Introduction

 

Chapter 3 - Creating Intranets for Management and Collaboration in Federal Agencies
Managing IT in Government, Business & Communities
by Gerry Gingrich (ed)
Idea Group Publishing 2003

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While e-government initiatives have focused on effective linkages between government agencies and their citizens or government agencies and businesses, there is growing interest in intranets connecting government with its employees. Intranets are typically newer applications than Internet Web sites, emerging in the early to mid 1990s in the private sector and, based on our respondents' accounts, mainly after 1997 among federal government agencies. Intranets are Web sites within government agencies that connect the agency administration to its employees and the employees to each other. In large multi-agency departments such as the Department of Transportation, intranets may be nested so that department-wide intranets and program-specific Web sites operate simultaneously.

These intranets make it possible for agency managers to enhance information resources for employees, make opportunities for employees to communicate more freely, and create online work groups through intranet collaboration. Information in bulky and expensive directories and manuals of policies and procedures can be provided in a more convenient, easy-to-find, and timely way in an internal Web network. Intranets make it possible for employers to communicate quickly and efficiently, and to save time and money in the dissemination of news and policy changes. Intranets may principally be portals linking employees to static information resources or they may include interactive elements that provide human resources services, such as the Employee Express payroll contract service. Some offer chat rooms or group works where employees can communicate outside of formal channels, air grievances, and seek solutions.

While the promise of intranets is great, little data has been collected to determine the state of intranet development. The purpose of our research is to describe intranet development in the federal government and to identify and analyze trends in use, sources of growth, and impediments to development. This research was funded by PriceWaterhouseCoopers and further elaboration and discussion of these findings can be found in Federal Intranet Work Sites: An Interim Assessment (Mahler & Regan, 2002).

The growing interest in intranets is spurred by their usefulness as management tools to foster productive communication and coordination, manage information, and encourage self-organizing work teams. Business-to-employee (B2E) intranets are developing rapidly because of their advantages in optimizing strategic communications. Allcorn (1997) identifies the "parallel virtual organization" composed of an intranet and organizational databases as the information and knowledge management model for the future. Curry and Stancich (2000) describe the advantages of the intranet for strategic decision-making. Southwest Airlines is cited by GAO as an exemplar of the uses of intranets for informal communication among members at dispersed work sites, which develops a culture of teamwork and pride (GAO/GGD-00-28). Many have noted the use of intranets for speeding and personalizing human resources functions in organizations (Holz, 1997). GAO reports how intranets can be used to foster human capital development in private firms that can serve as models for government (GAO/GGD-00-28). For example, at Federal Express, senior managers apply an automated intranet-based tool to assess leadership skills, potential, and development needs of mid-level managers so that new assignments and promotions can be made quickly and effectively.

Moon (2002) identifies intranets as a central part of e-government efforts in municipal governments, where they have been applied most often to human resources functions. He estimates that over half of the 85% of local governments with Web sites also had employee intranets of varying sophistication. Local governments are using intranets to support direct citizen services, from licenses and tax payments, to providing utility and planning maps (Isaacs, 2001). Intranets enable information sharing and collaboration across structural and geographical boundaries (Sheepers & Rose, 2001), and in doing so support significant government reinvention without massive reorganization (Ho, 2002).

A number of federal agencies have also reported plans to develop intranets, but the extent of the content and the level of actual use in agencies vary widely. For example, intranets are central to the IRS reform efforts by providing a communications strategy for informing staff about changes in tax law and policy and procedures, and for improving agency-wide communication (GAO/GGD-00-85200). The National Resources Center, the IRS's intranet Web site, was created in 1998 to serve as a site for centralized guidance on policy and procedures, to provide a way to disseminate answers to employee questions so that all staff would have the same answers, and to provide training. GAO reports successful strategies by Chief Information Officers (CIO) for enhancing agency information and knowledge management (GAO/GAO-01-376G). One example is the use of the agency intranet to make press clippings available to staff a significant improvement in speed and cost from traditional methods. In the Veterans Health Administration, intranet access to performance information, such as patient satisfaction data, is used to encourage improvement (GAO/GAO-01-376G).

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