Plan, Demonstrate, Provide Governmentwide E-Mail

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.