Intranets:
Using Internet Technologies
to Serve Your Enterprise
Seminar date: December 2, 1998

Several clear trends are guiding federal agencies as they construct new "intranet" resources.

1. Intranet systems are often built in tandem with new data warehouses that extend the life of legacy databases and platforms.
2. Intranets are being structured to give non-technical content managers better and more timely control of the material put on Web sites.
3. Intranets provide quick solutions to agency business challenges. They can be up and running in a matter of weeks, and are often built by federal officials unwilling to wait years for new system construction.

These trends and other issues were discussed by agency executives and IT industry experts at a recent conference, "Intranets: Using Internet Technologies to Serve Your Enterprise," in Bethesda. The one-day event was part of the GCN Technology Excellence in Government program, presented by The Council for Excellence in Government, the Digital Government Institute and GCN on December 2.

The idea of only five people managing a Pentagon system in itself implies the arrival of a new world order for federal IT.

The speed and dexterity that an intranet solution provides is also clearly indicated in a Census Bureau Electronic Hiring System, which was planned in 30 days and handed over to 400 personnel managers not long after. The system automates the entire hiring process, from intake of applications through acceptance of new employees while giving managers a flexible data "mart" of information about job openings and workforce availability.

A Lotus technical manager noted that his company is working to expand and further integrate a Navy SPAWAR net that was originally built by a GS-11 on a budget of about $40,000. Lotus is adding workflow, templates, automatic indexing, replication and other features to the Navy intranet. But they are also ensuring that functions like content refreshment and author notification will be easy for non-technical users.

Don't be surprised if such modest forays into Internet-based computing grow into the mission critical platforms of the 21st century, experts are saying.

To wit, the U.S. Postal Service's enterprisewide mail tracking system (being fully deployed now in time for the busy Christmas mail season) is scaled on the notion that anywhere from 20 to 3,000 users can track national mail delivery trends via an ad hoc query system that makes equally limited demands on end-user technical acumen.

USPS is relying on a WebIntelligence OLAP/enterprise query system from Business Objects (Bethesda, Md.) to create a Net-based method for tracking mail flow rates and trends "without making anyone learn to write HTML code," a company consultant said.

Both the NASA space shuttle program and the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development (USDA RD) program have implemented intranets that rely on Web-based systems to exploit legacy data for facilitating new operational apps and creating the foundation for warehouses and marts.

The NASA Insight System automates workflow for hundreds of processing tasks related to maintenance of space shuttles before and after flights. Data warehouse experts from Information Builders, Inc. (Arlington, Va.) began by putting the company’s EDA middleware product on legacy systems. They then built WebFOCUS-based front ends to give shuttle processing contractors on-demand processing that also will be used for building the essential repositories for coherent warehousing.

Like NASA, USDA RD officials built their new intranet capability in such way to better exploit legacy data, which was often impossible to get from tightly controlled mainframe systems. Today, the agency tracks $60 billion in loans via its intranet, which also exploits WebFOCUS for integrating operational and warehouse resources on end-user platforms.

An Agriculture official said the alternative to an intranet "would have been to spend five years doing a strategic plan, then five years to build a new system--at which time it would have been out of date anyway."

An F.B.I. official said that LEO not only gives cash-strapped police departments an online communication sharing platform of international scope, but it also provides law enforcement experts with special interest bulletin boards, chat and news group options, distance learning opportunities, and messaging.

Cost savings and efficiency gains are clearly achieved and easily measured when intranets exploit existing resources while not requiring massive user re-training. The General Services Administration's FEDSIM Tracking and Ordering System (TOS) has reduced acquisition management costs for a multi-agency procurement team by 47 percent while accomplishing a 50 percent time savings.

Implementation of the Lotus Notes/Domino-based TOS gave federal contracting officials a method for automating 42 contract tasks while drawing on legacy data from some of the government's most venerable accounting and finance systems, a GSA official said. "TOS also reduces our 'aggravation factor' by about seventy percent."

Those who see an intranet as modest option might think again. Experts at Information Advantage (Vienna, Va.) demonstrated how the company's DecisionSuite Web/OLAP system for extending bulky legacy data into streamlined browser-based apps is being used by the British internal revenue service to deal with 400GB of tax info, with a plan to add 200-300GB per year.

An intranet allows prototyping and proof of concept work to occur on a significant scale. The British engaged 100 users in the test phase of their system. As a result of so much feedback, IT officials were able to roll out the system to 1,000 more users in ten days.

Workflow, GroupWare and messaging remain the primary information sharing applications best suited for an intranet, noted an IT expert with FedWorld, the Commerce Department's networking service agency. He advised that most intranet solutions are inexpensive to launch and are immediately successful because they deliver useful apps at network speed.

If you need a reason to justify an intranet, you might point out that studies have shown that a $1 paper form generates about $20 in processing costs, and that more than 80 percent of all business processing remains paper based. It's not tough to get ahead of that cost curve with a new Web-based system.

Federal agencies that need help building an intranet are advised to call FedWorld (703)605-6445 or check out their site at www.fedworld.gov. These are the folks who are now running more than 20 million electronic tax filings for IRS per year, so they obviously know their stuff.

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