GSA information chief takes business approach to technology

Nearly four months into her tenure as the chief information officer of the General Services Administration, Casey Coleman said she hopes to strike a balance between federal mandates and the business needs of the agency. In an interview with Government Executive, Coleman said that at the top of her agenda for 2008 are expanding the use of Voice over IP, issuance of identity credentials to all GSA workers, and using more standard information technology functions across the agency. She took over as GSA's chief information officer when Michael Carlton left this summer to take the post of CIO at the Health and Human Services Department.

GSA holds a unique position in government, providing contracting and a range of managed services to agencies, while also managing those very same contracts and services for its own use. That adds to the pressure to effectively administer its own IT contracts and services, as many agencies look to see how GSA is performing.

The agency must keep up with the latest technology, to not only offer it to other agencies through the GSA Schedules but also for its own use. "The learning curve [in federal IT] can be a challenge," Coleman said. "Technology has come so far, but the question is always, 'Where do we invest and modernize?' It can't just be about the [latest] technology. You may fly a plane and want a new engine, but you still need to maintain" the rest of the plane's parts if you want to get off the ground.

GSA will continue efforts to move from a standard Private Branch eXChange telephone system, or PBX, to VoIP, which gives the advantage of unified messaging via the Internet. The transition at GSA has been gradual, with offices in six cities currently using the technology. Coleman hasn't set a deadline for agencywide transition to VoIP, but she said the office will use the Networx contract, which GSA manages for all government, to replace legacy equipment as needed. She hopes the initiative eventually will provide a case study for other agencies as they use the telecommunications program to move to more advanced technologies and services, showcasing, she said, "how we succeeded at drinking our own champagne." VoIP also will help the agency meet the GSA Telework Challenge, announced in September by Administrator Lurita Alexis Doan, who set a goal to have 50 percent of GSA workers capable of working remotely by 2010.

Coleman came to GSA from Lockheed Martin Corp., where she worked on developing onboard command-and-control systems for the military during the Gulf War. She has invested a lot of her time as CIO and, prior to her official appointment, as interim CIO driving a more enterprise approach to IT to not only comply with the Enterprise Architecture initiative, which identifies opportunities to simplify processes and unify work across agencies, but also to gain efficiencies.

"The focus has to be not only on requirements, but also making sure [decisions] are business-focused and mission-driven," Coleman said.

To accommodate changing requirements, for example, GSA plans to implement a business process management system that will track the customization of applications. Also, having consolidated contracts that are used to operate the agency's IT administrative infrastructure from 40 to one in spring 2007, GSA now plans to find ways to streamline individual IT functions. "What services can be offered with a single or [maybe] a few solutions nationwide?" Coleman asked. "E-mail may be the most obvious, but there are others. We'll take a phased approach, focusing on where it makes the most sense."

Like other agencies, GSA will need to comply with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which requires that all federal employees and contractors be issued by Oct. 27, 2008, new identity cards to replace the standard flash-card badges. GSA's managed services contract offers services to other agencies in producing the cards, known as personal identity verification credentials, which include biometric information such as fingerprints. But the contract doesn't make the agency immune to challenges associated with the mandate

"Once in place, the process will be repeatable and very efficient," she said. "But the technology, resources, security required for [getting the system in place] is all very complicated and challenging." GSA is on target to meet the deadline, she said, and will rely on the cards for two-factor authentication of workers that attempt access to the network.