Fed Government Review, Summer 1995,pp 20-22, 1075 words

Example of article Prater ghost wrote for a U S WEST account executive

Roger Cooper served as deputy assistant attorney general for Information Resources Management at the Department of Justice (DOJ) until his recent departure from government. During his 22-year career, Cooper worked for the Department of Agriculture, the Treasury Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, and has experience in information systems management. He met with Federal Government Review to discuss how information management and technology affect the federal government.

Roger Cooper left his position at the DOJ at the end of March. He embarked on a new career in private industry with I-NET, a Bethesda, Maryland based company that provides communications and computer services in the United States and abroad.

A hard worker used to a full agenda, Cooper is proud of the telecommunication and information technology efforts that flourished during his tenure at the DOJ.

Several infrastructure activities have potential, Cooper said. A Justice Consolidated Office Network (JCON) will be awarded sometime this year, and serve about one-third of the 100,000 of the DOJ employees.

Cooper views telecommunications as the fastest growing aspect of the information explosion, ahead of even the computer side.

"One of the things we’re doing is taking a look at whether we should build our own Wide Area Network (WAN)," Cooper said. "And we’re looking at how much we can use the Federal Telecommunications (FTS) 2000, which is one of our primary providers now."

FTS 2000 is the government contract that covers the communications needs of 1.7 million government employees across the country, including a growing number of military personnel. The 10-year contract was awarded to AT&T and Sprint in 1988 and expires in 1998.

Cooper called FTS 2000 a "success story," especially in terms of cost control. "When we started the FTS 2000 program, we were spending close to 40 centers per minute for voice traffic, and now we’re spending around eight cents a minute," Cooper explained. "You don’t have to be a genius to figure out you’ve done something pretty decent on that front."

Also on the drawing board is a fiber-based network in the Washington, D.C. area, perhaps in conjunction with the Treasury Department.

"There’s a lot of commonality of interest between Treasury and DOJ," Cooper said. "We currently use Treasury’s private encrypted network for some of our traffic.

"We’ve got some other initiatives in the imaging area," he continued. "One very significant project is the Joint Automated Booking Station. It turns out that when you arrest somebody, they often go through two or three points of custody and each agency fingerprints and books them again. What we’re trying to do is get a standard set of demographic data so if someone is arrested, they’re only booked once and the data is shared."

Cooper cited the DOJ’s Information Connection Utility program as an example of the effort underway to streamline government. The Information Connection Utility program would hook all DOJ e-mail together and allow the 20-plus systems currently in use to talk with one another.

Cooper is a big proponent of the Internet, and the DOJ has its own home page on the World Wide Web. "The cost of getting information out — such as the Ten Most Wanted List — via the Internet is very inexpensive. The velocity at which data gets out is spectacular, which is important in terms of what we’re doing," he said.

Telecommunications will continue to be a hot issue in Washington. Cooper was a member of the GSA’s Interagency Management Council (IMC), a group of the most senior executive agency telecommunications and information technology professionals that is setting the stage for the Post-FTS 2000 procurement.

Last December, the group issued its program strategy that calls for a more diverse approach, including:

• Two or more comprehensive service providers
• One or more switched data and value-added service providers
• Two or more technical service providers to help user agencies apply telecommunications services and technologies into their missions
• A possible wireless communications service provider

This new approach, according to a statement prepared for Congressional hearings, lets agencies select different telecommunications services and even encourage new service providers to enter the market.

The picture is complicated, though, because it’s hard to decide which technology will be dominant in the future, Cooper said.

"ISDN has been around a long time, but it doesn’t really have deep penetration. You’ve got switched megabit data services. You’ve got a lot of ways you can get your telecommunications. We want flexibility, but we’ve really got to tell the contractors what it is we want or they can’t provide it."

Also ahead, Cooper said, is telecommunications reform. "In my opinion, telecom reform is probably the most important legislation that Congress will enact in the next 20 to 30 years. If Congress passes the Telecommunications Competition and Deregulation Act of 1995, which basically allows competition in the local market, and also in the long-distance arena, the vendors in the local and long-distance communities increase in order of magnitude," he explained.

How does Cooper rate the government’s efforts to reinvent itself?

"I think it has been moderately effective," he replied. "The important thing is that it was initiated at the very top. We always talk about the bosses, the top managers, getting involved, and they have. We certainly would have to say that from the President on down, reinventing government has been a high priority."

Still ahead, though, is implementing reform. Cooper said he was optimistic, because the mood of the country demands change and congressional leaders have endorsed that premise.

Technology can facilitate the government’s efforts to streamline processes and cut costs, he added. "I think technology can save a lot of labor. If somebody types something on a word processor that can be sent to the rest of the world from that workspace, you’ve saved a lot of effort. Technology is an enabler. We’re becoming an information-intensive society."

And telecommunications technology is really spearheading change, Cooper said. "It’s the fabric of what makes the society of the future — sort of the raw materials — so it’s important to understand how it all works," he said. "If you have some vision of where telecommunications is going in the future, then you can design your company, social structure or organization around that vision."