Calling In for Your Data

n a typical workday, about one-third of the 2,000 employees at the General Services Administration's Washington headquarters check their e-mail and respond from somewhere other than their own offices.

They may be visiting a customer in another federal agency, meeting with colleagues in a building across town or attending a conference. Some are in training classes. Others are working at one of the 17 satellite centers GSA has opened for federal telecommuters in the Washington area. Another group is working from home. GSA permits many employees to work at home once or twice a week, and some employees have no permanent GSA desks at all but work at home most of the time.

To keep the employees productive while they're not in their offices, GSA has installed heavy-duty technology that allows employees to call in from home computers, notebook computers, telecommuting workstations or other gadgets via a toll-free telephone number.

The Cisco Systems Inc. remote access server the agency installed in 1998 is designed for use by Internet service providers and other telecommunications companies. It can accommodate more than 200 callers at any one time.

The GSA system accommodates both voice and data traffic, so employees can check their voice mail or their e-mail. It uses digital technology, which means that it handles voice traffic in the form of computer data.

Out of Control

Before installing the new server, GSA used smaller modem pools that were scattered around the agency. But they were too disparate and numerous for easy maintenance, says Jack Jackson, a GSA telecommunications specialist. Not only is the Cisco server easier to set up and maintain, Jackson says, but also it provides better security.

Security is the major worry of agencies considering providing remote access. Modems can be "dangerous back holes into an agency network," says Jackson's boss at GSA, Assistant Chief Information Officer (CIO) Donald P. Heffernan. With a central system, agencies get more control over the use of remote access channels.

Once they are in control, agencies can offer employees a wide range of opportunities to connect. At GSA, employees with home PCs, modems and Internet connections can simply check their e-mail with their Web browsers. With their modems, they can dial in for access to other kinds of services-programs that run on the agency's mainframes, for example, or the GSA intranet, which allows them to look up information, file travel expense reports and retrieve some shared files.

Employees working at home can get faster access with high-speed connections-often Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), but the agency is installing more digital subscriber line (DSL) connections and testing cable network hookups, Heffernan says. GSA will pay for high-speed services for employees' homes when it's in the agency's interest.

For example, some of employees in the CIO office have such hookups so they can make system repairs remotely whenever there's a malfunction. "At 2 in the morning," Heffernan says, "they may get beeped by a server. . . . They're in and out [of the system] all hours of the night and day. We want them to have robust remote access."

But GSA employees with less compelling cases for working at home also are encouraged to do so when they're not needed at the office. Administrator David J. Barram talks of the need for parity between public-sector and private-sector working conditions. He also likes to mention the trend for work to come to the employees, rather than for the employees to come to work.

The Name of the Game

In keeping with that trend, he's backing flexiplace and telecommuting options for GSA workers. It's happening more slowly than he would like, but he continues to push for what he calls "telework."

"We're all teleworkers," Barram told an electronic government conference last June. "It can range from the President working on Air Force One to any of us calling in late. This will be big in our future."

Assistant CIO Heffernan, who has his own personal computer network at home, reaches from there into GSA's systems through a virtual private network (VPN). This still-emerging form of access is widely regarded as the most likely way for future teleworkers to communicate with their organizations. With a VPN, a computer user communicates with an organization's internal network over the Internet. Security mechanisms segregate the private communications from the rest of the traffic on the Internet and permit the VPN users to tunnel through the organization's network defenses.

With a high-speed connection, using a VPN can feel very much like being at the computer in one's own office. That's an extremely appealing capability, and market analysts predict explosive growth in sales of VPN technology. Cahners In-Stat Group researchers in Scottsdale, Ariz., for example, say public and private organizations spent less than $3 billion on VPNs in 1999 and will spend more than $32 billion a year by 2003.

But the technology hasn't taken off as fast as was expected a couple of years back. Among the reasons: high operating costs, lack of industry standards for product interoperability, unreliable service quality and worries about security.

Many of the security concerns stem from revelations that Microsoft Corp.'s original Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PTTP), a VPN enabler that comes with most PCs, is not secure enough to protect sensitive information on the Internet. With its new Windows 2000 operating system, Microsoft now is supplying the secure Internet protocol, IPsec, which is more trustworthy.

Add-on security can increase confidence in these Internet-based systems. The Marine Corps is building a VPN to give 120,000 Marines remote access to the corps' unclassified systems. The software from Newbridge Networks Corp. works with the Defense Department's public-key encryption infrastructure to ensure that only authorized individuals can get access.

Still Too Risky

Nonetheless, there are situations when Internet access just isn't warranted. When NASA was getting ready to repair and modernize the Hubble Space Telescope at the end of 1999, the space agency updated its Hubble operations control center at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Microsoft's heavy-duty operating system, Windows NT, was installed to enhance the decade-old systems.

The updated ground system, which runs on relatively inexpensive but powerful Dell Computer Corp. workstations, can be maintained and repaired from anywhere on the Internet. NASA contractors are doing just that over a VPN-like network.

However, NASA officials decided not to let anyone control the space telescope itself from anywhere except the designated control console at Goddard. "It's just too risky," says John Gainsborough, the Visions 2000 manager who was in charge of the ground systems upgrade.

But the new system speeds delivery of new scientific data collected by the space telescope, while keeping costs down. The data can be distributed over the Internet for processing elsewhere, without having to go through Goddard.

The need to leverage a scanty IT workforce is driving the increase in centralized, off-site help desk and systems support centers. With current network and PC technology, a support center can deliver software updates, repair glitches and provide users with advice from a distant location.

What's more, as agencies outsource more of their operations, they are being forced to let more outsiders inside their electronic domains. At GSA, Heffernan says, contractors do not have the same system access that employees get, but they can interact with parts of GSA from sites outside the agency walls.

In the next few years, desktop videoconferencing, instant messaging and other technologies that support remote collaboration will see steady improvements in their ease of use, cost, security and availability. The next generation of federal managers may be just as comfortable attending an important meeting online as they are today when they show up for work.