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Talking
with the Champions: Gayle F. Gordon, Interior
December 3, 1998
by Sareen R. Gerson
Federal Communicators Network
Gayle Gordon designed and developed large statistical systems for
the Bureau of Labor Statistics, then moved on to manage a nationwide
network
for the U. S. Geological Survey. She is now Assistant Director for
Information Resources Management at Interior's Bureau of Land
Management. But she also wears another hat. As chair of the Information
Technology Innovation Fund, she is Vice President Al Gore's champion for
innovative uses of information technology. The Fund allots seed money to
encourage new uses for IT and improve its cost effectiveness and service
delivery. The Fund committee favors projects that will have multi-agency
or
nation-wide impact.
Four years into the IT Innovation Fund program, Gordon says that
most of the annual proposals have been for new uses of existing technology
to do government's business better and improve services to the public. But
along with that, some very exciting leading edge technology has gone from
the planning boards to real time trials. For example, Gordon said, going
down her growing list, there's ALERT.
Smart Squad Cars
A hand-held wireless computer is making a big difference to police
officers in Alexandria VA, where the ALERT (Advanced Law Enforcement and
Response Technology) system developed by the Texas Transportation
Institute
at Texas A&M is about to be piloted under one of the IT Innovation Fund
grants. ALERT provides for vehicles with enhanced, advanced, and
integrated
mobile telecommunications. Using specially equipped police squad cars,
Alexandria police officers can send and receive all kinds of digital
information, including digital photographs and composite drawings.
Data communications are maintained between a hand-held wireless
computer, a dashboard mounted touch screen that controls all the vehicle's
emergency response functions -- lights, sirens, video cameras, Global
Positioning System coordinates, radio, radar, and Computer-Aided Dispatch
systems. (ALERT is a joint effort of the Department of Justice, Federal
Highway Administration, the Office of Science and Technology, Department
of
Treasury, with support from the National Institute of Justice in the form
of
an integrated mobile telecommunications control network. The field
testing
is being conducted by the Alexandria, Virginia, Police Department and the
International Associations of Chiefs of Police.)
Police can access information immediately and get more of it than
ever before, identify individuals and their records, and, in accident
situations, interface swiftly with medical and emergency response teams.
Officers using the integrated system have reduced their data collection
time
by 20 to 50 percent. They can enter data electronically at an accident or
crime scene: all the citation and accident forms are stored in the
hand-held
unit. Best of all, computer in hand, an officer doesn't need to turn his
back on the scene to go back to his squad car to pick up responses to his
queries for information. Complete and timely information, available on
site
and on the road, can mean the difference between public safety and public
peril -- not to mention a greater return on taxpayer dollars invested in
the
criminal justice system.
Innovation Programs
The ALERT pilot is just one of a host of projects that Gayle Gordon
is shepherding through to completion and, hopefully, self-sustaining
results. From the annual call for proposals through complex planning
processes, gatherings of multi-agency teams, coordinated pilots, tracking,
encouraging, and weathering the usual ups and downs that accompany
experimentation, it's a tall order, indeed. These ongoing efforts are
going
on all over the country, in different stages of development. Involving a
wide range of federal programs, they all make use of high tech in one way
or
another to make things work a lot better than they ever have before -- and
to do some things we've never thought possible.
It all started with the recommendation, in one of the September 1993
"accompanying reports" of the National Performance Review, to "create
innovation funds." The federal budget process simply isn't flexible
enough
for investments in innovation -- for one thing, the timing is out of
whack.
Money never seems to be there when new ideas are ready to fly. But other
ways of encouraging entrepreneurs had been found, in both government and
private sector organizations ... working capital funds, innovation capital
funds, matching funds for cross-agency projects.
Before the year was up, support for an IT Innovation Fund had been
agreed upon. One percent of the annual income of the FTS2000 long
distance
telecommunications program (monies paid to the General Services
Administration by federal agencies) would be dedicated to innovative IT
federal agency projects. Thirteen projects were selected for funding in
FY95, at a total of $5,015,000. By FY98, more than $6M became available.
Though some projects affect only one or two federal or federal and local
programs, some are crossing international lines.
International Trade Data System
Why should any company trying to export or import goods across our
borders have to deal with an ocean of paperwork required by multiple
Federal agencies, or spend $200 or more for each transaction?
That's the way it's been, for decades. Anyone with an interest in
international trade has
to deal with as many as 14 different processes, obtain approval from all
the
agencies involved, fill out duplicative forms. For a single export
shipment, as many as 40 different paper documents may be required -- not
just for Customs, but, for certain foreign trade transactions, the Fish
and
Wildlife Service, EPA, Transportation, and others. Not only has the
private
sector suffered this burden, federal agencies that need instantly
accessible
import/export data to fulfill their own missions also have to network each
request.
Fact is, it's no longer good enough to "go with the flow" --
today's flourishing commerce demands staying ahead of it. "We need to stop
delaying trucks at the Canadian border, or at Laredo," says Gordon. A
Customs official should be able to evaluate a shipment before it arrives
at
the border, where most trucks could be waved on through.
When the International Trade Data System is up and running, that's
exactly what will happen. ITDS is a very large project begun with
Innovation
Fund seed money and a project office at Treasury. Involved agencies have
been working on the project for five years. An automated one-stop system,
the ITDS will provide a single collection point for all the information
required by more than 100 federal agencies for processing international
trade. Instead of needing to fill out separate paper forms for
immigration,
customs and other agencies dealing with the driver, the truck and the
cargo,
one ITDS form will be filed on-line. Trade procedures, statistics,
licensing, promotion, and standards for data elements and transmission
will
all be covered. The system will save time as well as money for importers,
exporters, brokers, carriers and the feds themselves. And a single
communications network would link all the law enforcement agencies
concerned
with importation of drugs, hazardous materials and other contraband -- an
added benefit of substantial streamlining.
System completion is crucial for the simple reason that the 15-year
old Automated Commercial System (ACS) now in use is on its last legs,
according to Customs officials. Customs needs to update ACS and keep it
running while they complete work on the ITDS and also implement ACE (the
Automated Commercial Environment), but so far only a small fraction of the
$1.2 billion to do this has been appropriated. At a public hearing held in
Washington on November 5 to discuss the recently issued draft ITDS
architecture/design report, private-sector and trade association officials
praised the concept of one-stop online filing and processing. A big
challenge right now, Gordon says, is how to bring all the federal
agencies
on board. And there is, of course, the huge funding question. The
Innovation
Fund seed money can go only so far, beyond planning, to get the system
started. With core development and management costs that are expected to
run to more than $250 million, the administration plans to request funds
in
its FY2000 budget proposal. Eventually, all the involved agencies will
need
to invest in the system.
One Stop for Grants
Another "one stop" system being funded is the Secure Electronic
Grants System project being piloted by the project office at
Transportation's Federal Highway Administration. Grant applications will
be
possible over the internet, and applicants will use one common application
form, greatly simplifying the grant application process. Seven agencies
worked with DOT in developing the pilot system in cooperation with ten
grants customers; 15 agencies have been involved in testing conducted
during the past year. The new system is paperless; low cost, and user
friendly. Administration data entered a single time is reused for all
grants. Encryption and digital signatures through the use of the Secure
Sockets Layer (SSL) and smartcards ensure authentic transactions, and
there's no need for applicants to load special software.
Geographic Cancer Patterns
Maps of geographical problem areas for cancer, heart disease, and
stroke have been published for years in paper form. Cancer atlases
particularly have been published in many countries as part of a
considerable
world-wide effort to help suggest possible explanations for geographical
patterns of the disease. Hard copy volumes published by NIH in 1975,
1976,
1987, and 1990 have allowed researchers to explore the associations
between
varous environmental factors and the development of cancer among members
of
specific populations in defined areas during certain periods. Such
information, expert oncology researchers tell us, is "incredibly useful --
and incredibly difficult to pull together."
Now, with the help of an IT Innovation Fund award, this important
tool for medical research is coming to the world wide web. Based on data
from the National Center for Health Statistics (Centers for Disease
Control
and Prevention, HHS), the Biostatistics Branch at the National Institutes
of
Health is preparing a website that will display 146 maps from their new
Atlas of Cancer Mortality for black and white Americans during the period
1970-92.
The Internet atlas maps will be very specific -- for example, one
map shows mortality rates by State Economic Area for breast cancer among
white women between 1970 and 1992. Similar maps for more than 30
different
kinds of cancer will be displayed by race and sex, and will be shown by
county whenever possible. Downloadable files will facilitate printing the
maps in color or black and white.
The hard copy maps have already provided many important leads for
cancer research; their availability on the Internet can only help speed
the
process.
For more information on the more than 40 projects selected by the
IT Innovation Fund since FY 1995, readers may want to visit the Government
Information Technology Services Board website, at http://gits.gov/htm/itfund.htm.
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