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The electronic enigma

E-gov case file: National Business Center

WHO: National Business Center at the Interior Department

What: The Federal Personnel/Payroll System, which provides services for approximately 180,000 federal employees at Interior, the Education Department, the Social Security Administration and other agencies.

Description: To upgrade FPPS’ character-based interface to a graphical user interface—with Internet access and a GUI query tool—the center selected Jacada for Java from Jacada Ltd. of Atlanta.

The center was satisfied with the core functionality of its IBM Corp. mainframe application, said Michael Colburn, chief of the center’s Products and Services Applications Planning and Technology Group. But the Jacada tool, which runs on the company’s own platform-independent Jacada Server, generates Java code without interfering with the function of the mainframe application.

A pilot program at NBC offices in Denver is nearly complete; plans call for a full Web version for more than 20,000 users.

Upshot: NBC reduced costs and increased production. “Essentially what we’ve done,” Colburn said, “is take a great application and make it greater.”