5. Professor Katz Helps to Reinvent Government
In the summer of 1993, a group of over 300 government employees, drawn from
all ranks of the Federal work force, participated in a comprehensive review
of the operations of the Federal government. This National Performance Review
(NPR), led by the Vice President, had as its goal to determine how government
could be made more efficient, more responsive, and save money [Gore 93].
Its "inside the Beltway" name was REGO: "REinventing GOvernment,"
and at least for a few months, it was the hottest activity in Washington.
Many political pundits believe that this could be a pivotal issue for the
1996 Presidential elections, and one which seems to have been usurped by
the Republican-led Congress and its "Contract for America." Unlike
previous studies and commissions, led by leaders from outside government,
this one was staffed by the very employees who best knew what does and does
not work in government.
Review teams were established both for individual government agencies and
to examine the issues that cut across all segments of the Federal government.
I was fortunate to have been able to participate in the "Reengineering
Government Through Information Technology" team, one of the components
of the NPR that held the greatest attention of the Vice President. It should
come as no surprise that a critical finding of the NPR is that modern information
technology must be exploited for government to meet the goals of "working
better and costing less."
5.1. Electronic Government for the 21st Century
"Reengineering" has swept forward-looking industry [Hammer 93].
Numerous case studies have indicated that it is not enough to simply computerize
existing work processes; they must be extensively redesigned if the goal
is to achieve maximum efficiency [Tapscott 92]. A critical component of
"reengineering" is to build systems that break down traditional
hierarchical command structures, empowering employees to make their own
decisions with reduced management oversight, and providing them with the
tools to access the information they need to accomplish their job. Part
of the notion of "reengineering" is to trust your suppliers, integrating
them into a firm's manufacturing processes creating a communications network-enabled
"virtual corporation" [Davidow 92]. The Administration has embraced
this "reengineering" manifesto, and through the NPR, has made
sweeping proposals about how to use these ideas to reinvent government [Osborne
93]. It is only fair that the American public should hold the Administration
accountable for how well these proposals have been implemented by the next
election.
The Virtual Agency
The virtual agency concept brings this concept of reengineering the enterprise
to government. Today's government systems are simultaneously duplicative
yet not designed to interoperate effectively. The story is often told of
how a soldier's career record must be completely rekeyed when he or she
retires from the military and enters the rolls of the Veterans Administration.
Each citizen has access to a comprehensive array of benefits, but these
span multiple agencies, making it difficult for any individual to discover
what he or she is really entitled to.
The NPR identified the need for virtual agencies in the following areas.
Integrated electronic benefits transfer: Each year, tens of millions
of Americans receive government services in the form of benefits payments.
Today, these are delivered using traditional paper-based systems. The cost
savings accrued by a completely electronic approach are substantial. The
NPR has recommended the establishment of a nationwide electronics benefits
system that would use direct deposit of benefits and plastic access cards
to integrate the many assistance programs across all Federal agencies.
Integrated electronic access to government information and services:
Just like any other customer-oriented organization, government should provide
quality services in a timely manner. This is not often the case, as any
one who has waited in a line at a government office knows only too well.
The NPR called for an integrated approach to toll-free telephone access,
information kiosks, and on-line libraries of government information. These
electronic services would include "one-stop shopping" for: government-wide
service directories and information locator services, change of address,
requests for forms and publications, tax filing, multimedia and multilingual
service delivery, and public messaging entry stations.
National law enforcement/public safety network: Federal law enforcement
agencies, as well as their state and local counterparts, do not have a single
interoperable communications network. This hampers government's ability
to form public safety task forces rapidly, such as those needed to respond
to a large-scale natural disaster. The NPR recommended that such an interoperable
network be developed, based on modern digital communications technology
and able to transmit both voice and image data.
Intergovernment tax filing, reporting, and payments processing: American
taxpayers use and prepare financial data separately when reporting their
taxes to Federal, state, and local government authorities. It would be much
more efficient to have a single flow of information. Not only will this
reduce the paper work for the taxpayer, it will also eliminate fraud and
abuse by making it possible to correlate information from multiple sources
such as financial institutions, as well as across government. The NPR recommended
the integration of tax processing systems across all levels of government.
It has even been proposed that through electronic filing and communications
networks, the government could collect sufficient financial information
about the taxpayer to bill him or her directly for the taxes due!
International Trade Data System: More than forty Federal agencies
collect, process, analyze, and disseminate information about trade-related
government functions. For example, as many as forty different paper documents
may be needed to obtain approval for a single export shipment. The NPR recommended
the development of a single integrated system. This would provide more accurate
and complete trade statistics, standardize import and export data collection,
reduce processing time and costs, provide better and more timely information
to verify compliance with trade statutes, eliminate redundant forms and
processing, reduce fraud, improve financial controls, and make possible
immediate access to trade data.
National Environmental Data Index: Environmental data is another
example of critical information that is created and maintained, sometimes
in duplicate forms, by multiple government agencies. The NPR recommended
that a single, integrated environmental data index be created across the
Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. These agencies collect vast quantities of information about
biodiversity, environmental data, satellite imagery, and weather and climate
data. Much of this data will now be made available to the citizens who have
already paid for its collection at a marginal addition cost.
Government-wide Electronic Mail: Intergovernment electronic mail
is a key technology to enable the formation of cross-government teams. It
has the power to break down traditional hierarchical structures, and to
make information sharing easier to accomplish. Yet it has been estimated
that only 250,000 Federal employees, roughly 10% of the federal workforce,
have access to electronic mail, and an even smaller number have access to
interagency mail or the Internet. The NPR has recommended that a plan be
developed within two years whose goal will be to have all Federal employees
accessible by electronic mail.
5.2. Support Mechanisms for Electronic Government
For electronic government to be successful, an underlying infrastructure
of technologies and policies are needed. The government's own information
infrastructure forms a crucial portion of the overall NII, and as we have
seen in the previous sections, it is not always state-of-the-art. This "GII"
consists of a seamless, interoperable integration of government networks
and information systems, with protected gateways to other commercial and
research networks. Traditionally the Federal government, like many other
enterprises, has deployed non-interoperable network "islands."
In the spirit of business outsourcing, government is likely to make even
greater use of commercially available services and network connectivity,
and these will be shared among multiple agencies. Policy reforms that are
needed include more rapid procurement of information technology and the
proper training of personnel to exploit it, as well as such pervasive issues
as privacy for the users of the GII and security of its contents.
As greater segments of the population interact with government in electronic
form, enhanced security and privacy mechanisms will be a critical, pervasive
need. When all benefits are distributed electronically, there will be opportunities
for fraud on an unprecedented scale. And with many aspects of a person's
life captured in electronic databases managed by the government, the need
to provide safeguards against improper access will be extremely high. The
NPR has called for the establishment of an independent Privacy Protection
Board, to formulate privacy safeguards to be implemented by Federal agencies.
Everyone is familiar with the rapid rate of change in computer technology.
It is not uncommon for leading edge industries to replace their capital
investment in computers every two to three years. This is much more difficult
to do in government procurements, because of the layers of management oversight
and the rigid regulatory environment. The NPR has recommended a thorough
redesign of information technology procurement, including increasing the
dollar amounts of items that can be procured without special oversight,
and encouraging the use of government credit cards for small purchases and
the more aggressive use of electronic commerce and on-line bulletin boards
for government procurement.
It is one of the main tenets of the reengineering approach that those who
save money by an innovation be able to gain from it. The NPR has made numerous
recommendations to provide incentives for electronic government. For examples,
agencies will be able to retain a portion of their savings form reinvestment
in new technologies. Some of the savings will be retained by the Federal
government as a "venture capital fund," to provide a source of
funding for innovative information technology projects.
The best technology is of no value if the workforce is not knowledgeable
in its use. It is therefore paramount that investments in technology be
matched by investment in technical training systems. The NPR has called
for training and certification programs in information technology for all
senior managers and political appointees. In addition, all new information
technology procurements should include some funding for training as well.
Furthermore, the Administration wants to exploit information technology
to circumvent the traditional hierarchical organizational structures of
government. From its earliest days, the Administration has a strong preference
for interdisciplinary teams as a mechanism for drafting legislation. The
Health Care Task Force, the National Performance Review, the Information
Infrastructure Task Force are all examples of interdisciplinary teams that
could only be made possible through the use of e-mail and network-based
exchange of documents to promote horizontal coordination. In addition to
these highly visible tasks, other examples of interagency coordination include
the Office of Science and Technology Policy and various agency science and
technology directors, the Cabinet Secretaries and their agency Chiefs of
Staffs, the National Economic Council and policy makers throughout the federal
government, and various trade policy, technology policy, and economic policy
working groups.
A critical challenge for government is to have computing and communications
where it is needed, and being able to purchase what you need when you need
it. Only a relatively small percentage of the Federal workforce has access
to the kind of email systems that always them to communicate with Federal
workers in other agencies. Furthermore, it is crucial to resolve the controversies
around the federal records laws, i.e., what electronic records need to be
archived and accessed, as well as the security and privacy issues. The government
has already discovered that the key is interoperability and the wide availability
of off-the-shelf technology, and has stepped back from an earlier commitment
to the failed OSI GOSSIP standards. In addition, the Administration recognizes
the need to move away from the old culture of centralized, hierarchical
organizations.
5.3. The NPR in Action: The Electronic Town Hall Meeting
One of the key tenets of the National Performance Review was that information
technology can empower government employees, giving them greater participation
in setting rules and procedures. To test this idea, the National Performance
Review (http://www.npr.gov) established NetResults, an on-line discussion
forum in which government employees could share ideas and success stories
of how they have reengineered the processes of government.
As in many on-line news and chat groups, conversations were organized into
threads closely associated with the structure of each of the major NPR reports.
Each report contained a list of high level recommendations, further elaborated
into specific recommendations. For example, the "Reengineering Government
Through Information Technology" Report includes high level recommendations
with titles like "Integrate Information Technology Into Government,"
"Integrated Electronic Benefits Transfer," and "Integrated
Electronic Access to Government Information and Services." Under the
former recommendation are more detailed recommendations, such as "Plan,
Demonstrate, Provide Governmentwide E-mail." Participants could post
a note via electronic mail that either Agreed with the recommendation, Disagreed
with it, or offered an Alternative idea about what the recommendation should
be or how it could be implemented. Such tagged comments could also be used
to respond to any of the posted comments. A participant could also post
a Question or a Promising Practice. Each thread of comments could be accessed
via the World Wide Web, with attractive icons to identify the kind of tag.
The system was developed for the National Performance Review by the MIT
Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, under my sponsorship at ARPA.
More than 4000 government employees participated in an experimental version
of this Electronic Town Hall during the summer and fall of 1994. It was
a successful "proof of concept" that has since led to wider scale
efforts to engage in the public in on-line forums of this kind. In May,
the Government Information Policy Working Group of the IITF sponsored an
Open Electronic Town Hall Meeting, wherein the public could comment on how
government could be more effective in its interaction with the citizenry.
More than 100,000 people visited the on-line forum, 10,000 participated,
and more than 3000 comments were generated.
[Prev] [Top]
[Next]
Randy H. Katz, randy@cs.Berkeley.edu, Last Updated: 20 December
95