Washington Post, May 20, 1996 Feds on the Web Federal agencies' efforts to link up with the citizenry over the World Wide Web take a step forward today. Officials plan to announce a pilot program in which 1,000 to 2,000 people will try their hands at secure Web transactions with federal agencies. It's set to start later this month. The vision for the "Paperless Transactions for the Public Project": a taxpayer files a return to the Internal Revenue Service over Web links that use advanced cryptography to confirm to the agency that the return's really coming from the right party. Or, a retiree goes into a Social Security Administration computer to check benefit information. VIPs, civil servants and ordinary folks are to be issued special "key cards" to take part in the test, which will use cryptography from Frontier Technologies Corp., a Wisconsin networking company. Officials promise the vision is not that far away. --