E-Maelstrom

ince his promotion from colonel in June, Air Force Brig. Gen. Gary L. Salisbury reports, the electronic mail messages showing up on his personal computer have multiplied fivefold. It's clear from his tone of voice that Salisbury is not entirely happy with the situation. But he's in the same position as many other federal executives, caught between the appeal of being in the loop, on the one hand, and being overwhelmed with information, on the other.

There's a certain irony here, because Salisbury heads a major unit of the Defense Information Systems Agency. DISA is one of several federal agencies tackling the next phase of the information revolution. They're trying to figure out what to do with all the information that now is available to everyone. Progress in this area has been slow, and meanwhile federal managers are struggling to make the best use of the new tools at their disposal.

The State Department's Bureau of Information and Research, for example, gets about 5,000 reports a day from the field and other information sources. With a staff that's dwindled from 361 to 276 in recent years, keeping up is difficult, even though the reports arrive via computer and not on paper. "The number of needles hasn't increased as fast as the volume of hay," says Deputy Assistant Secretary Thomas Fingar, who directs the department's analytical work.

"There are greater efficiencies, no question about it," in the information age, Fingar told an audience in April at a State-sponsored technology seminar. But almost in the same breath, he said technology has made the bureau's job more challenging. For one thing, he said, "the technology has led to a loss of discipline." There is no incentive to file concise summaries of information from the field. "It's striking how much longer reports have gotten" because it's easier to create them, he said.

Some of the extra information is useful. Some of it is just "information for the sake of information," he said, adding that he has detected a recent form of one-upsmanship in which State employees brag none too subtly about getting the latest and best e-mail.

Fingar also suggested that decision-makers sometimes act too quickly in response to the pace of breaking news. The minute a foreign event affecting our national interest is reported on CNN, someone in Washington picks up the phone or writes an e-mail message to ask what State is doing about it. A "firefighting quality" has permeated some U.S. diplomacy, he said, potentially clouding the strategic vision.

The technology also has eroded some chains of command in State and other agencies. High-ranking executives can send advice directly to field managers, and vice versa. The upshot can be a loss of field authority, because headquarters can issue very specific orders, rather than letting the professional in the field use discretion as circumstances change. Moreover, Fingar asks, just because you can use e-mail to involve 100 State employees in making a decision, does that mean you should?

Army Says Yes

At the highest levels of the Army, the answer is "yes." Certainly some decisions are made in the classic top-down way. But Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, Army chief of staff, is using the available technology to consult more officers about important decisions and bring them up to date on his thinking.

Last spring, for example, Reimer was considering a change in the way officers' performance is rated. It was late on a Friday afternoon, but he sent out an e-mail message describing the proposed change and requesting the views of senior Army officers. "Within 72 hours," says Lt. Col. Nick Justice, an aide to Reimer, "he had feedback from well over three-quarters of his general officers." Generals in the Middle East and other foreign posts were as quick to respond as those in the United States. On Sunday afternoon, Reimer decided to change the policy as a result of the feedback, and the new policy was issued Monday.

"It's a two-way vehicle here," says Suzanne M. Carlton, an Army management analyst. Reimer depends on e-mail and other electronic vehicles to convey his wishes to the service's officer corps and Senior Executive Service members, and his staff says it's useful for field executives to hear directly from the boss, rather than through the staff. Those messages often are forwarded down the line to those actually carrying out the tasks.

Reimer also participates in online meetings of his far-flung senior staff, using a system much like a "chat room" on America Online and other online services. As the meeting proceeds, participants at their computers see the comments others are making. Online conferencing not only saves travel costs, but it also fosters participation by people who can't travel often. For example, the Army commander in Korea seldom leaves his post to attend meetings.

The Army uses videoconferencing too, but the chat rooms in its America's Army Online system (an intranet, or internal Internet) have become very popular. "People like chat rooms better than videoconferencing," says Miriam F. Browning, information management director at Army headquarters. There's some camera-shyness with videoconferencing, she says, and give-and-take occurs less readily.

For example, the team coordinating the Army's reinvention program for the National Performance Review meets quarterly online. When Reimer attended the May meeting, he sat at the computer himself, with a management specialist nearby to advise him on specifics. Sometimes he typed out a little joke, although Reimer is not known as a jocular man. These NPR team meetings have been fruitful, the staff says, and the May conference online saved $20,000 in travel costs.

America's Army Online is building links among Army peers, they say, as well as up and down the chain of command. Until now, geography has isolated individuals such as garrison commanders-the officers in charge of each fort or base-from their counterparts. The intranet lets these people, with no equals at their scattered locations worldwide, exchange ideas and techniques.

"Organizational boundaries used to keep us stovepiped and segmented," Carlson says. Now people who should be in communication are. When people collaborate, Carlson adds, they generate better ideas and plans than they would on their own. "You are tapping the corporate brainpower," Browning says.

"The Army can empower itself with this technology," says Justice, who had much to do with development of America's Army Online. Networks collapse time and distance, two critical hindrances for a worldwide organization that must act and react quickly.

Browning and her staff are developing a plan for expanding America's Army Online and merging it at an operational level with a headquarters data warehouse and a decision support system that models scenarios for planners. The idea is to put this information and more at Army managers' fingertips through a World Wide Web-style connection.

Unlike the World Wide Web and the Usenet portion of the Internet, this future utility-known now as the Army Knowledge Office 21-will contain only timely information that has been screened, validated and organized in useful ways. Today's Internet "is just raw data out there," says Browning, explaining that the next-generation Army system represents a maturing of the concept.

For instance, the Army is trying to find better ways to link experts with those in need of advice on the job. The standard way to do this on the Internet is to post a query on an electronic bulletin board or send it to an e-mail list for broadcast. In either case, the query will be read by dozens or even thousands of people who can't respond helpfully and shouldn't be bothered. The Army Knowledge Office 21, says Lt. Col. Bob Hernandez of the Army's Artificial Intelligence Center, will be able to identify the nature of the query and direct it to people who can respond knowledgeably.

Experts at the Artificial Intelligence Center are working with the private sector to build and improve intelligent agents-software that analyses the content of messages or other texts and helps the user find paths through networked information.

Already, major commercial search services on the Web use software to scrutinize the kinds of research an individual undertakes, and then displays advertisements for products matching the individual's interests. Similar software, Hernandez says, can help Army users zero in on information pertinent to their assignments and specialties.

By customizing the user's interaction with the information base, the Army can avoid network congestion, minimize transmission of duplicate and unwanted data, and speed delivery of important information. If it frees up enough human and technological resources, the effort will pay for itself.

No More Phone Tag

One who believes such technology investments are well-warranted is Kenn N. Kojima, an attorney whom President Clinton appointed to run the General Services Administration's Pacific Rim Region. The region extends from Arizona to the Indian Ocean, and e-mail helps its 1,500 employees communicate across almost a dozen time zones. Employees in the region's San Francisco office use cc:Mail from Lotus Development Corp. Those elsewhere have access to Compuserve's e-mail. They can call a local number to access the service from cities in Korea, Japan and elsewhere.

"E-mail is one of the great inventions," Kojima. You don't have to play telephone tag, so you can get faster responses. Small issues can be resolved quickly. It goes on the road with you.

The downside of e-mail? His response, e-mailed from Chicago: "We have lost the in-person contact of greeting each other with a handshake, seeing each other's facial expressions, being more relaxed with each other, and discussing a broader range of topics which may lead into other topics."

Still, Kojima believes technology gives him more time to do the important things. While on travel, he uses a laptop with cc:Mail Mobile to call into his office e-mail system and retrieve messages.

With his Ecco Pro calendar software from NetManage Inc. of Bellevue, Wash., Kojima maintains to-do lists and prints out his schedule on 3-by-5 cards that he can slip into his suit pocket and carry unobtrusively. His secretary has access to his calendar so she can check his availability for events and enter new appointments.

Time-Sharing

However, Kojima says an experiment with group scheduling using network software was a failure. Such programs require the users to enter their appointments, leave plans and other schedule information into a shared calendar. Then those who are planning meetings, for example, can schedule them when all participants are available. "How people manage their time seems to be too unique" for them to share calendar systems, Kojima says.

Shared scheduling is making inroads, though, at a Health and Human Services agency, the Health Resources and Services Administration. About half the administration's 1,000-plus employees now use OnTime 3.0 from Campbell Services Inc. of Southfield, Mich., according to Cathy Flickinger, HRSA's deputy director of information resources management. OnTime, which runs on HRSA's local area networks, allows employees to coordinate their schedules and reserve conference rooms and other shared resources. It also keeps personal schedules and to-do lists.

"There's a lot of time saved" with the shared system, Flickinger says. But some employees won't use it at all or insist on using other calendar software on their PCs. In such cases, their schedules are not available to people setting up meetings. For those using OnTime, the software uses automatic e-mail to alert planners of pending schedule conflicts.

Flickinger recalls that a few years ago, when cc:Mail was installed at HRSA, some people were reluctant to use it. "Now you can't live without your e-mail," she says. She hopes the scheduling system will become as universal as e-mail.

Not everyone loves e-mail. One of the government's busier people, Mary Ellen Condon, prefers voice mail for the simple reason that "I can do it anywhere." Condon directs the information management and security staff of the Justice Department's information resources management unit. She also heads the Information Technology Resources Board, which provides peer reviews of troubled IT projects.

One reason for Condon's reluctance to use e-mail is the special security screening that e-mail undergoes at Justice. The department's secure gateway can slow down message traffic. Beyond that, however, Condon likes to stay in touch no matter where she is or what the hour. With voice mail she doesn't have to lug a laptop computer around or worry about establishing a physical connection to an unfamiliar telephone. At the office, though, Condon uses both e-mail and voice mail.

Condon isn't the only senior federal manager who has a love-hate relationship with e-mail. Today's technology, says Stanley E. Morris, director of the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network at the Treasury Department, "has within it the seeds of the destruction of the executive."

On one level, Morris is talking about information overload. Thanks to many advances, he says, "suddenly you have at your fingertips access to infinitely more information than you ever had before. I come back from a trip and I have a hundred e-mails in my in-box." To succeed, executives must discriminate among the bits, saving the worthwhile ones and ruthlessly discarding the rest. It's critical to set deadlines, beyond which you will accept no more information and instead will act on what you know, Morris says.

The Flatter Organization

On another level, he says he detects the beginnings of the much-discussed flattening of hierarchical organizations, thanks to technology. If everyone is online with everyone else, they will form working relationships and communications pipelines different from those they were limited to in earlier decades. Although management won't fade away, Morris says its power may be diminishing.

With good communications, "you can reduce inefficient activity" in an agency, he asserts, because there are fewer misunderstandings. When problems arise, they can be resolved faster.

"The hierarchical culture has some advantages," he chuckles, recalling his early days with the FBI. But on balance, he thinks he's better off with getting lots of e-mail than without. "What's the No. 1 thing every manager dreads?" Morris asks. It's surprises. Filters and screens to keep your e-mail box from overflowing can keep you in the dark, he says.

Like it or not, e-mail isn't going away. "It's amazing how much more business is conducted electronically," says the Army's Browning, who maintains paper actually is beginning to disappear from some desks. "When you withhold information," her colleague Justice says, "the organization loses."