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MARTY WAGNER: "HOW I USE THE WEB"

  Marty Wagner's career path has taken him in many directions
  
  * economic analyses of regulations for the EPA,
  * communications issues for the OMB
  * Director of Telecommunications Management
    for the Treasury Deptartment
  * acting Deputy Commissioner for the Information
    Resources Management Service
  * work with Dean Irwin on the Electronic Commerce
    Acquisitions team to implement the Presidential
    memo on electronic commerce within government.
  
  Wagner currently serves as Associate Administrator for
  GSA's Office of Governmentwide Policy, where he rethinks
  and recreates policy framework to manage government
  assets -- determining how government buys, manages,
  and disposes of items. EG interviewed Wagner in his GSA
  office to get his views on how the Web has developed
  in government agencies.


EG: How long ago would you say that Web technology
became prominent in the government?
  
  Wagner:The beginnings of Web implementation resembled
  a guerrila approach, with people coming out of the
  woodwork two years ago, with NSF and NASA as two of
  those early Web adapters. I personally saw government
  agencies beginning making concerted efforts to use
  the Web about a year and a half ago.
  
  A few years ago, while working on electronic commerce,
  we had developed the FACNET, in order to hand RFQs
  to the public instead of just to the standard known
  entities. The FACNET was essentially a private
  virtual network -- an intranet -- that worked out of
  Ogden and Columbus, but it had some problems. And even
  as we were testing it, we were watching the Web develop
  and prove itself as a great way to disseminate
  information. Taking advantage of that technology,
  we eventually created a system called GSA Advantage,
  which now allows government agencies to search
  for products, compare prices, and purchase items
  from vendors, all via a centralized Web location.
  
  
EG: Has implementing Web technology been a strong
concern of GSA over the past year?
  
  Wagner: Things have been moving ever since Mr. Barram
  became Acting Administrator about six months ago.
  Originally from Silicon Valley, and having worked
  for Hewlett-Packard and served as Chief Financial
  officer for Apple Computers, he's very much interested
  in using technology effectively, and changing the way
  we do business as a government. One of his favorite
  phrases is "It's not your father's GSA [anymore]".
  It's his idea to load up everything we've got. He
  also believes that having Internet access is part of
  every GSA employee's job. Even if you can't figure out
  right now why you might need the Web, we'll give it to
  you anyway because in the future you WILL need it.
  
  In general, we consider Internet access to be a valuable
  government resource, and it should be treated as such.
  You're not supposed to use it for non-businesses purposes
  during the workday, or to download things such as
  pornography. Individual actions should be governed at
  least by common sense, although many agencies including
  ours are currently examining actual Internet policies.
  
  But the bottom line on the Web is that it should
  definitely be used, and that it should be used
  to support our work.

  
EG: How do you personally find yourself using the Web
while in the office?
  
  Wagner: Well, besides the GSA intranet, I also use
  the internal phone book to locate names, numbers,
  and addresses. And there are opportunities for
  internal collaberation as well. For example, I was
  just looking at Hungary through the browser. I recently
  attended a conference over there, and they sent me some
  material inviting me to look at their Web page, so I did.
  As far as world telecommunications go, time zones matter
  more than actual distance today.


EG: Does the government currently harbor any reservations
about the Web or the Internet in general?
  
  Wagner: OMB recently wanted a way to communicate
  with the entire user community -- not just inside-the-beltway
  groups -- so they ran meetings video-linked aross the country,
  and I represented the GSA at one roundtable. Our audience
  was open to anyone, although it consisted primarily of
  information technology folk and a few reporters.
  
  The attendees were allowed to ask questions, and based on some
  questions, I think that many government people are having
  problems getting to use the Internet, due to some security
  concerns. Yes, there's some dangerous people online, and
  there are risks in being accessible via the Internet,
  and sometimes employees do abuse the technology. But that
  type of thinking will soon seem silly; after all, we're not
  taking phones off the desks so that people won't be
  tempted to call home. One good analogy is that, when a
  porcupine rolls into a ball, it's safe but it can't eat.
  The fact that security is an important issue is not an
  excuse to completely avoid dealing with the electronic
  world. We need to go in with our eyes open and with
  our firewalls installed and monitored, and then take advantage
  of what's out there. 
  
  Still, I'm not saying that the security issue can be ignored.
  Dependable security is necessary before electronic commerce
  can truly become a reality.
  
  
EG: What sort of problems do you see with the way that
Web technology is currently being used and treated today?
  
  Wagner: Well, to start with, technology is interesting,
  but used for its own sake it's quite dangerous and
  seductive. We must find the best way to implement it,
  instead of just paving over the cow paths. We should not
  just use technology for its own sake but to accomplish
  our mission, which means using the Web in the way
  it's designed rather than mimicking the familiar
  linear paper model.
  
  For instance, Web sites are often set up to resemble books.
  However, home pages are different animals than books, and
  if you try to make them act too much like books, you're
  not making good use of Web capabilities. If I wrote a
  1000-page book, FTP would probably be the best way to
  deliver the entire document to you at once. But if I want
  the book to be easily available on the Web, I would need to
  break it into bite-sized chunks first. We have many tools
  today that convert documents into HTML but none that break
  down large texts into manageable sizes.
  
  And then you change your perspective and consider the
  purpose of your information as well. While writing the
  book, you might have looked at it as twelve large chapters,
  rather than 250 subsections that can fit together in
  many different ways. But slamming a 50-page doc on the
  Web isn't doing much for the reader; you need to implement
  cross-indexing, so that the reader can find the parts
  she wants. Effective Web use involves thinking long
  and hard about indexing and crosswalks. You want to describe
  an item in as many ways as possible, and that's something
  we're still feeling our way through.
  
  Another concern is that not everyone has a high-speed link
  through a LAN to get online. In that case, you need
  text-browsing support, and even if you do have graphics,
  you need an efficient and quick way to download them.
  
  
EG: What are some of the actual problems of information
transaction via the Web?
  
  Wagner: Well, in the print world, we have this concept
  called an "editor," and maybe we need something like that
  in the Web world as well, not just to determine structure
  and format but to have someone just read the stuff
  before it's posted online. Our normal paper reports are all
  routinely scrutinized: numbers are checked, people look at
  word choice, a traditional process has been set up to
  proofread our work. We never just have the document's
  drafter ship the information out immediately to millions
  of people, like what happens today on the Web. I think that
  it's currently too easy to put information online. Even
  the most innocent mistakes can cause some very
  serious problems.
  
  About two years ago, a mishap occurred involving bidding
  in the futures market with italian lira versus dollars,
  where the company's employee accidentally rearranged
  some digits on their bid, pushed the button, and ended
  up losing something like two million dollars. In the old
  world, the bid would have been reviewed by the president
  and other managers -- it would have been extensively examined
  before being submitted -- but in this case someone just
  typed in some numbers and hit "Send". What we need to do
  is build procedures into our transmissions that will make
  hasty postings more difficult, that will make people ask
  the right questions and examine their work before sending
  it out.
  
  Our Per Diem document (which compares hotel room rates
  across the country) is widely used, and we know that we
  have to carefully edit our work, to get the numbers right,
  or we'll cost people a lot of money. We perform extensive
  research around the US just to create the document,
  and Legal carefully examines the finished report to make
  sure that it's correct. And when we finally post the book
  up on the Web, we load it directly onto the site rather
  than keypunching it back in, which avoids the introduction
  of new errors. Other kinds of electronic information are
  being developed that need the same kind of care, and we
  must work out how to do that.
  
  
EG: So what's the bottom line as far as communication goes?
How has the Web impacted the relationship between the
government and citizens?
  
  Wagner: The Web makes it easy to get information out to
  the citizens and taxpayers, as well as provide answers
  to routine questions. Anyone with Web access can easily
  locate pertinent government information. Of course, the
  ease of unearthing information is balanced by the fact
  that the reader needs to be able to place the information
  in context. Having access to data is not enough: People
  need to be able to properly comprehend what the data means.
  

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(c) 1997 by Fed Services, Inc.
Electronic Government, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp.2-4

Material to be used solely in regards to examining
my credentials for employment.