Government Computer News
GAO analysts ditch those sticky notes
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GAO’s Kevin Dooley says feds who take part in his agency’s computer-aided telephone interviews “generally spill their guts, and we get more than we need in terms of comments.”
Ever wonder how the General Accounting Office compiles a report full of seemingly endless details about projects at multiple agencies in quick fashion?
For years, GAO analysts mostly did this work by hand, shuffling and reshuffling paper and electronic files gathered by auditors. One senior analyst, Kevin Dooley, figured there had to be a better way than
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“You could run queries that search for documents, sort the documents according to your criteria, and output all or just pieces of the documents.”
—GAO’s Kevin Dooley
—GAO’s Kevin Dooley
In his search for applications to automate the process, Dooley discovered a few years back that the GAO library used an information management app that could import free-floating and database files, then organize them.
He decided to try the tool, askSam from askSam Systems Inc. of Perry, Fla. Dooley started out 16 years ago using the MS-DOS version and now uses Version 5, which runs under all versions of Microsoft Windows on a PC with at least 30M of storage. The original version let him chain queries, searching for something in one database and using that to search another database.
“You could run queries that search for documents, sort the documents according to your criteria, and output all or just pieces of the documents,” he said.
The askSam report window now does that automatically via dialog boxes.
Dooley said populating the search boxes with key words was much easier than remembering arcane syntax. But, he said, “You set one query, one sort and get one report. You can’t run a bunch of reports at the same time.”
Survey tools—bang
Dooley discovered he could query the number of times a certain phrase appeared in any text file. For example, he uses askSam to generate GAO reports from Web surveys that pose, say, a dozen questions to virtual panels of 30 or 40 subject-matter experts at various agencies. He processes their essays into reports.
“If you have survey tools like this, the statistics are a lot more convincing than doing a couple of case studies,” Dooley said. “That’s where the big bang is.”
AskSam can organize the replies in Microsoft Outlook or Eudora e-mail and can import Rich Text Format, HTML, Microsoft Word and Excel, and Corel WordPerfect files.
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