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Bill Would Alleviate Constraints, Let Customs Use Paper Records Two congressmen are sponsoring a bill that might alleviate the legal constraints inhibiting automation of Customs Service paperwork. Rep. Bill Frenzel […]

IRS Awaiting Bids for Processing Payments, Paper The Internal Revenue Service is depending on vendors to come up with a system for automated processing of the flood of paper forms […]

Procurement Process 'Broken' And Stalling IRS Modernization Existing technology could modernize the tax system, but the federal procurement process is impeding progress, the head of the Internal Revenue Service said. […]

This article offers a look at the automation project started by the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) in late 2003. The agency's technology executives promised they could meet the June 2005 deadline despite reservations expressed by systems auditors at the Government Accountability Office (GAO). In reports released in March and July 2004, GAO auditors stated that the accelerated schedule could produce disastrous results. SSA officials call the case folder the centerpiece of automated claims processing. Most medical offices and clinics keep patients' medical records on paper. This practice is a national problem that has contributed to excessive health care costs according to Robert Kolodner, acting deputy chief information officer for health at the Department of Veterans Affairs. To digitize medical records for the electronic disability folders of SSA, agency officials have contracted with Affiliated Computer Services Inc. to scan medical records submitted on paper and transmit them digitally via a secure network to the agency's centralized image databases in Baltimore, Maryland. Bill Gray, deputy commissioner for systems at SSA remarked that the agency has experienced dramatic processing efficiencies from receiving digitized medical evidence directly from physicians.

This article discusses the possible implications of using direct recording electronic (DRE) machines in the upcoming U.S. Presidential election in November 2004. In many ways, politics in the U.S. are unlike those in Venezuela. The South American nation held a recall election in August 2004 for President Hugo Chavez, who survived an attempted coup in 2002. But in another sense, the election may foreshadow the upcoming election in this country. The Venezuelan vote was conducted using electronic voting machines that generate a voter-verified paper trail. Chavez's opposition claimed that the victory, in which 59 percent voted to keep Chavez in power, was rigged. But international election monitors were able to conduct an audit by comparing the paper record to the electronic vote tallies. The Venezuelan referendum is just one more chapter in the controversy over DRE machines, most of which use a touch screen to record votes. A U.S. company, Smartmatic Corp., made the machines used in Venezuela. Each machine has a built-in printer to create a paper record. Another U.S. company, AccuPoll Inc., also makes direct recording electronic machines with built-in printers. Other vendors, mostly basing their products on older technologies, are trying to add printers to some models, with mixed results. INSET: Nevada elects to have paper trail.

This article looks at the law-tracking system used by the government of Bermuda to monitor the evolution of legislation which could serve as a model for how the U.S. government might improve efforts to record and track the status of prospective laws. In Bermuda's government, staffers depend on rudimentary practices for managing the work of making laws. They must call legislative officials about their bills and then record information through paper-based logs. They share Microsoft Excel files or paper documents to view the development of initiatives. But that process as about to change now that Bermuda government officials have bought a government-wide automated bill-tracking system. Legislative staffers will be able to view lists of who has not commented on legislation and send them electronic mail reminders. The system is not designed to provide access to the content of the law rather it is designed to provide a mechanism for recording and logging progress on the work associated with devising a piece of legislation, starting with the concept and ending with an act of law. Bermuda has a public Web site where people can view the final versions of the laws but the site does not show the status of pending legislation or the history of enacted laws. INSET: Bermuda's bill-tracking machinery.

This article reports on the government-wide implementation of online E-Travel System (ETS) in the U.S. as of July 5, 2004. Several agencies have awarded task orders to implement ETS, and soon, officials will begin transforming the travel reservation and approval process. Prior to ETS, travel management in agencies was very decentralized. Many government agencies used outdated paper-intensive planning, vouchering and reimbursement processes. The goal behind ETS is to make travel reservations and approvals more efficient and cost-effective by creating a fully automated management system. In May 2004, officials at the U.S. General Services Administration, which is the lead agency for the initiative, approved three vendors to provide the travel service: CW Government Travel Inc. of San Antonio; EDS of Fairfax, Virginia; and Northrop Grumman Mission Systems of Fairfax. After the testing period, the companies were awarded 10-year contracts totaling $450 million and are accepting agency task orders. The solutions' features vary among the vendors, but each includes several requisite capabilities, from automated travel planning to reimbursement data and reporting. Agency officials must choose a solution by the end of the year. By the end of 2006, every agency is expected to use an automated travel management system.

The article focuses on the patent automation problems of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Jon Dudas, directors of the agency, told congressional auditors that he does not plan to further reassess the agency's patent automation plans, despite a critical audit and recommendations that USPTO fix what the auditors called ad hoc management practices. A Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit, released June 17, 2005, states that USPTO officials violated many of the Clinger-Cohen Act's information technology management principles in an effort to develop an automated patent system. Dudas disputed that conclusion. In his written response to GAO, he defended the agency's Web-based patent filing and document imaging system as offering vastly improved capabilities Compared with previous paper-based procedures for filing and processing patents. GAO auditors said that performance problems with the agency's automated patent systems stem in large part from management decisions that former director James Rogan made in 2002 under congressional pressure to move quickly on automating patent filing and processing. USPTO officials told GAO auditors that they recognize sufficient problems in the Image File Wrapper document imaging system that they plan to begin replacing it in September 2005.

This article provide information on a study, conducted by the Merit Systems Protection Board, which concluded that automated hiring systems could help human resources officers search for qualified U.S. federal job candidates. The study states that automation could cut the costs and delays of paper-based hiring. The primary reason for automating the hiring process is to reduce the time between applying and hiring. Automated systems eliminate much human labor by distributing job information electronically, accepting online applications, assessing applicants and notifying applicants of the outcome of the hiring process, according to the study. Researchers found that automated systems also tend to be more consistent and less biased than human examiners. Before automated hiring was introduced, the process of filling a government position allegedly took months. But with the use of software and Web portals, applicants are allowed to apply online instantly and reduce time involved in the process. Steve Nelson, director of the board's Policy and Evaluation Office, said automated hiring allows agency officials to create progressive hurdles, attract increased number of applicants and select the best candidates.

IN 1990, FORMS generation vendors pitched their products as a simple method of helping sites save time and money by bringing paper-based forms onto the computer. In 1994, however, forms […]

A goal of NASA's documentation project is to keep paper from cluttering space missions At NASA, if technology can't advance science or save lives, it better reduce costs and increase […]

The Agriculture Department reinventing the food stamp program. Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy last month urged states to adopt an electronic food stamp benefits method instead of paper coupons to cut […]

Financial EDI Combines Payments With Paperwork To Save Your Business Time And Money Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) are drawing a lot of attention lately. They […]

The technology necessary for the electronic delivery of post-secondary and continuing education has been available for some time. Yet many college and university administrators and faculty remain reluctant to accept […]

CAI and Interactive Video Enhance Students' Scores on the College Level Academic Skills Test Interactive video, which involves the merging of the microcomputer with video techniques, is one of the […]

New Developments in Planning and Control Have Short-Term Solutions Pitted Against Long-Term Goals Manufacturing planning and control software is going through some interesting permutations. On one hand, it's addressing the […]

EFFICIENCY IS the Holy Grail for any manager, MIS managers included. In its usual role as a support function rather than a profit maker, a data center is a natural […]

BAR-CODING HAS been somewhat of a plain stepchild in the family of computer technologies. Unlike its more glamorous counterparts, which aspire to changing a corporation through strategic planning and other […]

People who can move comfortably in and across the worlds of high technology and education are valuable and in high demand because there are so few of them. It is […]

Pity the poor helpdesk. No one cares when the system performs well. But as soon as there's a glitch, everybody faults helpdesk. Fortunately, the long-term prognosis for helpdesk is good. […]

The Defense Department is not the only federal agency singing the praises of corporate Information Management. The Department of Veterans Affairs has adopted many of the tenets of DOD's CIM […]

A major Central Intelligence Agency directorate is ushering in a new era of computing perestroika, throwing over its mainframe systems and dedicated word processors for 386 and 486 micros running […]

Prairie Vista Elementary, part of the Peno-Harris-Madison School Corporation, nestles amidst native grasses, a lake and even a little house on the prairie' in Granger, Indiana, near South Bend. This […]

Not long ago, the Customs Service's Automated Commercial System was the target of serious allegations of mismanagement and flawed technology. But offcials in charge of the system now say ACS […]

Earlier this year, some Army National Guard officials considered killing the $1 billion Reserve Component Automation System project, according to Army memos and other documents obtained by GCN. Maj. Gen. […]

RS Uses Matching to Identify Tax Evaders As most people mailed last-minute checks to the Internal Revenue Service this month, another 8 million people likely chose not to file income […]

IRS Wants Electronic Payments Come April 15, 200 million tax returns will flood the Internal Revenue Service, which remains in the throes of its massive modernization effort. One thrust of […]

FEDSIM Leader Pondering Automation The move to automated data center operations should be gradual, said the head of the Federal Facilities Management Support Center. John R. Ortego of the General […]

DEA's System Is Waging Back-Door War on Drugs When Gene R. Haislip needs to explain his favorite computer system, he tells how it helped Drug Enforcement Administration agents shut down […]

Mapping Project Will Scan the Depths of the Ocean The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has begun work on an automated navigational system to better chart chart ocean terrain. The […]

IRS Readies a Plan to Revamp Aging Tax System After nearly 10 years of planning, several false starts and a series of senior-level information resources management reorganizations, the Internal Revenue […]

Army's Internal Wars Hinder RCAS System The Army went to war against itself in late 1982. It was a bureaucratic battle with a $500 million computer system at its center. […]

Networked Minis Help Air Force Cope With Staffing With a network of minicomputers that could be worth $480 million when it is completed, the Air Force is managing its civil […]

The Social Security Administration is poised to release a request for proposals for up to 90,000 workstations, the agency's senior IRM official said last week. SSA will release the RFP […]

Come July 1, the Education Department will distribute student loans directly to eligible students at 105 colleges and universities, using a new automated system. Congress authorized the Federal Direct Student […]

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is striving to give state and local agencies faster answers when they turn to an INS database to verify an alien's status. More than 100 […]

Mark D. Cox, who has acted as the Internal Revenue Service's in-house systems integrator for the Tax Systems Modernization program, received the 1991 Meritorious Presidential Rank Award for his work […]

Three things led Mission Control officials at NASA's Johnson Space Center to develop and deploy expert system for use during space shuttle missions. First, flight controllers still were using monochrome […]

When you think about manufacturing, do you think about assembly lines, where the same parts get attached to the same parts to produce the same product after the same product? […]

SEC Looking to Award Tracking System Contract By next month, the Securities and Exchange Commission hopes to have a contractor busily converting records to a system that will track lost […]

10 Key Questions For Scrutiny of ADP Projects Not long ago I had the good fortune to hear a Capitol Hill staffer list his 10 key questions for evaluating ADP […]

Human Resources Looks to Next Step While the Health and Human Services Department puts the finishing touches on a departmentwide personnel system, Thomas M. King, director of Human Resource Information […]

CALS Will Carry the Weight of Defense information The Computer-Aided Acquisition and Logistics Support program has taken on even greater importance in the last year because of budget cutbacks in […]

ADP Initiatives Are a Priority in War Against Drugs President Bush has given ADP initiatives high priority in his drug eradication plans. The president's 1990 National Drug Control Strategy report, […]

Census Is Tuning Up For 1990 Technology, equipment and people are about to come together in a symphony heard only once a decade as the Census Bureau tunes up for […]

New Publishing System Helps REA See the Light By replacing manual document production methods with an electronic publishing system, the Agriculture Department's Rural Electrification Administration (REA) nearly halved its production […]

Image Retrieval Keeps PM in Touch With Public Garry Tapper encountered light resistance when he went to sort out Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's correspondence problems. Tapper heads the imaging technology […]

New Technology Requires Rethinking Storage Needs Library storage limitations imposed by magnetic tape and disks have been overcome by the high recording densities of optical disk. Tremendous vistas are being […]

SEC Deputy Discusses Troubled History of EDGAR Kenneth Fogash Kenneth Fogash, deputy executive director of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has seen the agency through more than two years of […]

Customs Says Systems Can Replace Staff Although the Customs Service's top official recently testified before the Senate that his agency's information systems are compensating for staff reductions, senators and other […]