After months of preparation, the Commerce Department now has a roadmap for becoming a "digital department." The plan features an upgraded computer network, an intranet and electronic processes to replace paperwork.
As a first step, Commerce wants to install a high-speed fiber network in its headquarters in the Herbert Hoover Building in downtown Washington. The $5.8 million rewiring project, included in the department's fiscal 2001 budget request, would give the department the capacity to deliver services like online training and video teleconferencing to employees' PCs.
"We'll have serious bandwidth to the desktop," said Roger Baker, the department's chief information officer.
On its new network the department would create a secure intranet, or internal version of the Internet. The same intranet eventually would be extended to Commerce employees worldwide. It will give the habitually paper-based department a push into the Digital Age, officials hope.
"We want to create an environment where we put all of the current processes used to run the Commerce Department up in an electronic version on an intranet," Baker said. "This information will be readily available to everyone. . . . Getting people to publish to the intranet first is a change of the whole process."
Beyond the technology, Commerce's move toward becoming a Digital Department is really about reengineering the way it does business. Commerce Secretary William M. Daley asked for such a plan last July.
"We have [processes] that aren't even automated, let alone stovepiped," said Karen Hogan, director of the Digital Department initiative. "We want new Web-based processes."
Another goal of the Digital Department is to standardize information technology and encourage employees to rely on computers to do their jobs, Baker said. The hoped-for results: more efficiency and better communication across Commerce bureaus.
When all recent Commerce documents are published electronically, the department will have an online knowledge base that could eventually help with things like responding to Freedom of Information Act requests, Baker said.
Another goal of the Digital Department plan is to help companies and private citizens communicate more effectively with the department.
Commerce officials have posted the plan on the Web at www.doc.gov/cio/digital/index.html.