9 Hot Trends for '99

hen the Agriculture Department was reorganized beginning in 1993, parts of a half-dozen agencies were combined into the new Rural Development division, but the computer systems supporting those agencies remained separate.

Rural Development managers yearned for a single system that would give them a complete picture of activities and spending, but the likely cost of building a new system was prohibitive. So the agency muddled along with separate mainframe-based systems that could be accessed only by professional programmers.

There were five financial management systems and three loan tracking systems, for example. Compiling reports in response to congressional inquiries about loans, grants and other program actions in a particular region could take weeks. Parts of the reports often were inaccurate.

Continued downsizing and simultaneous expansion of its programs forced Rural Development to look again for a better
system. With a $200,000 budget and two full-time computer employees, the agency created a data warehouse that merges the information from the legacy systems into what looks like a single system, while leaving the legacy systems intact. More than 7,000 Rural Development employees nationwide can retrieve the information at their desktops, using a standard Web browser.

Because employees are familiar with the browser, they did not need training to use the new Data Mining System. That's important for an agency with 900 offices. They can look at standard reports, drill down into the data for more detail, and create custom reports as needed. Little more than a year after it was established on the department's intranet, or internal Internet, the system's Web site gets 75,000 hits a month.

Success stories like this are driving one of the most important communications trends at the turn of the century: the rush to connect people and devices through the World Wide Web. The Web browser is a deceptively simple way to give PC users access to an entire universe of information and, increasingly, computer processes. Electronic mail software lets people communicate with one another, but the Web is a window into the contents of computers.

Originally developed as a kind of public bulletin board that gave users access to text, the Web is increasingly interactive and used for processing. Futurists talk of the day when your coffee-maker or home heating system will have its own Internet address, allowing you to operate it from another location. But already today your office copier probably has such a capability.

You can make purchases, pay bills and, in some nations, vote for the candidate of your choice on the Web. New Web applications in the federal government are announced almost daily, and the power of those applications is increasing.

As this change takes place, it is wreaking fundamental changes in the way organizations do their work. For example, USDA's Rural Development units did not routinely make budget and program activity available to thousands of employees the way it does now. The need for more responsiveness to Congress was a driving force behind creation of the Data Mining System, but one byproduct was the opening up of the agency's books to all employees.

"Collaboration" is now a watchword in management circles. Whether caused by Web technology or simply enabled by the Web, openness of information and flexibility in organizational structures permit people to work together more closely, regardless of their locations.

This change has only begun. As Rural Development's data warehouse software supplier, Information Builders Inc., said in nominating the Data Mining System for an award: "What has been accomplished thus far is only the beginning of realizing the potential of the DMS." The same is true for the Web.