Vice President Al Gore faxed a challenge to step into the world of collaborative work to the representatives of the NSF/NCSA World Wide Web Federal Consortium (N2W3FC) assembled on the UIUC campus this past July. His challenge caused a stir at a conference already abuzz with excitement. NSF DASC Program Manager Larry Brandt welcomed attendees, noting that the agenda was packed with "a generous helping of new technologies, peeks at the future of the Web, and exciting research."
The consortium was founded in 1994 to advance member agency goals through continued development of NCSA Mosaic and related technology. The consortium also fosters collaborative research and development and the exchange of information between NCSA and the member agencies and among the member agencies. Currently sixteen federal agencies participate and the White House and the National Performance Review are ex-officio members.
The consortium's 1995 annual meeting held at the Beckman Institute was "a very high bandwidth transfer of ideas and possibilities," said Brandt. Presentations on server testbeds, digital libraries, an automated support system, Java, and SDG's future directions filled two days. Consortium representatives took time out to prepare a response to the vice president's challenge. Excerpts from their reply follow:
"We share your enthusiasm for the results of our support of NCSA's software development over the last year. With the availability of Mosaic and the proliferation of Web browsers and tools, the reinvention of government through modern information dissemination has a good start in many government agencies. . . . We share your belief that the current challenge is to move beyond online information dissemination. Accordingly, the Federal Web Consortium and NCSA will seek to foster a new era of interaction and collaboration among federal agencies, and, more importantly, between citizens and government. We believe we can contribute to building the technical environment to allow citizens to be more than passive recipients of government information; rather, the vision is that of citizens as full partners in a two-way interaction with a more responsive government."
Janet Thot-Thompson of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is the 1996 chair of the consortium. She found the second annual meeting in July "energizing" and is looking forward to a year that will "build on the message of the second conference -- working together collaboratively -- and on the energy of the meeting." She noted that it is not easy to represent, in only two days, the many and varied aspects of the innovative work being carried out at NCSA and, at the same time, to try to catch a glimpse of the future. Thot-Thompson felt the visit to NCSA was right on target. During the conference, the group conferred outstanding achievement awards on Joseph Hardin (NCSA), Larry Brandt (NSF), and R.P.C. (Rick) Rodgers, MD (National Library of Medicine) in recognition of their outstanding commitment and pioneering leadership.
Rick Rodgers of the National Library of Medicine was the chair of the consortium during the 1995 Webmasters workshop. "It was an information-rich meeting with presentations on important developments for the future," he said. "We considered the workshop a service to the rest of the community of federal agencies as well as an outreach activity." He noted another important meeting held during his tenure as the first chair of the consortium: the Defense Technical Information Center hosted an NCSA-sponsored two-day security seminar for members in March.
Member agency representatives meet monthly in Washington, DC. (Each agency is required by the consortium's charter and bylaws to appoint a representative as a point of contact and for voting purposes.) The agendas for the coming year have been prepared to include time for formal technology presentations and additional time for working groups to meet and for informal technology transfer presentations. To increase membership, interaction, and interest from agency staff, Thot-Thompson opened the meetings to interested consortium staff and to other potential member agencies and their staff. Electronic communication methods include email, newsgroups, hypernews, and Web collaborative tools. The consortium's dedicated Web server is another venue for information sharing and technology transfer.
"I want to solicit ideas, expand our membership, and promote technology knowledge exchange and sharing across the member agencies to leverage our federal resources. And I want to continue the feeling of collegiality and build on the successes that Rick Rodgers established in our first year," Thot-Thompson says. "Being involved in the consortium is like having another job, so we need to allow time at the meetings to talk and exchange ideas. Most of us are working on or are interested in similar projects and have common problems that the innovative application of technology may resolve."
Kim Stephenson, NCSA's technical lead for the Federal Consortium, agrees. "We're establishing a virtual agency rather than helping to establish discrete towers," she says. "NCSA is part of the glue, putting member staff in touch with other people doing similar work. I think we are on the right track, and the agency representatives seem to agree."
The major focus for the consortium this year is on collaborative work and tools. To emphasize this theme, the fall meetings are facilitated using portable electronic conferencing. September's meeting data were captured and posted on the consortium home page to encourage comment and foster participation by the membership. Kim Stephenson briefed the members on the consortium's server design, plan, and access with a walkthrough, demonstration, and discussion on future plans. A new member of the consortium, the Bureau of Census, provided a demonstration on building an integrated, distributed repository via an HTML front end. Reed Overfelt, from The National Performance Review in the Executive Office of the Vice President, shared encouraging email from Gore in support of the consortium. October's meeting featured an NRC proof-of-concept demonstration using NCSA Mosaic to access management tools; the demonstration also used the Web and the HTTP protocol as a common user interface for communications and information serving internal and external to the NRC (e.g., access to NRC report data, database data, phone and fax lists with autodial, training, and video conferencing).
The hard work of Federal Consortium members is starting to make a difference by reducing duplication of effort, increasing communications among agency staff, and providing the public with information in an easy-to-use manner. Reinventing government is more than a phrase.
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