Subscribe to the Free Print Edition!
Celebrating 25 Years

GCN Home > 05/01/06 issue

The dervish is in the details

At the IRS, and at other agencies before, Smoter has stayed on the cutting edge

By Sami Lais, Special to GCN

Those are some sly dogs over there at the Capitol.

“The government got me through trickery,” said Susan Smoter, director of Internet development services at the IRS’ Electronic Tax Administration. “My mother was a government lifer,” she said, “and I was not going there. But I applied to a blind ad in the Washington Post, and it turned out to be too good a job to turn down.”

Doing computer-based training for the U.S. Senate was “so creative and so much fun that I stayed there for seven years,” she said.

A brief stint in the private sector followed, but the Postal Service won her back, and that started a career trek though several agencies, each stop marked by significant IT achievements.

“When I started in government in 1979, there were a lot of Kennedy and Eisenhower administration people still around,” she said. “They taught that this was a job you did because you wanted to give back to your country. I believe in service.”

Charged with developing the Postal Service’s Web Interactive Network of Government Services (Wings) kiosk program, Smoter looked at the obvious technology choices—and rejected them.

In 1994, kiosks relied on videodisks for data. “Preparing, printing, distributing videodisks—how could you get information out to people in a timely manner?” she scoffed. She opted instead for an emerging technology: the Internet.

She also found the hardware lacking. Because touch screens were heat driven, “if you had a prosthetic finger, they wouldn’t work,” she said. So she persuaded touch-screen makers to make pressure-sensitive monitors.

Kiosk makers also got a visit from Smoter, after which they changed their designs to accommodate people using wheelchairs and walkers.

She tapped the Trace Center at the University of Wisconsin to develop new accessibility standards, which later formed the basis for the Section 508 Rehabilitation Act Amendments of 1998.

Spreading her wings

She extended Wings’ usability with another first: a Web gateway. The kiosk program was superseded by new technology, but Smoter’s vision survives as the precursor to e-government, said Wilma Lanier, an IRS program analyst.

On mobility assignment at the Transportation Department, Smoter brought the department into compliance with Section 508. “DOT’s 13 operating groups had never agreed on anything,” she said. “As an outsider, I was unaware of cultural differences going on, so I just said, ‘Here’s a law that’s going to kick in June 21, and here’s what we have to do,’ and they did it.”

More news on related topics: Business Process Management, E-Government, Management, IT Management



GCN Popup