A "National Privacy Protection Board" ?! Forwarded message:

Posted-Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 08:35:15 -0400 Message-Id: <9310131235.AA08993@linc.cis.upenn.edu> X-Sender: farber@linc.cis.upenn.edu Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1993 08:35:15 -0400 From: farber@central.cis.upenn.edu (David Farber) Subject: from a source who said "NOT FOR ATTRIBUTION" re: National Performance Review Precedence: list

"The Vice President's recent report "From Red Tape to Results: Creating a Government that Works Better and Costs Less (National Performance Review) is peppered with recommendations about how to use information technology to "reinvent government." They would put in place an administrative infrastructure that empowers agencies and tracks progress, and undoing much of the entrenched bureaucracy that evolved and got ossified in the single vendor-mainframe era.

The meat behind the recommendations, teased together with much help from industry and information technology experts, is in a yet unreleased technical report, and it appears that it may never be vetted in public. The reason seems to be fears within the VP's public relations hirearchy, that the background report may generate controversy. This one should- among the ossified. Early and inaccurate drafts have begun circulating, raising risks that many of the good ideas will be stillborn as bureaucratic barriers that threaten the status quo are errected.

The recommendations include no-brainers (placing all agencies on the Internet and spreading e-mail through all agencies), huge $ savers (generating agency agreements for integrating tactical law enforcemnt network technology) and actual innovations (replacing the infamous "GSA Schedule" (which slows federal procurement of IT and raises costs) with a real time electronic marketplace. Some short acronym agencies appear sensitive to a proposal for a National Privacy Protection Board.

Curious? Take a look at the report on the UNC Sunsite Gopher. Want to know more contact the VP and tell him!"

-- -=> mech@eff.org <=- Stanton McCandlish Electronic Frontier Foundation Online Activist & SysOp NitV-DC BBS 202-232-2715, Fido 1:109/? IndraNet 369:111/1, 14.4V32b 16.8ZyX