Plan, Demonstrate, and Provide Governmentwide Electronic Mail Faster Than a Speeding Bullet(in) Imagine this: A citizen walks into a government office for job counseling and information on training programs. Unfortunately, the local counselor is not familiar with her particular job category. He sends an e-mail message to an expert at the regional office. A few minutes later, the counselor is sharing a detailed reply from this expert with the jobseeker. In fact, he gives her an e-mail address she can use to continue to communicate with the expert from her home computer. In 1969, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (Arpanet) was created so that researchers at universities and other facilities might share data and computational resources.[1] Soon these scientists developed ways to use the network to transmit messages, known today as electronic mail or "e-mail." Universities and regional networks then connected their own systems to Arpanet, creating Internet. Today, this cooperative network of networks links millions of computers throughout the world. Moreover, e-mail on Internet and other networks has become an important tool for industry and a growing market driver for commercial networks and software suppliers. E-mail has many applications. It provides rapid communications among individuals or groups. Workers in an organization, within a building or throughout the world, can use e-mail over local area networks, telephone lines, or specialized data networks such as Internet for easy, rapid interaction. The delays and frustrations of "telephone tag" disappear, and many people can simultaneously interact. In effect, workers can assemble and interact as teams without concern for location. E-mail permits easy access across agencies and bureaucratic boundaries. As such, it breaks down barriers to information sharing. This can be as important within an agency as across agency boundaries. Barriers to vertical communications are lowered by removing hierarchical controls to communications. E-mail can also minimize the need for personnel transfers or expensive temporary assignments. For example, 53 engineers at Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)--spread across Massachusetts, Arizona, Colorado, Singapore, and Germany--collaborated on a design project but had never met and had talked on the phone rarely. DEC estimates that this group finished its project one year sooner, and needed 40 percent fewer people, than a team assembled in one building.[2] E-mail is also cost-effective. According to Hewlett-Packard's calculations, a two-page electronic mail message between any two HP employees worldwide cost on average $0.22; a letter $0.51, and a fax $1.66.[3] And e-mail is faster than all other methods, especially when more than one addressee is included. The infrastructure needed for supporting e-mail is widely in place in universities and research establishments; most agencies that do business with universities--notably those supporting research and education--are major users. Agencies with e-mail capability use it for rapid interaction with the public. Some have incorporated e-mail into processes for grant and contract proposal reviews, saving the time and expense of conventional mail for receipt of comments from expert reviewers of proposals. Using e-mail, agencies working jointly on national research initiatives, such as the High Performance Computing and Communications Program and the U.S. Global Change Research Program, "meet" and exchange information needed to manage complex cooperative programs. As the infrastructure, personal computers, user-friendly software, and telephone-based access have grown, some agencies have opened facilities for general interaction with the public. Need for Change Presently, over a dozen agencies, and (experimentally) the White House and parts of both Houses of Congress are "on-line." Ultimately, most federal employees should be reachable by e-mail. However, much work needs to be done before this can happen. Issues of standards and compatibility must be resolved. Additionally, many agencies desire applications that are still not fully developed, such as file transfers and multimedia mail. Many agencies have electronic mail, but few make it available throughout an agency or use it to maximum advantage. The federal government as a whole has an often incompatible mix of systems. As the utility of linking internal systems together to conduct agency business became apparent (and linking agency internal systems with more global systems), several ad hoc interagency groups were formed to examine various problems related to implementation. However, none of these groups has the authoritative charters to accomplish the myriad tasks that must be completed to optimize e-mail use. In addition, several potential barriers of "traditional practice" must be dealt with. The most difficult is a lack of understanding about the various potential uses of e-mail. In addition, messages created in the e-mail environment are treated by senders and receivers in much the same way as telephone conversations--privileged personal communications. But messages, unlike telephone calls, are inherently archival, which introduces records management, security, and privacy concerns. The Federal Records Act (FRA) requires that agencies document work that is used to transact official business--regardless of the medium. Because official agency business will be conducted over electronic mail systems, agencies must take steps to ensure that the recordkeeping requirements of the FRA are met. Guidance for agencies in meeting this requirement is not adequate and should be strengthened and extended to reflect changes in records management, privacy, and computer security. Endnotes 1. Arpanet was established by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense. 2. Perry, Tekla S., and John A. Adam, "E-mail: Pervasive and Persuasive," IEEE Spectrum (October 1992), p. 24. 3. Ibid., p. 26.
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