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This workshop series is part of an overall strategy to use information technology as an enabler of reinventing government. The Vice President's reinventing government team and the federal agencies serving the public already are reaping benefits of using information technology to reinvent government.
"These technologies allow our government to increase its efficiency," said the Vice President. "With these workshops, government agencies will build on their successes of using the Internet to reinvent how they serve customers. In the past year alone, there has been an explosive growth in the amount of government services delivered to the public using the World Wide Web."
The U.S. Business Advisor (http://www.business.gov), announced by the Vice President in February 1996, is a one-stop Internet site for business to access the information, services, and transactions they need from the federal government. The Internal Revenue Service's industry award-winning Web site (http://www.irs.ustreas.gov) was immensely popular this year, with customers downloading more than 2.5 million forms and publications. The Social Security Administration's PEBES service (http://www.ssa.gov) allows customers to complete a form online requesting a statement of their Social Security earnings along with an estimate of their future benefits. In the past, customers had to call or visit the Social Security Administration to get the form.
Now the federal government is using internet technology to simplify its internal administrative functions like supply procurement, electronic for submission, directory assistance and others, these are "intranets."
To help the federal government find ways to work better and cost less, American corporations are sharing their experiences with information technology to this workshop series. Representatives from Eli Lilly, Federal Express, John Deere, and Visa International agreed to speak about the use of computer models for internal operations, or "intranets."
Teams representing federal agencies will select "intranet" applications that will be developed to improve performance and efficiency. NPR estimates that within a few months, these initial intranet applications will be running and, within a year, the intranet idea will be in widespread use by federal agencies.