Integrate Information Technology Into Government

Provide Clear, Strong Leadership to Integrate Information Technology
Into the Business of Government

Making the Vision a Reality

Reinventing government is an enormous, complex undertaking that begins
with leadership, not technology. Yet information technology (IT)-
-because it can help break down bureau and agency boundaries--can be a
powerful tool for reinvention. Its use requires both a clear vision of
how government can benefit from technology to change the way it does
business, and a commitment to making the vision a reality. Only good
leadership, which combines vision and commitment, can ensure sound
investments in IT to support the redesign of federal business practices.

The Clinton administration has made expanded use of IT a national goal;
its efforts in achieving this goal are two-pronged.

-Creating a National Vision-

To accelerate the development of the National Information
Infrastructure, the National Economic Council and the Office of Science
and Technology Policy have created a committee--the Information
Infrastructure Task Force--to coordinate the administration's efforts to
formulate forward-looking telecommunications and information policies.
This task force, chaired by the Secretary of Commerce and consisting of
deputy-level representatives of relevant federal departments, will
articulate and implement the President's vision of a nationwide system
in which all Americans can exchange and receive information when and
where they need it at a reasonable cost.

-Improving Federal IT Practices-

The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 gives the Office of Management and
Budget's (OMB's) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA)
governmentwide responsibility for providing leadership in information
management. The act also charges a senior official within each
agency--reporting directly to the agency head--to provide agency- level
leadership in this area. With proper vision and direction, these
officials could fulfill their potential as agents of change, using
information technology to help reinvent their agencies' approach to
their mission.

Need for Change

The federal government's attempt to integrate information technology
into the systems supporting its operations have produced some successes-
-and some costly failures. Despite spending an estimated $25 billion in
fiscal year 1993 on information technology, the federal government has
lacked the strong and effective leadership required to ensure that
government makes the most of these resources.[1] We have operated
without any overall, enterprisewide strategic plan or vision of the role
of information systems in government, and with little or no regard for
connections among various federal agencies, or with state and local
governments. Many agency heads and federal executives continue to
overlook IT's strategic role in reengineering business practices.
Agency information resource managers typically lack the tools or the
opportunity to be effective partners with top executives in developing
strategies to use technology effectively. Too often, agency information
resource management (IRM) plans and agency strategic plans are not
integrated. Without clear direction and support from the top,
modernization programs tend to degenerate into loose collections of
independent systems solving unique problems and automating--rather than
improving upon--the existing ways of doing business. For example, three
bureaus in the Department of Agriculture were to share a computer system
to improve the management of food acquisition and price support
programs.  However, 5 years after work on the system had begun, no
mechanism had been established to resolve disagreements that arose in
testing, installation, and maintenance.[2]

The oversight community--OMB, the General Services Administration (GSA),
congressional committees, the Inspectors General, and the General
Accounting Office (GAO)--often aggravates this situation by
overemphasizing specific details such as the acquisition costs of
individual IT projects rather than assessing the overall impact on
productivity. Instead, effective oversight should foster the analysis of
work processes and formulation of strategic plans that integrate
information technology with agency missions. Oversight agencies are in
an excellent position, given their independent status, to identify and
promote opportunities for cross-agency sharing of capabilities.

In particular, OIRA is charged under the Paperwork Reduction Act to
provide leadership and oversight for the information resources
management activities of federal agencies.  Historically, OIRA has
placed more emphasis on regulatory and paperwork review responsibilities
than on leadership and information policy. The Administrator of OIRA is
committed to improving OIRA's performance in the information area.[3]
The seeds of change have been sown. Nurturing them will require
resources and expertise from the central agencies, and a new partnership
between OIRA, GSA, and the agencies.

In a few cases where oversight agencies have attempted coordination,
the results have been positive. For example, in 1988, OMB analyzed the
use of information technology by the Customs Service, the Immigration
and Naturalization Service (INS), and the State Department to check the
names of persons entering the United States against a master list.
Finding duplication of effort and little sharing of information, OMB
worked with the agencies to create the Interagency Border Inspection
System (IBIS), jointly funded and operated by the three agencies. IBIS
allowed Customs and INS to redesign their work processes. INS agents now
conduct all name checks, freeing Customs agents to inspect
baggage--thereby improving enforcement and speeding the processing of
legitimate transfers.

An even more powerful example of successful coordination has been the
work of the High Performance Computing, Communications, and Information
Technology Subcommittee which coordinates the multi-agency High
Performance Computing and Communications Initiative. By coordinating and
sharing resources and expertise among 12 federal agencies, this
interagency working group, under the leadership of the White House
Office of Science and Technology Policy, has created a $784 million
program that is expanding the nation's computing capabilities.[4] This,
and other programs, should be models for the type of coordination across
government to realize IT's full potential in reinventing government.

Endnotes

1. U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Information Resources
Management Plan of the Federal Government (Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office [GPO], 1992), p. 3.

2. U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Government Operations,
Subcommittee on Government Information, Justice, and Agriculture,
hearing on"Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service Computer
Systems: Building Another Hubble?," September 18, 1990.

3. Katzen, Sally, Administrator of OMB/OIRA, confirmation testimony
before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, May 14, 1993.  4
President William J. Clinton and Vice President Albert Gore, Jr., A
Vision of Change for America (Washington, D.C.: U.S. GPO, 1993), p. 54.

Implement Electronic Government

Introduction

Citizens and government workers contend with an increasingly complicated
array of federal agencies, organizations, processes, and forms. The
existing service delivery system is largely based on hierarchical design
structures developed in the 1930s. The result is slow, inefficient
service that may not satisfy actual customer needs.  The information
needed for sound decisionmaking and high-quality customer service is
not coordinated across government agencies, thus increasing cost and
time to provide services.  In short, today's government structures,
processes, and business practices, which were designed for a different
era, cannot keep up with the existing types and volumes of customer
demands.

Information technology will be the key to providing more cost- effective
and user-friendly government services.  Industry examples illustrate how
exploiting technology can provide superior customer service,
significantly decrease costs, increase quality, and improve overall
effectiveness and competitiveness.  Successful applications of
information technology also can be found in federal, state, and local
government.  Moreover, the Office of Management and Budget estimates
that by the year 2000, approximately 75 percent of public transactions
will be processed electronically.[1]

The requirement to address ever-more-constrained operating budgets makes
integration of information technology into all phases of the federal
workforce vital to meeting service demands of the American public.

Information technology must not be applied haphazardly or sporadically.
It also must not be used simply to automate existing practices. Instead,
information technology must be seen as the essential infrastructure for
the government of the 21st century--a modernized electronic government.

Electronic government will allow citizens broader and more timely access
to information and services through efficient, customer- responsive
processes--thereby creating a fundamental revision in the relationship
between the federal government and everyone served by it.  Electronic
government will enable the creation of "virtual agencies" that will give
citizens access to integrated program information and services organized
around service "themes" (e.g., unemployment assistance), rather than
bureaucratic--and often idiosyncratic-- structures. In a virtual agency,
several interconnected federal organizations will be able to provide
information and services in a seamless manner.

In electronic government, high-speed telecommunications links
(information highways) will carry the data necessary to support
governmental operations. These information highways will connect
federal, state, and local governments, and help form a National
Information Infrastructure (NII) made up of public and private
transmission circuits and information services. Existing components of
the NII include the nation's telecommunications carriers; Internet,
which serves both government and private sector as a pathway for
electronic mail and data; public libraries; and the electronic
settlement services that support the automated teller machines and
credit cards that facilitate the flow of funds nationwide.

A conceptual subset of the NII is the government's information
infrastructure, the portion of the NII used exclusively by the
government. It is composed of all the electronic services and paths that
support government operations, such as the computer systems that
facilitate the payment of monthly Social Security benefits, the FTS2000
telecommunications systemthe federal government uses for voice and data
communications, internal networks run by individual government agencies,
and the wealth of data and information that the government makes
available.

The following seven initiatives, which NPR proposes implementing on a
fully operational or pilot basis, would facilitate and expand
government's use of the NII. These initiatives are highlighted because
work is already in progress on their development and they offer
significant payback opportunities:

---integrated electronic benefit transfer,

---integrated electronic access to government information and services,

---National Law Enforcement/Public Safety Network,

---intergovernmental tax filing, reporting, and payments processing,

---International Trade Data System,

---National Environmental Data Index, and

---governmentwide electronic mail.

Endnotes

1. U.S. General Accounting Office, Comptroller General's 1989 Annual
Report: Facing Facts (Washington, D.C.: U.S. General Accounting Office,
1990), p. 28.