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GCN Home > August 2, 1999 issue

Web interactions are six to 10 years away, feds say

The Net will need solid security before the IRS, SSA can exchange forms and personal data online

By Christopher J. Dorobek
GCN Staff

DALLAS—More data moves electronically than ever before. The federal government has experienced a dramatic shift in the way it presents and collects information. But it is only at the first stage of using the Internet, experts said.

In the next six to 10 years, governments will move beyond static information to interactive, online transactions, experts said.

Kathleen Adams, associate commissioner of systems design and development at the Social Security Administration, said SSA has gone about as far as it can in providing information online—for now.

“If we want to make the next breakthrough, we’re going to have to give people direct access,” Adams said, and allow people to perform tasks without entering a government office.

Most agencies have had Web sites for years, but most of those sites provide information that is static and poses little security risk, experts said last month at the Federation of Government Information Processing Council’s Management of Change conference.

The sites are popular with citizens and agencies. Both SSA and the IRS post forms online and have seen skyrocketing growth in numbers of users. Adams said that in 1995, SSA’s Web site registered less than 1 million hits; last year it racked up more than 12 million hits.

What’s a savings

Web sites have also helped the government save money. IRS deputy chief information officer Robert Albicker said taxpayers can download eight years of tax forms, and that has been cost-effective for the tax service. It costs the IRS a penny per 1,000 forms online, but it costs $3 per form if a taxpayer makes a request by phone.

But the goal is to let citizens perform transactions by either coming into an office, phoning or performing the transaction online, Adams said.

But before agencies can provide information about a specific person, they must resolve the significant hurdles of security, privacy and confidentiality.

SSA confronted those concerns when it attempted to make Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statements available electronically, Adams said. Although SSA’s PEBES Web site required the same identification techniques a person would use in an SSA office, it alarmed privacy advocates.



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