Closing the gap between standards and government IT

Featured Course: Investing 101

Government has long been a major user of information technology, beginning with the 1890 census that gave the world the 80-column Hollerith punch card. Because government rarely does things in a small way, governmental purchases of IT equipment, software, or services can have a significant impact on and play a role in determining standards for the private sector. When it comes to using existing standards, however, government has a history of going its own way. Presentations at a recent meeting on the Extensible Markup Language or XML suggest that the Federal government may now be giving private sector IT standards more respect.

Government IT often becomes standards

The Internet itself is a good example of government IT that became a worldwide standard. The Internet started in the 1980s as a distributed network designed to withstand a direct strike from a hostile power (we defined hostile powers in those days as other superpowers) and still continue to operate. Instead of designing a new network, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA took a different approach. It established specifications for the network, which enabled defense facilities, contractors, and research facilities to inter-connect their internal networks and thus provide the capability to exchange messages and files. The National Science Foundation later took over management of DARPANet as it was called, and established the Internet first for scientific and educational institutions, and then for the public at large.

The lesson of the Internet shows the value of standards in IT developments. By establishing common specifications and protocols, such as TCP/IP, FTP, or HTTP, organizations, institutions, and companies can develop their systems to interoperate, without establishing a large, centralized network. Standards like these provide stable targets to which IT vendors can build their products and services, as well as offering end-users economies of scale to keep prices low. As a result, the world gets a continuous flow of innovations, as vendors take the standards and build new and imaginative product offerings, as well as providing lower prices.

Many agencies of the government, however, often consider their IT needs substantially different from the private sector, and as a result have often paid high prices and suffered long waits while systems were built. Some systems such as those used by the intelligence community, or for such unique functions as air traffic control are not likely to be available off-the-shelf. But many business processes used by government agencies are not so different from their private sector counterparts, and laws and regulations now encourage agencies to use commercial off-the-shelf (or COTS) equipment and software.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic