a small laptop. The question is, what do they know about
it?
That is one of the things that we have to do. Money talks.
When you say $60,000 down the line, I think you might get a lot
more people there than we have in the past. That is what is
needed.
Mr. Upson. Mr. Chairman, one of the points on this goals to
personnel issues, maybe just an observation, it is going to be
very difficult for the government to hire qualified people as
long as the technology people are over here and policy people
are over here which, in many ways, is the issue today. As long
as that is the case, medicine will be a different speech than
health care.
I think one of the things, the power at the Federal level,
is we use State government not to build a network, but to bring
together our technology experts and our business leaders, and
we use the power in the Federal Government, both its buying
power and expertise in technology, to bring together the
communications companies, for example. I know President Clinton
was in North Carolina talking about in 3 years he has an
agreement to provide high bandwidth communications in rural
parts of North Carolina.
We did that last December, and were rolling out the
omniband, high bandwidth communications network for any
business in Virginia based on using the power of government to
bring the companies together, and all of the enterprises are
paying the same price so people in northern Virginia are paying
the same as people in counties which are in far southwestern
Virginia.
It is without those building blocks, without those building
blocks, rural America and nobody else is going to participate.
We are going to have a divide where we have opportunity. It
goes back to that point about networks. Canals, networks and
superhighways all have prosperity. This network can be
everywhere and government--I think some of the technology
people in government with executive leadership and coordination
are in the best position to bring about an infrastructure that
will give all of our citizens opportunity, I think, for
generations. That is a different model.
Mr. Horn. Well, I sure empathize with you about rural. I
happened to grow up on a ranch, and in college we all found out
that a lot of us had grown up on farms. We knew how hard it was
to work on a farm, and going to college would get us off that
place.
Mr. Cooper. Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Horn. Mr. Cooper.
Mr. Cooper. I cannot pass up the opportunity to say
something about the part of the country that I come from and
the difficulty that we have in this area. Just across the State
line in Tennessee, the hills of Tennessee and it is atrocious
the situation that we are in. We also, here in the Washington
area, we often make jokes about the Federal Government moving
to West Virginia. There are government contracts, there are
opportunities for moving some of the performance of the Federal
business to these parts of the country. Being the oldest of 12,
the rest of them are still in the hills, they need the
training. It is not just the people of our age, it is the
teachers in the public schools who do not--who are not computer
literate. They don't have the schools wired and they don't know
how to train the kids.
If you look at the industry, whether it be Saturn moving to
Tennessee, there are many industries who are moving industry to
those parts of the country and are doing a good job. The
Federal Government has not done its share.
Mr. Horn. You know, in the Eisenhower administration when I
asked the personnel director where we were getting our supply
of clerical people, they were full-time living in West
Virginia. That got people out of the classrooms to get them up
here to get an education. That was helping West Virginia before
Senator Byrd.
You are right about some places do get favored more than
others.
Mr. McClure. We do have a request in from Congress to look
at that very issue--what are the factors that are influencing
relocation of data centers and virtual service providers,
customer centers in other parts of the country. In today's
environment, they don't necessarily have to be located in the
urban centers. So we have a dialog with some of the members of
our executive council who come from the private sector to look
at what some of those factors are that could be influencing the
relocation of some of the power of the Internet via some of the
call centers and the customer relation centers that you see in
the private sector. We would be happy to share that with you
when we get it done.
Mr. Horn. I would be glad to see it. When President
Eisenhower was in office, he wanted to decentralize the
government in case of bombs, and this was during the cold war,
or anything else that were dropped in Washington, he wanted the
government moved out of range, at least piece by piece. He
wanted it 50 miles, 100 miles, so some things did get moved,
which was good.
Mr. Molaski. Back to the digital divide, Mr. Chairman, I
think that some of the transportation companies are showing us,
such as Ford Motor Co., has given all of its employees access
to the Internet and a computer. American Airlines has also. The
chairman said his payback and his cost to the organization was
less than a year.
I think it is very difficult for us in government to keep
on talking about e-government when some of our employees in
government don't have access to the Internet. If we want them
to think about it in their jobs, how they can use the Internet
to be able to perform better services, they need to be on it
and playing with it.
Likewise, we need to encourage industries to continue the
model that these fine organizations have started.
Mr. Horn. You are absolutely right on that. This
rejuvenates a number of areas, and we have to keep going on
that. We have had a lot of things, in fact, sometimes the grade
is wrong. We had a lot of problems with the--I think it was
Columbus, OH Army processing center on contracts. They had GS-
1s there. I thought that they went out with the Civil War. That
is why they were spewing out contracts for people who didn't
have any orders. That was rather amusing.
But they needed to up the level, and that is what we had to
do. The military is terrific in that. If you want to get a
Ph.D., join the Army. They will send you to Harvard or
Princeton or Long Beach. We need that constant upgrading and
giving people a chance.
I happen to have a small subsidiary of a German firm in my
district, and 8 years ago when I was campaigning for the first
time, I went through there, and if a person logged 1,000 hours
on the computer, the firm would give it to him. He could take
it home or whatever. They taught them computing and those
people have a career now. But it took good management to have
the idea and get people involved and excited about it.
Any other last questions or thoughts you have?
If not, I thank each of you for coming. We deeply
appreciate the work of everyone who worked to put this hearing
together. We have the staff, and I thank J. Russell George,
staff director and chief counsel; Randy Kaplan, counsel; Bonnie
Heald, director of communications; and Bryan Sisk, clerk; Liz
Seong and Michael Soon, interns; and minority staff, Trey
Henderson, counsel; and Jean Gosa, minority clerk; and the
staff from Representative Davis' office, Melissa Wojciak and
Barbara Tempel, and the court reporter is Doreen Dotzler.
[Whereupon, at 3:10 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]