Former e-government officials favor governmentwide plan

The federal government should create a flexible, governmentwide information technology plan to cut costs and expand services, including new applications for homeland security, two former senior federal officials said on Thursday at a Hewlett-Packard-sponsored event.

Stephen Squires, Hewlett-Packard's chief science officer and a former senior official with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and Mark Forman, the former e-government and information technology chief at the White House, said the government should use inexpensive network servers, advanced computer-operating systems, and specialized software applications to create a tech framework that could eliminate redundant systems in federal agencies.

Separately, Forman told reporters that Congress' reluctance to meet the Bush administration's request for a central e-government fund will not thwart implementation of such initiatives.

Hewlett-Packard is repositioning itself as a framework computing company, shifting computer intelligence from desktop systems to networks, and the conference was designed to demonstrate how an "adaptive enterprise" would work for government. "In the future, we will look at computers the way we look at electricity," with portable computer devices that "just plug into the wall," said Bruce Klein, vice president of HP's federal division.

Squires said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks demonstrated that the U.S. defense complex had "over-optimized itself to win the Cold War" and needs to be retooled for the 21st century. "The only way the United States will achieve strategic advantage in economic and strategic security is to work with emerging technologies," he said.

Building government-wide systems can create a virtual network of critical resources -- including emergency response and supplies -- that could be activated and monitored quickly, Squires said. With 85 percent of the nation's critical infrastructure in private hands, government and industry must cooperate to build an intelligent communications network that goes "beyond the Internet."

Such a network could track, locate and communicate with "first responders" to emergencies. "The day will come when there will be a building-code requirement in every room for ubiquitous wireless communication," Squires said, "giving business and government a strategic advantage in ordinary times and also during an extraordinary event."

Forman noted that the greatest recent computer innovations have been in infrastructure. The law of diminishing returns shows that devoting money and personnel toward a management problem yields limited results, he said, whereas adaptable computer infrastructures yield greater returns.

Forman said oversight of government technology by House Government Reform Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., and Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., is moving the government toward a leveraged computer system.

The Linux computer-operating system soon will play a bigger role in federal technology, Forman said. "Linux is more robust; it fits better for heavy-duty applications," he said of the "open source" system that is open to review and alteration. "There's a clear path to Linux for servers."

He further argued that a central e-government fund is not essential for tech deployment, but that continued oversight by the White House Office of Management and Budget is. OMB can go to individual agencies and tell them to "shut down redundant investments and join the common plan," Forman said.