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GCN Home > August 21, 2000 issue

ANOTHER VIEW: Herbert Schorr

Research can head off poor systems work

I research computer applications and often focus on software for government agencies. Over the years I have become increasingly concerned with how agencies craft information management products.

There is a better way to develop these products than is commonly done, and I am glad to report that a newly established research center will help agencies begin to use that process.

Government often has special needs that cannot be satisfied by off-the-shelf software unless it is customized. In such cases, the software requirements are typically more severe than even the most demanding commercial applications.

With information security, for example, banks and retailers can and do accept a certain amount of risk of fraud. But unauthorized access to government data such as Social Security or Medicare records is both illegal and politically unacceptable.

Requirements for information systems will become even more stringent when the bulk of the public’s dealings with all levels of government occur over the Internet.

Corporations with demanding information technology needs often invest in R&D labs to find the best technology available or invent what they can’t find to solve their business or manufacturing problems.

Digital split

In today’s federal government there’s a kind of digital divide. On one side are agencies such as the Defense and Energy departments and the National Institutes of Health that can access such in-house research facilities. On the other side are federal as well as state and local government agencies that lack access to research.

This divide is a tangible distinction. Agencies without in-house research facilities have far more difficulty getting the software they need than agencies that do.

Making things even more difficult for the have-not agencies is a government procurement process that requires officials to prepare and field proposals with precise descriptions of what they need built. Such a process can work well for commodities, equipment and even buildings. But for software, this method often results in agencies awarding a contract, waiting, receiving the product and finding that although it corresponds to the specifications, it either does not fill the agency’s requirements or fills them poorly.



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