**The IRM and ALMRS Forum**

**BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**September 11, 1997**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors in transcription and omissions.

Announcer: the Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live
from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona: the IRM and
ALMRS Forum, a Discussion of the Goals and Objectives of Future IRM
Activities. And Now, the Host of Your Program, Robin Stoebe.

Robin: Good Morning, Everyone. Welcome to the Second IRM/ALMRS Forum. We
Have an Exciting Show Planned Today That Will Include Two Video
Presentations. The First One Is on ALMRS Release I Capability and the
Second Is an Overview of Some of The Hot Spots to Visit on the Internet.
Today\'s Forum Will Include Three Discussion Groups. Our Panelists
Include the Assistant Director for IRM, State, Field and National IRM
Center Staff Members. The First Panel Discussion Will Give a Brief
Overview of the Goals and a Discussion on Some Key Areas That Include
Changes In the Office Automation Suite, The Dual Platform Issue of UNIX
And Windows Nt, and Also Configuration Management and Information
Technology Security. Before We Begin the Show I Would Like to Mention
You Will Be Able To Communicate with Us via Telephone and Fax Using
Numbers Provided to Your Office. You Can Send Us a Fax at Any Time. Use
the Form Provided with Your Written Materials. Please Print Your
Questions with A Dark Marker. You May Also Call Us Whenever You like.
Our Operators Are Standing By. In Most Cases, However, We Will Only Be
Putting Calls on the Air During Our Three Scheduled Interactive
Segments. Let\'s Get Started by Introducing Panelists for this First
Discussion. Gayle Gordon Is the Assistant Director for IRM and the
Bureau\'s Chief Information Officer. Glad to Have You with Us.

Gayle: It\'s Nice to Be Here. It\'s Been Approximately Seven Months
since the Last Forum. A Lot Has Happened since That Time and We\'re
Looking Forward To Discussing Some of Those Activities this Morning.

Robin: Thank You. Our Second Panelist Is Al Wright, Associate State
Director For California. Al Is Also a Member of the Field Committee\'s
IRM Subcommittee, Better Known as the Quartet.

Al: It\'s Good to Be Here. I Have Noticed a Lot of the Panel Members
Today Are IRM People. So I Hope You Are Going to Help Me Keep the
Language Simple So I Can Understand and the Viewers Will Understand.

Robin: I\'m Also Pleased to Introduce Mike Garratt, Senior Systems
Engineer from the National IRM Center. Mike, We\'re Glad You Could Be
With Us Today.

Mike: Thank You, Robin. It\'s Interesting, You Can Come To Phoenix Where
It\'s the Fiery Furnace, and the Day Before You Were in Colorado and You
Had Frost on Your Windshield, but That\'s the American West.

Robin: Glad You\'re Here. Also Joining Us from Wyoming Is Glen Coffman,
IRM Chief and the Newly Elected Chair of the IRM Advisory Committee.
Welcome and Congratulations on The New Appointment, Glen.

Glen: Thank You, Robin. I Would like to Take this Opportunity to Commend
You and The Other Members of Our IRMac, That Would Be Specifically John
Foster from Colorado and Bill Degrew from Idaho for the Outstanding
Leadership You Provided to the IRM Advisory Committee.

Robin: Thanks, Glen. Director Pat Shea in His All‑employee Video in
August Clearly Stated Support of ALMRS Development and Deployment. In
Addition, He Is Very Supportive of Utilizing Today\'s Technology in
Achieving the Bureau\'s Mission and Goals. To Kick Things Off, Director
Shea Has Prepared Some Remarks About the Bureau\'s Modernization
Efforts.

Shea: Welcome to the IRM/ALMRS Forum. Many of You Will Recall the First
Address I Made to You. I Described Three Particular Projects I Wanted to
Be Involved In. The First and Most Important Was The Health of the
Organization, The Second Was ALMRS, and the Third Was an Inspection and
Enforcement Action for Oil, Gas And Mining. I Welcome this Opportunity
to Talk to You Today about Technology and Specifically About the
Information System ALMRS. It Represents a Great Opportunity to Enhance
Our Ability to Communicate, to Make Our Jobs Done More Efficiently And
to Work with the General Public. But Don\'t Kid Yourself, It\'s Not A
Job Without its Peril. Many Systems Have Gotten Started, as We\'ve Seen
with the Faa or Irs, and Have Not Been Successful. But We\'ve Made Great
Progress, And We\'re Still Moving Ahead on The Project, and this Forum
Is One Way in Which the Information We Need to Have Will Get to You. One
Warning That I Make to You\... Be Sure to Take Advantage of the
Technologies Here. Don\'t Allow Yourself to Slip Into the Process Where
You\'re Chasing Technology. Remember, Every Manager must Be Smarter,
Better and Look at Cost Control. Gayle Gordon, as the Assistant Director
of IRM for BLM as Chief Information Officer and Her Staff Have Done an
Extraordinary Job of Bringing a Complex Database to Bear in the
Automation Technology ALMRS Represents. Today\'s Forum Will Not Focus
Just on Technology, and That\'s One of the Advantages of the Forum. It
Will Also Address Information Management. Many of You Are Aware That I
Use E‑mail Quite Extensively. I Always Find it Interesting That I Will
Find a One‑sentence Memorandum, and I Think to Myself, \"Now Here Is
Somebody Who Managed the Information Well,\" and as a Somewhat New
Person to E‑mail, I Will See There Is an Attachment, Click It, and Sure
Enough, There Is a Five‑page Memo or Article I Need To Read to
Understand What Is Being Said There. In My Judgment, That\'s Not Good
Information Management. We Need to Boil down to the Essence of What We
Want to Say And How We Use this Technology, And So I Encourage You as
You Go Through this Forum to Think of How You Can Manage the Information
You\'re Responsible For. To Be a Good Steward of the Land Requires Good
Management of Our Information, Which ALMRS Represents. The
Demonstrations That I\'ve Seen over the Last Few Months Really Have
Convinced Me That We Are at the Cutting Edge of Where Government And,
Indeed, the Private Sector Are in Bringing Online an Efficient and
Effective Way New Technology Will Make Our Life and Our Jobs Easier.
But, Remember, Congress, the Gao And Omb Will Be Watching. So It\'s Very
Important That We Do this Job Successfully and Effectively. I Think
We\'re Only Beginning to See the Blossoming of Technology As it Will
Assist Us in the Workplace in Fulfilling Our Obligations as BLM
Employees. Again, Welcome to the Forum, and Thank You for Your
Participation.

Robin: We Appreciate the Director Taking the Time to Prepare Those
Remarks for Us Today. Before We Begin Our Discussion, We\'d like to Get
an Update Overall IRM Strategy and How it Relates to the IRM Strategic
Plan. During this Forum We Hope We Will Address Many of the Concerns
Employees, Managers and IRM Staff Have. To Begin With, Gayle Will Give
Us an Overview of Where We\'re Headed. Gayle?

Gayle: Thank You, Robin. What I Would like to Do Is Go Over the Three
Strategic Goals We Have Identified, and Then Throughout the Program
Today We\'ll Be Talking about Activities That Will Be Moving Us Towards
Achieving These Goals. The Three Goals Are the First One Is to Develop
and Maintain a Sound and Integrated Information Technology Architecture
to Saw. The Second Goal Is to Increase The Application of Information
Management Principles Throughout The Programs of the Bureau. The Third
Goal Is to Ensure That Our Employees Understand the Potential of
Information Technology, its Use and its Management. What I Would like to
Do Now Is To Go Through and Say a Couple Of Words about Each of Those
Goals. Going Back to the First One, the Information Technology
Architecture, the Architecture Is Composed of a Number of Pieces. It
Includes the Information Technology Infrastructure, the Data, the
Systems, the Standards And Procedures to Make All of The Pieces Work
Together And, of Course, Our Employees to Make it All Happen. What
We\'ve Done over the Last Four Years with Modernization Program Is to
Have an Infusion Of New Technology in the Bureau. We Now Have a Very
Fine What We\'re Calling Information Technology Infrastructure. What We
Need to Do in the Future Is to Make Sure We Not Only Sustain this
Infrastructure, Keep it Viable, but Move it Ahead as We Need To. The
Second Goal, Which Deals With Information Management Principles, Relates
Back to Some Of the Things That Pat Said in His Opening Message. Just as
We Are ‑‑ Need to Be Stewards of the Land, We Also Need to Be Stewards
of the Information Within the Organization, Particularly Information We
Collect and Manage. Likewise, One of Pat\'s Themes Is To Try and Do Good
Science in All of Our Work. Good Science Requires Starting With the Best
Quality Information That We Can Possibly Find. The Third I ‑‑ Goal Is to
Ensure Our Employees Understand Technology, its Potential, its Use and
its Management. Just as We Have Made a Major Investment in Our
Technology Infrastructure, We Also Have Made a Maker in Vestment in Our
Employees over the Last Few Years. We\'ve Had Hundreds of Classes Here
in the National Training Center, and We Need to Make Sure That We
Continue this Investment In the Future. Ok?

Robin: I Think, Gayle, One of The Strengths of this Revision Of the
Strategic Plan Is We Have Really Emphasized the Sharing of Data with
Partners and I Think That\'s Extremely Critical and We Are Starting to
Do More and More In the Field.

Gayle: and That\'s a Theme We Will Be Repeating this Morning.

Robin: Do You Have a Manager\'s Perspective of All This, Al, Where
We\'re Headed, Going, from The Last Couple Years You Have Been Working
with the IRM Community?

Al: I Think for Sure We Have Gone from Experimentation and Sort of
Practice into Developing Some Very Professional Applications Using
Computer Technology in the Bureau. We\'ve Invest Add Lot in Our Work
Force the Last Last Two or Three Years. I Think We\'re Also Seeing
Recognition That the Interdependency Is Critical Between the IRM
Community and The Users of the Systems, the Geologists and the Realty
Specialists, and I Think the Readiness Reviews That Occurred Last Year
to Help Us Get Ready For the Deployment of ALMRS Really Gave Each of the
States Some Very Good Ideas about What They Need to Focus on to Make
Sure We\'re Ready for Deployment. Also Addressed the Staffing in Each of
the States and as a Result of That I Think We\'ve Beefed up Our Staffs,
and I Think Considering That We\'re Going to Be Deploying this next
Year, It\'s a Good Time to Go Back and Sort of Validate Those Staffing
Plans and See That We Have People in Place to Make Sure That We\'re
Going to Be Successful in the Deployment. So I Think We\'re down a Good
Road. We\'re Building a Foundation Certainly with ALMRS, with the Data
That\'s in the System and The Capability That We\'re Going To Have to
Use the Information After We\'re Deployed and I Think It\'s the
Foundation We\'re Going To Be Looking Forward to for Also Building on
Resource Data Laters in the Future.

Robin: Good. A Lot of Optimism There.

Al: Absolutely!

Robin: in the First Goal, Architecture Was Mentioned, And, Mike, I Was
Wondering If You Could Kind of Fill Us out a Little More on What That
Really Means.

Mike: Well, I Think Gayle Summarized That Architecture Consists of
Application Systems, Data and Infrastructure. That\'s the One Sentence
Version Of What Architecture Is. There Is a 50‑page Document Called the
Integrated System Architecture Document, Also Known by ‑‑ for Those That
like Acronyms as the Isad, or the Euphemism, Isad. For Those of You Have
‑‑ Who Have an Interest in Learning More about the Modernization
Architecture, I Recommend You Look at this Document. It\'s Been
Distributed to the IRM Chiefs. Since the Modernization Architecture Is
Always Evolving, This Document Is Revised on About an Every‑six‑month
Basis, And it Allows You an Oversight Of What the Architecture Is About.
I Want to Spend a Little More Time Talking about What We Mean By
Infrastructure Associated With the Architecture. The Infrastructure That
We Deployed as Part of the Modernization Project Basically Had Four
Components, Hardware, Network, Software and Security. The Hardware
Consisted of Large Distribution of UNIX Platforms That Went to about 60%
of the Bureau Employees. Subsequent Purchases Have Raised That
Percentage to about 70%. This Mixed Environment, Because We Kept a
Number of Personal Computers That Comprised the Large Portion of It, the
30%, Are the Basis of the Client Workstations That Users Have. There Are
Also Servers Associated with this. When We Go to the next Piece, The
Network, One of the Requirements That We Wanted to Have, and We ‑‑ When
the Bureau Modernized, Was to Provide Connectivity Between All BLM
Users. What this Required Is That We Had to Create a Local Area Network
and a Wide Area Network So All Users Could Communicate With One Another
and Then Also Have Access to Doinet, the Department of Interior Wide
Area Network So We Could Communicate With Other Agencies and Also Have
Access to the Internet. So One of the Goals Was to Provide These
Workstation Platforms and the Network So That All Users Would Have
Access To Office Automation So They Could Share Documents Bureauwide And
Also Communicate Through E‑mail Bureauwide. The next Component Is
Software, And One of the Things That Was Done with Software Was
Deploying Database Software, Gis Software. As a Part of the
Infrastructure That Provided the Building Blocks for a Couple of the
Other Business Applications That Were Required by the Modernization
Infrastructure. One Is the Building and Subsequent Deployment of ALMRS.
Other Part Was the Had He Roasting of ‑‑ Rehosting of the Administrative
Systems, the Bureauwide Administrative Systems That Was Needed to Be
Done. The Other Piece Is Security. Once You Provide this Network Where
All Users Are Connected Together, a Mechanism Needed to Be in Place to
Provide Security So That We Could Transact Our Business Without
Outsiders Interfering on Our Network. The Mechanism That Was Chosen to
Do this Is the Installation of Firewalls, a Security Device at Each
State Office. What this Allows BLM Users to Do Is to Communicate with
One Another Inside the Firewall, So To Speak, Knowing That Their
Communications and Their Data Is Secure, but Have Access to the Outside,
in Other Words, to Send ‑‑ to Exchange Information with Other Agencies
or Use the Internet. At the Same Time, Allow Authorized Users, Maybe
Other Federal Users That Need to Cut Into the BLM Network, Access
Through the Firewall, or BLM Employees When They\'re out of The Office
and They Need to Get Access Inside the Firewall to Come Through That
Device. And Have Access to Their Data Needs. The Real Challenge Is That
this Infrastructure Has ‑‑ Was Spec\'ed out Five Years Ago and Began to
Be Deployed Four Years Ago, and Keeping this Infrastructure Viable and
Current over Time Is Really Where the Challenge Lies, and That\'s Some
of the Issues We\'re Going to Talk about Here Today.

Glen: Yes, Configuration Management Is the Process by Which We Manage
That Process You Described. We Have Two Levels in BLM, We Have a
National Level, a National Configuration Board, And Then Each State and
Center Also Has a Cm Process. What Has Been a Recent Change to That Cm
Is That We Now Incorporate Both Platforms, That\'s Now the Pcs and the
Government‑furnished Equipment That We Already Had. We\'re Even
Including the Radio Systems and Telephone Systems. So It\'s Going to Be
a Comprehensive Management Process That We Have. The Gao Recently
Commended the Bureau of Land Management for The Activities That We Have
Undertaken in the Last Few Months. The BLM Is Evaluating All of Our
Software, for Example, How Many Licenses Do We Need, How Many ‑‑ Which
Products Are We Using and We\'re Doing a Pretty Comprehensive Job of
That. Looking at the Most Cost Effective Way to Purchase New Software
Upgrades. The Only Package We Had in the Office Automation Software, for
Example, That Has Current Licensing Capabilities Where We Could Upgrade
it When We Choose To Do So Is the Wordperfect Product. Upcoming Is the
Upgrade of the Operating System for the Ibm UNIX Platform. This Is this
Is the Aix Operating System and We Are Looking to Roll out That Upgrade
In the Month of November. Now, There Are Several Reasons We Need to
Upgrade That Operating System. There Are Some Efficiencies to Be Had,
Particularly in the Area Of Networks, Where We Would Increase the
Throughput by a Factor of Tenfold. The Applications Software Is ‑‑
Operating System Specific and This Is the Reason We Haven\'t Upgraded
Wordperfect, Because 70% of Oureers Are on the UNIX Platform. We Cannot
Upgrade to Wordperfect 7 or 8 until We Have That Aix Upgrade. The Other
Thing Is That Ibm Drops the Maintenance in December. So Configuration
Management Is An Extremely Critical Process And the Bureau Has Done a
Pretty Good Job.

Gayle: as I Have Been Going Around the Country Visiting Our Offices, One
of the Frequent Complaints I Get Is That People Can\'t Just Walk down
the Street To Their Nearest Computer Store And Buy a Package for \$50
and Bring it in and Have Them Help Them Do Their Job Just as They Could
at Home. What Is the Best Answer to That Question?

Glen: the Best Answer Is for the \$50 Packages, That Would Be a State or
Center Call That Would Need to Go Through Their Configuration Management
Process. The National Center Is Looking At the Large Application
Software, Be it Office Automation, Informix Database Package, the UNIX
Platform, That Kind of Thing. There Are Many Horror Stories About
Individuals Using Particular Packages. One That Many of You Have Heard
About Would Be the Occasion Where an Employee in One of Our Offices Came
In, Load Add New Version of the Ibm Aix Operating System on Their System
and Then Took down Sites That Weren\'t Even in the Bureau of Land Manage
Thement. So We Also Run into the Problem Of Supporting These Systems. We
Have Limited Resources in Our IRM Staffs, and the More Widespread Use
That We Have of Packages That Are Not Meeting Some Kind of a Standard,
Then We\'re Having Some Adverse Impacts on Those Staffs.

Gayle: Before We Go Any Further, I Would like to Have an Al Wright
Check. Are You with Us? This Has Been Fairly Technical. How Are You
Doing?

Al: I Always like Pictures, Robin, So I Brought a View Graph. I Would
like to Put That up and Talk about It. The Importance of the View Graph
Is, at Least in My Mind, it Sort Of Simplifies the Fact That Right Now
We Have a Number of Operating Systems Sitting on Our Desk. We Have UNIX
Systems, Which Are Deployed about 65 to 70% in the Bureau to Employees
and Then We Have a Variety of Pc Systems. We Have Dos and Windows 95 and
The Mac Operating Systems. In the Future We ‑‑ as We Replace Those, I
See Us Migrating Towards Two Operating Systems and in the Center of All
Of That Is the Key That Management Needs to Pay Attention To, and
That\'s the ‑‑ That\'s the Data Management, That\'s the Applications
Part of This Thing, and That\'s the Importance of Investing in the Work
Force. So That\'s Where We Need to Keep Our Focus in Terms of Management
Of Issues, I Think, While You Guys Are Sort of Doing the Wiring in the
Background and Keeping Things Working Together.

Glen: I Would like To.

Mike: I Would like to Expand on The Two Operating Systems, like Gayle
Mentioned on Employees Bringing Software In, the Complexity Gets More
Complicated As We Introduce More Hardware And Operating System
Components In There. One Thing the Bureau Has Looked At Is the Need for
What Is Required to Support the Personal Computer Environment Versus the
Aix Environment. Obviously Our Operating System On the UNIX Side Is Aix.
On the Personal Computer Side, We Have a Number of Operating Systems.
What the Bureau Has Done Is an Evaluation of the Windows Nt Operating
System as Another Operating System for the Personal Computer
Environment. What this Evaluation Resulted in Is We\'re Recommending as
the ‑‑ Through There Are Macs Is That Windows Nt Be the Second Operating
System for the NonUNIX Platform. With the Idea to Simplify Maintenance
in the Long‑term. In Terms of Application Servers And Data Servers and
Mail Servers, It\'s Still an Open Issue. Further Evaluation Needs to Be
Done as to What Should Be Done On the Server Side of the Equation in the
Long‑term. Robin: One Thing You Mentioned Earlier, Glen, Was the
Operating System, Aix Upgrade, and Some Other Upgrades Related to the
Office Automation Suite. I Was Wondering If You Could Get Into More
Detail, Some Time Frames That We Might Expect to See Something Start to
Go Hit The Ground.

Glen: I\'ll Talk about the Office Automation Project We Have Embarked
upon Within BLM. The Department of the Interior Has a Study, an
Evaluation Going On, Looking at Their E‑mail System Throughout. The
Package That\'s Being Looked At Would Be the Lotus Domino Notes Product
and the Bureau Is Part of That Overall Evaluation. So Our Office
Automation Project Is Really Split into Two Parts, We Have an E‑mail
Component and Also the Applications Component. The Applications
Component Would Have the Functionality for Word Processor, Spreadsheet,
Database And Business Graphics. Now the Approach We\'re Take Something
to Obtain and Procure An Integrated Package. That Differs from the
Environment We Have. We Have an Interoperability Package or Components
That Are Comprised of Wordperfect for Word Processing, Groupwise Is The
E‑mail, We Have Applix We Use for Spreadsheets, and We Have No Database
Component. We Never Gave the Employees a Replacement for the Dbase Iii
And Iv That We Previously Had. So We\'re Looking at an Integrated
Package. So We\'re Looking at One Vendor In One Package for That
Intraoperability. You Can Drag a Spreadsheet into A Word Processing
Document. Benefit in Terms of Cost Effectiveness. It\'s Cheaper to Buy
One Integrated Package than it Is Several Different Packages to Obtain
Those Same Components. From a System Administration and User Support
Standpoint, It\'s Much Easier for Our IRM Staff to Support an Integrated
Product Like That. Now, Robin, You Specifically Asked Me about Time
Frames. We\'re Presently Scheduled to Deploy the Ibm UNIX Operating
System in the Month of November. Along about That Time Frame, It\'s
Conceivable That We Could Do the E‑mail Component as Well Because the
Lotus Domino Notes Product Is Bundled in with That Operating System. It
Arrives in the Same Box. Now, That\'s a Very Aggressive Schedule. We\'ve
Got Testing Ongoing Right Now. We\'re Looking at the Administration and
the Actual Functionality of the Product in Comparison to Groupwise. The
First Team Is Comprised of The Bureau State and Center Groupwise
Administrators and They\'re Looking at That. I Know That One of Gayle\'s
Concerns Is That We Have User Involvement, and We Definitely Plan to Do
That. As Far as the Applications, We\'re Looking at about the Third
Quarter of next Fiscal Year for That. Once Again, We Have about 70% of
Our Users That Are Sitting There On the UNIX Platform.

Mike: I Would Would like to Expand on What Glen Said Because Of the 70%
UNIX Client Workstation Deployment. Many People That Are New to the
Bureau Might Wonder Why the Bureau Ended up with a Largely UNIX
Environment as Opposed to a Personal Computer Environment. This Goes
Back to the Modernization Contract That Was Basically Scoped out about
Five Years Ago, and One of the Main Requirements of That Platform Was to
Support the ALMRS Application That Was to Be Developed, as Well as the
Office Automation, E‑mail Infrastructure, and That ‑‑ at The Current
Time, the Most Viable Platform That Looked to Be Able to Support ALMRS
Was the UNIX Environment, and That Was ‑‑ and Subsequently the ALMRS
Application Has Been Developed On the UNIX Environment and as a Result
That\'s Why the Bureau Has A Large Installed Base of UNIX Workstations.

Gayle: Now, Don\'t You Think That For at Least the near Future, Our UNIX
Investment Still Makes Sense, Though?

Mike: Yes. And Users That Are ALMRS Users Will Require a UNIX
Workstation.

Gayle: a Lot of Our Gis ‑‑ Actually, Probably Most of Our Gis Users Also
Use the UNIX Environment, Too, Don\'t They?

Mike: Currently, I Believe So.

Robin: You Mentioned New Upgrades and Products. Along with this Comes
the Budget Issue and the Training Issue, And I Was Wondering If Gayle or
Al, If You Have Some Insight on Where We Stand.

Gayle: Ok. I Referred to Our Initial Infusion of Technology with the
Modernization Contract. Along with That We Did Get Funding for That
Technology. Unfortunately, That Funding Level Was Not to Continue
Indefinitely in the Future, and We\'re Starting to See in Fy‑99 The
First Time Where We Really Need to Replace and Refresh Our Technology
Base Without the Corresponding Omb Funding for Modernization. So What
We\'re Trying to Do Right Now Is Really Get a Handle on Our Technology
Infrastructure. What Are the Components? What Is the Lifecycle for Each
Of the Components? That Is, When Do We Expect it to Need to Be Replaced?
And Then We\'re Working up a Time Line in What We\'re Calling Our
Lifecycle Cost Model, and We\'ll Be Able to Really Come up with Very
Good Estimates of How Much Money We Will Be Needing in the Future to
Sustain this Investment We\'ve Had. Now, One of the Things That\'s
Become Very Clear to All of Us Is That All of Our Programs in The Bureau
Now Rely on Technology. It\'s Not Just the ALMRS Project. So What We\'re
to Be Doing Is a Part of Every Program They Will Be Having to Make the
Investment To Sustain the Technology to Continue Supporting Their
Project.

Robin: Ok. I Would like to Interrupt for Just a Second. I Would like to
Mention to the Viewers That We Will Be Moving Into Our First Question
and Answer Period in about Five Minutes. So If You Have a Question or a
Comment for Our Panel, this Would Be a Good Time to Give Us A Call or
Send Us a Fax. As a Matter of Fact, I Have a Fax Right in Front of Me
Right Here. Let\'s Jump to That Real Quick. This Is from Howard in ‑‑
Doesn\'t Say Where He\'s from. We Now Have a Bureauwide UNIX System.
Then Why Do We Need Adobe to Read Messages Coming out of the Denver
Business Center. There Is No Operational Way to Complete an Option Form
3347 on The New System. Will the New Ideas System Be UNIX Compatible? If
Not, Why Not. Looks like More than One Question There.

Mike: I\'m Not Sure I Have the Familiarity with the Componentry At the
Level That Question Is Asked to Be Able to Answer this In this Forum.

Robin: I Will Take a Quick Part Of It. Part of the Problem on like the
Adobe and Some of the Problems We\'re Having There Relates to Exactly
What Glen Was Talking About Where We\'re Utilizing an Operating System
That Really Needs to Be Updated, and Version 4.0 of Aix Is Going to
Solve Some of Those Problems for Us. Gayle: I Think That Highlights The
Need for Really Thinking Through Technology Investments, And Before We
Start Developing Application Systems, We Need to Make Sure That Everyone
in the Bureau Who Will Need to Access These Systems Is Equipped to Do
So.

Mike: I Think We Have a Good Example of That. Glen Is Currently Doing an
Evaluation of What Our Requirements Are for Eris for Gis Software.

Glen: That\'s Correct. We Actually Had Loaded 3600 Copies of Arc Info on
Systems Throughout the Bureau. Since That Time Many Have Been Removed
Because They Take up Space and the Particular Users Had No Requirement
for Those. What We\'re Trying to Do Is to Now Expand the Number of
Products, Specifically the Art View 3 Product and the Extensions for
That. What We\'re Asking Esri to Do Is To Consider the Investment We\'ve
Made Heretofore in the Esri Products and Roll That into the New
Licensing. We\'re Awaiting That Proposal Right Now. A Difference in the
Way We Are Approaching All Licensing Now Compared to What We Did Before
Is Get out of this Mode of Being Locked into a Specific Release. We\'re
Looking for Version Currency on All the Software and We\'re Also Looking
for Cross Platform Compatibility Where That\'s Applicable.

Gayle: Robin, Going Back to Howard\'s Question ‑‑ Howard\'s Fax, with
the Idea System, We Will Be Making Sure That Anyone Who Needs to Access
the System Will Be Able to Do So. Now, it May Be That If They Are Using
UNIX Equipment They\'ll Have to Be Using an Emulator, But We Will Be
Making Sure That They Will Be Able to Get Access To the System.

Glen: I Think a Distinction That Needs to Be Made Is We Will Not Have
Two Workstations on Anyone\'s Desktop. If I Have an Aix Machine or a
Personal Computer, I Would Be Able to ‑‑ as Much as Possible,
Transparently Get to the Type Server Where That Application Resides,
Whether That\'s on a UNIX Server or If It\'s on a Windows Nt Server or
Even Some Other Thing like an Ibm Mainframe.

Robin: That Ties into the Ideas Application. It\'s One of the Ways
They\'re Trying to Look to Flesh out Exactly How That Application Is
Going to Be Implemented. Another Background on the Ideas, It\'s Not a
Bureau Application, It\'s a Department One. So It\'s Coming down from
the Department and We Just Have to Deal with it and Adjust. Al, You
Wanted to Expand a Little More on the Budget Side.

Al: I Would like to Follow up on The Budget Issue That Gayle Talked B
the Reality Is, I Think, in the States after Seeing the Work Plan
Directives We Got Last Week Is That Money Is Going to Be Short next Year
And I Know Some of the ALMRS Costs Are Going to Be Passed Onto the
States the Way the Work Plan Is Proposing Now. The States Have
Additional Costs We Haven\'t Had in the past like Picking up Some
Additional Space Costs. We Will Be Need to Go Start Purchasing or
Escrowing Money For the Narrow Band Radio System. I Think We Have to
Keep in Mind Our Primary Mission Is Managing The Public Lands and
Providing Information and Help for the Public about Public Lands and to
The Degree That Computers and Information Technology Help Us, Had He
Make it More Efficient, Effective, the Way We Do That, That\'s How We
Ought to Be Spending Our Money. So It\'s Going to Be a Tight Balancing
Act There, but We Always Have to Keep in Focus Why We\'re Here and Took
Place Manage The Public Lands and Provide That Information and Customer
Service for the People Using the Lands.

Robin: Howard Had a Second Part To His Question Here and Goes: Why Are
We Using Systems Not Compatible with the UNIX?

Glen: I Think That We\'ve Just Talked about That with the Ideas Thing.
We Have a Lot of Applications That Don\'t Reside on UNIX. For Example,
the Auto Cad Product, the Release 14 That\'s The Present Release, Is Not
Available on Any Kind of UNIX. It\'s Only Available in the Windows
Environment, in the Dos Platform, If You Will. We Get a Lot of
Applications That Are Given to Us That We Have No Control over. They
Come in from the Doi. So We\'re Looking at the Windows Or the Second
Platform as Being A Safety Net So That We Are Able To Run Whatever
Application it Takes to Do Our Business Processes.

Gayle: Yes, Mike Talked a Little Bit about the History of the ‑‑
Specifying UNIX as Our Primary Platform. We All at That Point ‑‑
Platform. We All at That Point in the Early \'90s Expected UNIX to
Become ‑‑ Take on Even More and More a Larger Share of the Market. That
Hasn\'t Happened, and as a Result, We Haven\'t Seen Software Developed
the Way We Had Hoped It Would. As We Said Earlier, We Still Consider
That to Be a Very Viable Product for Meeting a Segment of Our Needs, but
it Certainly Will Not Be Meeting All of Our Needs in the Future.

Mike: it Can Be Viewed as Having A Second Platform as a Form of
Insurance. Putting All Your Eggs in the UNIX Basket Could Actually Be
Said to Be a Business Risk That\'s Unacceptable to Take.

Robin: a Couple Things to Highlight from What You Have Been Saying
That\'s Important From My Point of View Is That The Idea of Having One
Box on a Person\'s Desk Is Really Important, Whether That Be a UNIX
Workstation or a Pc. That Hasn\'t Happened Yet Across The Board, but
That\'s, I Think, The Viewers Need to Realize That\'s One of the Goals
of the IRM Community to to Try to Strive for That. It\'s Good for Use
Ther and Also Good for the Support Staff. The Easier the Support, the
Better it Shook Should Become. What We Have Been Talking about With the
Two Platforms Should Be Transparent to the Users in the Forms of Servers
Behind the Scenes That Are Hosting the Applications.

Mike: That\'s One of the Issues About the Dual Platform That Is The Most
Critical, That Is the Evaluation of What the Second Server Environment
Should Be, Because What You\'d Really like To Do Is Have a User with One
Box on His Desk, Whether it Be UNIX or Pc, Could That Access Things off
a UNIX Server or off Of on a Non‑UNIX, like a Windows Nt Type Server.

Gayle: Later in the Program We Will Be Talking about Enter Net, And I
Think this Technology ‑‑ Internet and this Technology Offers a Lot to
Help Us out in The Dual Platform Environment. If We Are Developing
Systems and We\'re Having Them Available on The Intranet, Not the
Internet, It Really Won\'t Make Any Difference Which Box Is Sitting On
Your Desk as Long as You Have Access to the Intranet.

Robin: I Have Another Fax In. This One Is from Wyoming. I Don\'t Know If
by Default it Goes to Glen or Not, but We\'ll Hear the Question.

Glen: I Told Those People Not to Send Any Faxes.

Robin: He Has a Couple Questions. First One Is Do We Have a FIRM Date
for ALMRS Deployment?

Gayle: We\'re Going to Be Talking About That Later. What the Continuing
Test Cycle Is Going to Be. What We\'re Doing, Just Very Briefly, I Will
Summarize It, We Have Broken the Testing into Segments, and We\'re
Completing The Last Segment Testing this Month in New Mexico. In
November We\'ll Be Doing Our Final Entire System Testing, and Then
We\'ll Be Following That by Independent Verification of the System. This
Was Something That Was Mandated in Our Appropriations Language Two Years
Ago, and We\'ve Contracted with Miter Tech To Do That Independent
Evaluation. We Fully Intend to Deploy to the Nonpilot Sites in New
Mexico in January and this Will Be Followed by Deployment to All The
Other States. The Schedule We Have Been Talking about Is That the Second
State, Which Is Planned to Be Arizona, Will Be Deployed in April.
However, Our New Director in His Enthusiasm for ALMRS Has Asked Us to
See If We Can\'t Move That Date up a Little Closer to January. So We\'re
Looking at That. The One Thing That We Really Are Committed to Is to
Make Sure That the System Is Fully Tested And That the States Are Really
Ready to Accept it Before We Move it out.

Robin: Thank You. Second Part of the Question from Wyoming: Now That
That the Decision Has Been Made to Go From a Three Tier to a Two‑tier
Organization, What Effect Does That Decision Have on Data Conversion and
Deployment Dates.

Al: it Was Discussed with the Executive Leadership Team of State
Directors and the Assistant Directors Last Week With the Director, and
it Appears That We Are Going to Move in That Direction, and We Expect to
See a Decision from The Director in a Short Time. I Don\'t Think It\'s
Going to Have An Impact on Deployment All That Much Because We\'re Going
to Keep The Basic Foundation of the Organization, and That\'s the People
on the Ground and That\'s Where the Realty Specialists and The
Geologists Are That Are Doing the Work with the Customers, the Utilities
Tea Customers and Others. They Are Working with People Directly in the
State Office That Have Been Cleaning up the Data and Getting it Ready
for Conversion into the System. I Don\'t Expect to See it Will Have Much
of an Impact on It.

Gayle: We Can Follow this Question up and Follow up All The Questions
with Our Data Conversion Experts and Make Sure They Agree with Us.

Robin: We Have Another Fax Here From All the California Employees, and
It\'s Directed to Al Wright. The Question Is: How Should Managers
Prepare Themselves to Keep up with All These Technology Changes?

Al: Well, There\'s Probably Several Things to Do. I Would Guess All the
States Are Being Somewhat Creative about How That Happens, but First of
All, I Mentioned the Importance Of Having the Technical People And the
Users of the Systems Working Together as the Interdependency Is So
Critical There. Management Also Has to Be a Part Of That, to Help Ensure
That We\'re Focused and We\'re Heading In the Right Direction, and as
You Become More Familiar and Sitting down and Talking Through The Issues
with Those People, You Also Start to Learn about The Issues and Those
Things That You Ought to Be Paying Attention To. I Think It\'s Also
Important That Managers Continue to Use the Tools That Are Available
When It\'s Applicable. Another Learning Process. I Just Think It\'s
Something We\'re Going to Learn over Time. I Don\'t Think There\'s
Anything Magical about it or Black & White That Today We Don\'t Know And
Tomorrow We Are Going to Know. I Think One Thing That Is Certain about
Modernization and The Use of Information Technology, and That Is Change
Is Constant and Perhaps That\'s The Only Constant Thing about
Information Technology, Is We Are Going to Continue to Have a Lot of
Change.

Gayle: That Question Gets Back To Our Third Goal, Having to Do With
Making Sure Our Employees Understand the Technology, and When We Talk
Our about Employees, We\'re Not Just Talking about the IRM Employees,
But We Have to Find Ways to Ensure That Everyone, Even Managers,
Understand Basics of Technology. What We\'re Doing Is Trying to Identify
Core Competencies That We Feel That Everyone Should Have, and Then What
We Will Be Doing Is Following up That Identification with Particular
Training in Those Areas.

Robin: One Thing That Phoenix Training Center Is Looking at Is
Management ‑‑ or Training for Managers, Non‑IRM Managers and So
Hopefully You Will Be Seeing Something along Those Lines. Good. We Have
Another Fax in from Wyoming. What Is the Hold up with the Informix
Software. When with All this Be Available To the Field Office and Has
Training on this Software Been Addressed?

Glen: Informix Is a Complex and Complicated Relational Database System.
The Training for it Is Extremely Expensive. You Need to Be a Computer
Type Person to Fully Utilize Informix. What We\'re Doing, as Part of the
Office Automation Project, Is to Make Sure We Have a Database Component,
Something along the Level That a Dbiii or Dbase Iv Was. And That
Component and I Can Name the Components\' We Are Looking At, it Will Be
a Graphical Front End. That\'s Part of the Way We Are Getting at That.
At the Same Time, We Do Have a Team in Wyoming Specifically That Is
Doing Development for Informix. But Here Again, it Comes down to The
Complexity of the Product Itself and the Expense.

Robin: Thank You. We Have Another Fax Here from Meg in ‑‑ I Don\'t Know
Where the Area Code Is. Her Question Is ‑‑ Comment Is: I Found Pat
Shea\'s Comments on Managing E‑mail Thoughtful, Particularly ‑‑
Thoughtfully, Particularly Relevant to the Field Office. We Are E‑mail
Every Ib Issued by Headquarters and Told to Read It. 90% Do Not You a
Apply to Everyone in the Field Office. Reading These Is Time Consuming,
They Are Arrive in Groupwise and Must Be Saved in Wordperfect to Be
Read. Any Chance When These Chance the Subject Is Noted on the Subject
Line So Employees Can Screen the E‑mails for Relevance to Their
Particular Job?

Gayle: Actually this Subject Came up Last Week and What We Agreed to Do
Is Come up with Common Procedures and Courtesies For Using E‑mail and
Actually Voice Mail, Too. We Definitely Agreed That the Title ‑‑ as Much
Information Should Be in the Subject Line as Possible. And Then More and
More of These Bulletins Will Be Making Available over Intranet, However,
We\'re Still Going to Need to Find a Mechanism Such as E‑mail to Make
Sure People Know They Are Now out on the System And Can Be Accessed.

Mike: I Would like to Reinforce Glen\'s Point That What That Problem
Defines Is We Have an E‑mail and a Word Processing System That\'s
Interoperable but What We Really Need Is an Integrated Office Suite
Where You Look at the Attachments While in the E‑mail You Don\'t Have to
Go to a Separate Package. That\'s Really the Advantage to Going to a
Truly Integrated Office Automation Suite.

Glen: Mike, by Also like to Mention Another Project We Have Ongoing and
That\'s to Look at a Document Management System. Colorado Has the Lead,
and They\'re Using Some Records Administrators from Colorado, Wyoming
and Actually the Bureau\'s Records Administrator. Now, this Particular
Document Management System Is a Component In Lotus Domino Notes. We Just
Don\'t Know at this Time If That Particular Product Is Robust Enough to
Handle That. But We Can Also Get at it by Looking at Some Kind of
Software Tool.

Robin: Good. Thanks. We\'ve Got More Faxes and We\'ll Try to Get to Them
Later in the Program. So Don\'t Be Disappointed If We Don\'t Get to
Them. We Appreciate Your Participation. We Have Several More Segments
Planned. If We Didn\'t Get to Your Question, Stay Tuned. We Will Have
Another Opportunity. At this Point We Would like to Take a Closer Look
at the Capabilities Included in ALMRS Release I. An Enthusiastic Team
from the National Training Center, the National IRM Center and the New
Mexico and Colorado State Offices Have Prepared a Short Tape That\'s
Very Informative. The Tape Is Narrated by Cathy Cooney, Data
Administrator from The New Mexico State Office and Is the Culmination of
Many Hours Of Brainstorming and Hard Work By Employees. The Taped
Overview Will Give You All an Idea What to Expect the First Time You Sit
down in Front Of Your Computer and Pull up the ALMRS Systems for Case
Processing. The Screens You Will See Are Exciting ‑‑ Are Exactly like
the Ones That Will Come up When You Are Ready to Run a Report, Update a
Case File or Assign a Case Number. We Are Sure You\'re Going to Enjoy
this Overview. So Let\'s Take a Look.

Cathy: Hi, I\'m Cathy Cooney, Data Administrator from the New next State
Office and I Would like to Introduce You to the Odd Mated Land and
Mineral Records System Known as ALMRS. ALMRS Release I Is the First of
Several Software Releases That Will Provide Land and Mineral Case
Processing Capabilities in One Intragrated System. ALMRS Is Composed of
Legacy Systems from the Interim Land Information System in Alaska,
Status, Mining Claim Recordation, Eastern States Land Ownership System,
Legal Land Description Data File, Geostate Tables, Case Recordation and
the Geographic Coordinate Database. These Various Databases Will Be
Integrated into One System Which Is Called ALMRS. Let\'s Talk about the
Components Of ALMRS Release I. This Is the ALMRS Session Management
Window. The First Window You Will See After Accessing the ALMRS
Application. There Are Six Components, Each Accessible by Buttons near
the Bottom of the Screen. Most Land and Mineral Employees Will Utilize
Case Processing. From Here They Can Create New Cases or Open Existing
Cases. They Can Enter Case Events and Relate Them to Customers and Land
Descriptions. Through Queries and Reports, Any BLM User and the General
Public Can Query the ALMRS Data and Generate Reports Which Can Be
Displayed on Screen, Saved to a File or Disk, or Printed. Anyone Can Now
Generate Their Own Reports. Spatial Maintenance Provides the Ability to
Import Gcdb Data to Begin Building Land and Mineral Cases in a Spatially
Displayed Format. In Land Maintenance, New Land Descriptions Are
Created, and Land Description Attributes and Associations Are Updated.
New Customer Names and Addresses Are Created in Customer Maintenance.
Customer Records Are Updated as Name and Address Changes Occur. The
Final Button for Segment Administration Allows Certain Users to Import
Mms Data, Record Frc Information, Mass Update Mining Claim Data,
Initiate Derivation of Land Status, Control User Permissions and
Retrieve Error Log Reports. Let\'s See What ALMRS Will Do for You.

for Me?

ALMRS Operates in a Windows Environment Utilizing the Ibm Version of
UNIX. ALMRS Integrates the Legacy Systems into One Relational Database.
A Relational Database Is a Series of Data Tables with Related
Information. For Example, a Customer Is Related to a Case by a Case
Identifier Key. A New ALMRS Concept Is Case Pathways, Which Organizes
BLM Land and Mineral Information According to the Way We Do Business.
The Five Categories of Pathways Are: Conveyances, Fluids, Locatable
Minerals, Solids, and Land Use. There Are 27 Specific Pathways Among
These Five Groups. A Conveyance Pathway Is Different than the Fluids
Pathway since the Business Rules Are Different for Those Two Case Types.
The Three Digit Action Codes You Use Today Are Replaced by User‑friendly
Data Elements. For Example, in a Right‑of‑way Case, Action Code 124,
Which Is Application Received, Is Changed To Authorization Request
Received Date. You Don\'t Have to Memorize Action Codes Anymore. Because
the Various Databases Are Integrated into One with ALMRS, the Days of
Entering Redundant Data Are over. For Example, Today the Same Customer
Information Is Entered Into Case Recordation, Mining Claim Recordation,
and Status. Tomorrow, in ALMRS, You Capture Customer Information Only
Once. Now You Will Be Able to Select Data from Domain Lists or Selection
Windows Using a Mouse, Instead of Typing in the Data. New Capabilities
Include Two Online Help Features, the Training Reference Manual, Also
Known as the Trm, and the Pathway Data Standards. Click Help from Any
Screen, and Information about That Window Will Appear. If You Want More
Information, The Pathway Data Standards Can Be Displayed, Which Provide
You With Specific Information on What Data to Enter. The Pathway Data
Standards Replaced the Data Standards We Use Today. An Area of Interest,
or Aoi, Is A New Tool to Assist the User in Retrieving Data for the
Geographic Area They Are Interested In. This Is an Example of How an
Area of Interest Would Be Selected for New Mexico. Preliminary Casework
Can Be Handled in ALMRS Release I. Today If a Proponent Visits You To
Informally Talk about Getting A Road Right Away Across BLM Land, You
Probably Jot down Some Notes and File Them Away Somewhere and Hope You
Can Find Them Later. Tomorrow, in ALMRS, You Can Capture the Pertinent
Data, Such As Customer Name and Address, The Federal Land Involved and
The Kind of Right‑of‑way He Wants as a Preserialized Case, Which Means
it Has Not Yet Been Assigned a Serial Number. This Information Is Not
Available to the Public. If the Proponent Decides Not to Pursuit
Right‑of‑way, the Preserialized Case Data Can Be Deleted. If the
Proponent Does Formally File an Application for the Road Right‑of‑way,
the Application Can Be Certificate Annualized, And the Information You
Previously Collected in ALMRS Is Already There and Doesn\'t Have To Be
Entered into the Database Again.

Wow!

Serial Numbers Are Automatically Generated in ALMRS. Let\'s Look at
These BLM Employees Standing in Line at The Cashier\'s Window Waiting to
Get Serial Numbers Assigned to Their Applications. It Takes Quite a Bit
of Time to Get That Accomplished in Today\'s Environment. With ALMRS, an
Employee Just Makes a Few Selections on the Serialize Case Window, and a
Serial Number Is Automatically Assigned. No More Waiting in Lines since
This Manual Process Has Been Automated. Multiple Case Types in a Single
Serial Number Is Another New Concept. All Information about a Recreation
and Public Purpose Case, Including the Classification, Lease, Patent And
Even the Reconveyance, Are Included Within One Serial Number.
Associations Relate Individual Case Events to Specific Land
Descriptions. For Example, Different Segregations Related to a
Withdrawal Can Be Created for Individual Parcels of Land. Events Can Be
Associated to All Or Part of the Case. Displaying Reports on Screen Is A
Great Aid for the User. Of Course, Printed Copies Are Available, as Well
as Saving Reports to Files or Output to Another Medium. Users Will Have
Various Levels Of Access into ALMRS Depending On Their Job Function. If
You Process Only Acquisition Cases, Your Ability to Create And Update
Data Will Be Limited To Acquisitions. However, All BLM Employees Will Be
Able to View Data and Create Reports. ALMRS Release I Builds a
Foundation for Future Spatial Capabilities. Spatial Maintainers Will
Import Gcdb Data and Display Case Data To Verify the Data Quality
Against the Current Master Title Plats and Source Documents. Let\'s Look
at the Reports Available from ALMRS. The Serial Register Page Provides
All the Case Data for a Specific Serial Number. Or the User Can Select
the Case Abstract and Print Only Those Portions They Are Interested In.
You Can Choose to Select Only Customer and Land Information, For
Example, or Select All the Events for a Serial Number. The Land Status
Report Reflects Surface and Subsurface Segregations, Surface and
Subsurface U.s. Rights, and Surface Management Agency and Ownership
Information. Today this Information Is Only Available from
Interpretation of The Master Title Plats and Historical Indices. Five
National Reports Are Part Of ALMRS. Two National Reports for Lands And
Three Covering Mineral Materials. Since the Case Information Report
Won\'t Be Available in ALMRS Release I, You Will Use The ALMRS Ad Hoc
Query and Report System, or Aaqrs, Which Basically Replaces Today\'s
M‑11 And Other Reporting Functionality. Let\'s Change Gears to Look at
The ALMRS Architecture. Since I Am Most Familiar with New Mexico and
Oklahoma, I Want To Illustrate That the ALMRS Database for New Mexico\'s
Jurisdiction Will Be Physically Located in the State Office in Santa Fe.
Each Field Office Will Access The Database via a Client Version of the
ALMRS Software And Is Accessible by an X Terminal or 250 Workstation.
Bureauwide the ALMRS Database Will Be Located at Each State Office.
Access to Another State\'s Database Will Be Provided Through the Aoi.
Within the Aoi Is a Domain List Of States. Selecting One Will Begin the
Process of Accessing the Other State\'s Database. The Centralized
Database We Use Today in Denver Will Be a Thing Of the past. Are You a
Little Overwhelmed Yet? Well, to Make the Transition Easier from the
Legacy Systems To ALMRS, We Have Developed a Multitude of Training
Courses. In Fact, There Are over 50 Courses. Now, Don\'t Worry, You
Don\'t Have To Take All 50. The National Training Center Estimates That
Bureauwide 3,000 People Will Take the First Two Preliminary Courses for
Session Management and Queries & Reports. In Addition to the Basic
Courses, Approximately 1200 Employees Will Take Introduction To Case
Processing. For Each Pathway, Approximately 200 Employees Will Be
Trained. In Other Words, 200 Employees Will Take Locatables,
Conconveyances and So Forth. All of These People Will Be Trained by a
Team of Trainers Utilizing the \"Train the Trainer\" Approach. The
Trainers Will Be Armed with The Training Desk Manuals, the Tdms, Which
Provide a Consistent Look and Feel and Can Be Utilized for Stand‑up
Training And Self‑paced Training. Training Will Take Place at
Strategically Placed Training Facilities Bureauwide. The Public Will Be
Trained Through a Combination of Methods, Including Computer‑based
Training and Self‑paced Training. Preparation for ALMRS Requires a Lot
of Hard Work and Planning. Activities During the Predeployment Phase,
Meaning Before ALMRS Is up and Running In Your State, Include Reviewing
The Post‑conversion Cleanup Area, or Pcca, Trial Runs. The Pcca File
Contains Data That Does Not Convert. These Trial Runs Are Your
Opportunity to Analyze Data Errors and Get Them Fixed Prior To the Final
Data Conversion Effort. Preparing for Data Conversion Is A Complex
Process, and Your State Should Be Diligently Reviewing All Data for
Proper Format and Content for Conversion Purposes. The Process for
Freezing Legacy System Data Basis Will Start With Status and Lld
Approximately 120 Days Prior to Deployment. Case Recordation and Mining
Claim Recordation Data Bases Will Be Frozen Approximately 15 Days Prior
to Deployment. Freezing Databases Means You Cannot Create or Update
Cases. However, Data Can Be Retrieved And Reports Generated. Training
Needs must Be Identified So Training Can Be Scheduled and Conducted
During The Predeployment Phase. Each State must Canvas Their ALMRS Users
to Determine Categories of User Permissions So That Each Employee Will
Have The Correct Level of Access. What Kind of ALMRS User Are You? And
What Kind of Access Do You Need in Order to Do Your Job? Hardware to
Support ALMRS Will Consist of New Lan and Wan Components, New Servers,
and Upgraded 250 Workstations. Each State Is Required to Prepare and
Test a Contingency Plan for Recovery Purposes in The Event of a
Catastrophe for Their Site Prior to Deployment Of ALMRS. It\'s D‑day.
Deployment Is Finally Here. During the Deployment Phase, the Application
and Database for Your State Will Be Installed by System Administrators
and Database Administrators at Your State Office. This Includes
Installation of The Pcca File. Another Activity Is Managing the Backlog
of Data Entry. This Is a Result of the Legacy Systems That Are Frozen
from Update. How Will That Impact Your Business Activities? When Case
Recordation and Mining Claim Recordation Are Frozen, You Can Retrieve
Data and Generate Reports, but You Can\'t Enter Newly Serialized
Applications or Update Case Events. The Time of Year When ALMRS Is
Deployed Can Impact the Backlog Of Work, Such as During a Oil & Gas
Lease Sale or Mining Claim Assessment Filings. And Training Will
Continue as Necessary. After ALMRS Has Been Deployed, The Real Work
Begins to Transition into the ALMRS Environment. You Are Now
Operational. What Do You Do First? How Do We Take Advantage of the Power
of this New Software? Get That Data Entry Backlog out Of the Way. This
Will Be One of the Highest Priority Activities after Deployment. The
Process for Creating Land Customer to Case Event Associations Begins for
Converted Cases, from Case Recordation and Orca. With this Powerful Tool
We Can Generate Meaningful Reports. I Talked Earlier about the Pcca File
Which Contains the Data Errors and the Need to Prepare Data for
Conversion. Data Remaining in Pcca Can Result in Inaccurate Reports and
Incomplete Case File Data. This Should Be a High Priority Activity for
Each State after Deployment. Initially Aaqrs May Not Provide All the
Reporting Capabilities You Need for Your State. Additional Templates May
Be Required and Can Be Best Developed after Deployment. The Gcdb Import
Land and Build Land Process Can Finally Begin. This Will Prepare the
Data So Land and Mineral Cases Can Be Displayed Spatially. Derivation of
Land Status Occurs After Deployment. This Process Takes All the Title
Data Collected and Calculates Ownership Information. As a Result of
Testing at the Pilot Sites in New Mexico and Development of ALMRS
Training Documents for NTC, Numerous Functional Issues Have Been
Identified Which Will Affect You As an ALMRS User. These High‑level
Issues Include: Preparing the End Users for Deployment. You Need to
Understand What the Application Provides to Help You Do Your Job.
Training Will Help Provide That Understanding, as Well as Outreach
Techniques, Such as This. You Will Be Bombarded with the New
Terminology, Such as Area of Interest, Tdm, Aaqrs, Pathways, Pcca and
Trm. These Terms Will Become Commonplace to You Very Soon. Different
Ways of Doing Business Internally Are Being Identified, And Processes to
Accommodate These Changes Will Evolve from Modernizing Our Data. There
Are Significant System Administrator and Database Administrator Impacts
from Implementation of the ALMRS Application. ALMRS Users Will Be
Interacting More with the Sas and Dbas. New Roles and Responsibilities
Will Evolve as a Result of ALMRS. For Existing Users, Who Will Do Data
Entry? Who Will Record Initial Applications? Who Will Serialize
Applications? For New Users Who Have Never Used the Legacy Systems, You
May Find That You Will Need Access To the ALMRS Data in Order to
Generate Reports or Find Answers To Your Questions That You Could Never
Get Before. No Longer Will You Have to Rely On Others to Generate
Reports For You. This Has Been an Overview of What You Can Expect from
ALMRS. As You Have Seen, it Is Filled With Exciting Capabilities and
Enhanced Reporting Functions Which Will Give You a Variety of Data Right
at Your Fingertips. By Working Together, We Can Make All the Pieces Fit,
and You Will See ALMRS Become an Increasingly Valuable Tool to Help BLM
Manage Our Public Land and Information Into the 21st Century.

Robin: That Was Really Great. Thank You to All the People Who Worked on
this Tape. The National Training Center Will Be Sending the Tape to All
BLM Offices So That Everyone Will Have an Opportunity to Learn More
about ALMRS Release I. At this Point We\'re Going to Take a 15‑minute
Break. When We Come Back We Will Be Discussing ALMRS, Resource Data And
Data Standards. We Will Also See Another Video Which Highlights Some
Exciting Spots to Hit on the Internet. We\'ll See You in a Few Minutes.

Robin: Welcome Back. To Start off the Second Half of Today\'s Show, I\'d
like to Introduce the Panelists Discussing Topics Related to BLM\'s
Mineral, Land and Resource Systems. Joining Us Again Is Gayle Gordon,
Who Will Help Us Keep Our Discussion Focused on the Application of
Information Management Principles Within the Bureau\'s Program Areas.
That\'s the Second Goal of the IRM Strategic Plan, Isn\'t It?

Gayle: That\'s Right.

Robin: I Would Also like to Introduce Chris Hamilton. Chris Is the Chief
of the Information Management Section from the Oregon State Office.
Thank You for Joining Us Today, Chris.

Chris: Thanks a Lot. I Appreciate this Opportunity to Come to Phoenix in
September and Sit in Front of All These Cameras.

Robin: Glad Could You Make It. From El Centro, California, Please
Welcome Terry Reed, the Area Manager. Terry, Thank You for Being on The
IRM and ALMRS Forum. Terry: I\'m Glad to Be Here and As Hard as it Might
Be to Believe, I Am Coming from a Place Where It\'s Hotter than it Is
Here in Phoenix.

Robin: I Hope You Enjoy It. And Completing Our Second Panel Is Leslie
Cone from the National IRM Center. Leslie Is the Project Manager For
ALMRS Release Ii and Has Been Very Busy Coordinating ALMRS
Demonstrations for Our New Director Pat Shea as Well as the Participants
at the Bureaus Lands Conference in Montana the End of July. Welcome,
Leslie.

Leslie: It\'s a Pleasure to Be Here and Talk about ALMRS and The Future
and Release Ii.

Robin: Thank You, Leslie. Let\'s Begin by Discussing How The ALMRS
Application Fits into The Big Picture of Other Application Development,
Resources Programs and the IRM Infrastructure. ALMRS Has Been Identified
as a Priority by the Bureau Director, And I Am Sure There Is Concern As
to the Impact on Other Non‑ALMRS Applications. So What Really Is the
Relationship Between ALMRS and Our Other Automated Efforts, Terry?

Terry: I Think You Saw in the Video That Cathy Talked about The Data
That Makes up ALMRS and The ALMRS Application it Several And it Might Be
Worth Talking a Little More about the Distinction Between the Data
Contained in That System and the Application Which Allows the Users to
Access it and Update It.

Leslie: the BLM Has Spent Many Years and a Lot of Time and Effort
Collecting Data and We\'re About Ready to Convert the Legacy Systems\'
Data Basses into An Integrated Database That Will Be ALMRS.

Chris: So We Have an Infrastructure in Place and Data Is Provided on Top
and ALMRS the Application Utilizes Some of the Data to Actually Do Some
Analysis?

Leslie: Yes, the First Panel Talked Extensively about the Infrastructure
and We Can Talk About Data and Data Standards And What We Need to Do to
Clean Up Our Data and Make Sure It\'s Going to Run with the Application.

Chris: So ALMRS Is Just an Application on Top of the Data. There Are
Other Applications as Well?

Leslie: It\'s a Fairly Complicated Application That Took a While to
Capture All Our Business Practices and the Pathways That Cathy Talked
about In the Video.

Chris: I Bet the Average Employee, the Question That They Would like to
Ask Is How Will ALMRS Help Me Personally?

Terry: I Think There Was a Number of Users That Cathy Referred to in the
Video Earlier And I Can Use My Office as an Example to Reflect the Range
of Users and the Kinds of Use They May Make of the ALMRS System and The
Data That\'s in It. We Have a Lands and Minerals Assist Opportunity That
Deals With the Public and Sees Applications as They Come In. They Will
Use That System to Initiate Those Applications. We Have Realty
Specialists and Geologists That Will Use the Application to Actually
Process Cases. And to Reference and Check on The Status of Cases. We
Have Resource Specialists That Will Use the System to Find Out What
Authorizations May Exist on a Given Parcel of Public Land. Of Course, We
Have the Public That Comes into Either Check on The Status of Their
Application Or Perhaps Wants to Research Cases for a Land Action That
They\'re Working on in the Private Sector and Consultants That Will Use
That Information To Support Applications from Private Individuals or
Large Cases That We May Be Processing. Leslie: Release I Really Focuses
On That Part, the Case Processing, Some of Our Internal Use. Release Ii
Is Going to Focus on Making That Data Available to The Public on the
Internet, Providing Enhanced Capabilities For Reporting, and Then on the
Spatial Capabilities.

Gayle: but the Public Still Will Be Able to Access the Information
Through the Public Rooms, Right?

Leslie: Yes. Chris: So Release I Concentrated On Data Entry, Cleanup of
Data, Update and Maintenance of That Data?

Leslie: Yes, We Need to Do Build Our Corporate Memory, Which Is Started
by Building the ALMRS Database, and Converting the Data from the Legacy
Systems.

Robin: You Have Been Talking a Lot about Data. What Types of Data Is
Going to Be Needed for the States to Be Ready?

Leslie: Well, Legal Land Descriptions, Status Information, the Gcdb,
Part of The Process of Being Able to Graphically Portray the Information
in Case and Status Is Being Able to Do the Import Gcdb Process. It\'s
the Geographic Coordinate Database Which Are Latitude and Longitude
Points Which Tie Our Data to Points on the Earth.

Robin: Good.

Chris: So Release Ii Will Improve Those Reports, the Reports Part?

Leslie: Yes.

Chris: We Should Get Some Ability to Do Ad Hoc Queries?

Leslie: Yes, Ad Hoc Query Capability and Enhanced Reporting Capability
Is the First Module of Release Ii That We\'re Working On. We Have
Brought a Bunch of User Requirements Teams Together from Field Users to
Help Us Define What\'s the Most Important Things We Need to Add to ALMRS
to Increase the Usability to the Field.

Chris: So We\'re Talking More Than ALMRS? We\'re Talking the Data?
Eventually the Data Will Be Able To Be Used by All Our Resource
Specialists In, Say, Gis Analysis, Really All Other Uses To Satisfy
Legal Land Description Needs, Any Case Information That Our Other
Resource Specialists Have Use For, Customer Database, That Kind of
Thing?

Leslie: Well, One of the Purposes of Doing the Integrated Database Was
So That We Develop A Corporate Memory and That We Provide That
Information in a Format So That it Can Be Used by Other Systems like
Afmss. Terry: We Have Talked about Spatial Data and I Think It\'s
Important for People to Understand That Spatial Data Whether it Comes
from Lands Cases or the Geographic Coordinate Database of the Sir Very
and its Coordinates on the Earth, All Our Geographic System Data Is Just
a Piece of Information Tie to Do a Location On the Ground. So Once this
Data Becomes Available from ALMRS, We Will Be Able to Link All That
Resource Data to It. I Can Think of Many Projects Just Within the Last
12 Months Where We Have Had to Machine Annually Update Land Status Data
And Survey Data and Reference it To Other Case Data in Order to Make an
Analysis to Handle a Current Resource Management Issue.

Chris: So What Are Some of the Lessons We Have Learned to Date From
Implementation of the Infrastructure, the Data and Then ALMRS as an
Application? Leslie: I Think One of the Important Things We Have Learned
Is the Importance of Data Standards.

Terry: Certainly in Your Job, Chris, I Think You Probably Have A Greater
Appreciation for What Data Standards Mean and When We Don\'t Have Them,
What Effect it May Have on Systems You Are Trying to Develop and
Maintain Or Maintain the Quality of the Data.

Chris: Really, I Think There Is A Multi‑pronged Approach to Data
Standards. I Think You Have to Have a Top‑down Approach Really at the
National Level Where the BLM Works with Other Federal Agencies,
Especially, Let\'s Say, The Forest Service, Which Is Another Land
Management Agency, And Some of Our Regulatory Partners and Fgdc, the
Federal Data Graphic Committee, to Look At a Framework for Data
Standards. Another Pronged Approach Would Be a Bottom‑up Approach.
Nobody Knows Our Business as Well as the Resource Specialists That Do on
the Groundwork. They Have Specific Information Needs. They Need to
Identify Requirements and Work with Peers In Other Resource Areas or
Districts and Even States to Really Build Data Standards from The Bottom
Up. The Trick Is to Ensure That Those Two Pronged Approaches Meet in the
Middle.

Terry: I Think That\'s Really Meet in the Middle. That\'s Important. Our
Partners Change from One Location to Another. State Agencies That Have
Fish And Wildlife Data, Fish and Wildlife Service, the Forest Service,
Many Many Counties and Municipalities Are Interested in Acquiring Our
Data but Have Their Own Needs. So If You Have the Recognition Of Some
Core Data Standards That Are Essential for the Entire Agency and Provide
Flexibility From the Other End to Accommodate Local Needs.

Chris: Certainly.

Gayle: Chris, One of the Things We\'re Doing at the National Level Is
Working with Maitland Sharpe and His Staff to Try to Identify Some
Principles We Would like Everyone to Follow When They Are Initiating a
Project or a New Program. Certainly We Want Them to First Of All Start
by Identifying What Their Data Needs Are for the Program, and Then to
Identify Alternative Sources for It. We Need to Make Sure We\'re Taking
Advantage of as Many Sources of Data Other than Just What Our Own
Sources Are. Chris: So Really You\'re Talking About Lifecycle
Management?

Gayle: That\'s Right. The Other Thing Is as We\'re Getting into Sources
of Management, Talking about Standards, and Then as You Said, Lifecycle
Management to Make Sure We Manage the Data Throughout the Entire Life of
The Program.

Terry: the First Time I Heard Lifecycle Management, I Thought They Were
Talking about Some Upcoming Retirement\...

Leslie: I Think It\'s Important That We Look at a Project from Beginning
to End, All the Possible Costs, All the Things That Need to Be Done
Throughout The Whole Process in Our Planning.

Gayle: Yes, Part of That, Leslie, Is the Importance of Looking at Links
to Other Applications as We\'re Starting a Project, Make Sure We\'re
Covering Those. We\'ve Talked about One of the Advantages of ALMRS Being
a Common Database That Different Applications Could Tap into. We Need to
Make Sure That as We\'re Generating Data That We\'re Making it Available
to as Many Applications as Possible.

Chris: Certainly the Data Will Become More Valuable as We Increase Our
Electronic Storage Of Other Information from Other Sources.

Leslie: That\'s an Important Part Of Release Ii, for Us to Be Able To
Link to Other Systems and Be Able to Provide That Information To the
Public on the Internet or Other Electronic Means. They Want to See
Seamless Data, Regardless of Who the Jurisdiction Is.

Gayle: Yes, You Mentioned Afmss A Couple Minutes Ago. Do You Want to
Elaborate on That.

Leslie: It\'s a Post Lease Processing System and Stands for The
Automated Fluid Mineral Processing System. We Can Do Case Processing
Electronically and That Will Use Some of the Same Information in The
ALMRS Database, Legal Land Description, Status Information, So That We
Can Link Those Systems Together.

Terry: Some Other Issues Wave\' Heard a Lot About, I Guess It\'s An
Anxiety on the Part of Many Of the Field Offices, Is ALMRS Is Released,
Realizing it Is a Big Application and it Is a Priority, Whether or Not
There\'s Enough Capacity in the Equipment In That Infrastructure That
Was Talked about in the First Panel, To Support Both ALMRS and All of
Its Data as Well as All of the Things That Are Operating on That
Platform Now and Some New Ones That Will Be Coming.

Leslie: There\'s a Lot of Rumors That ALMRS Is Going to Kick Other
Systems off and They\'re Not Going to Be Able to Do Things. One of the
Things We\'re Doing at NIRMc Is Looking into How Do We Need to Size the
System? Mike Talked about That in the First Panel. It Will Continue to
Grow and Change and We\'ll Add Add Technologies That Will Help
Tremendously in the Ability to Be Able to Support That System. But It\'s
Not Our Intention to Have Any System Kicked off Because We Want to Size
the System to Support All the Needs Of the Bureau.

Chris: We Will Always Have Limited Network Capacity, and The Crick
Probably Is Looking Far Enough in Advance to Ramp up Our Capacity to
Take Advantage Of Increased Use of the Network.

Leslie: We Don\'t Have All the Answers and We\'re Looking at Exploring
All Those Possibilities, What Kind of System Enhancements Do We Need To
Do. There\'s Enhancements to the Equipment in Release I and Release Ii
to Aid the Spatial Capabilities.

Gayle: Leslie, Why Don\'t We Talk A Little Bit about the Schedule. I
Touched on That in the First Segment. I Said We\'re Finishing up the
Testing this Fall. We Will Be Going into the Non‑pilot Site, All of the
Sites In New Mexico in January and Then We Will Be Following That With
Deployment to the next State, Probably Arizona, Either In April or
Earlier If We Can Pull it off. What about the Schedule for Release Ii?

Leslie: Release Ii We Hope to Sometime Third Quarter in \'98 Be Able to
Bring up the First Modules of Release Ii, Which Are The Enhanced
Reporting Capabilities, Which Will Help The States Transition from the
Legacy Systems. One of the Things Much the NIRMc Has Been Involved in Is
Revising The Transition Deployment Plan, The Second Version of That,
Which Should Be Coming out Shortly, That Kind of Details Those Plans and
How We Would Deploy, the Order of the States, All the Training That Has
to Be Done Before We Deploy.

Gayle: I Think That That Plan Is ‑‑ Really Represents Progress Over the
Initial Plan. It Still Isn\'t Going to Be the Plan That Someone Can Pick
up And Know, Well, What\'s the next Step I Have to Do? That Plan, the
Operational Plan, Will Be Released in the Thanksgiving Time Frame. But I
Think this Plan Will Really Give the States a Good Sense of What They
Should Be Working on Right Now to Be Ready.

Chris: Do You Think All the States Will See Release I, or Will Some
Components of Release Ii Be Deployed in Some of the States at the Back
of the Schedule?

Leslie: I Think it Depends upon What Final Deployment Schedule We Arrive
At. We\'re Looking at Alternatives of How to Group Them, to Do States In
a Group or Stagger Them out. We Hope by the Third Quarter of \'98 to Be
Able to Provide Enhanced Capabilities, and So Some of the States in the
Tail End Will See Release Ii Added to The Release I Functionality.

Terry: We\'ve Talked about Data And Systems and the Earlier Panel Talked
about How the Technology Continues to Evolve, And We\'ve Touched a
Little Bit On the People Component of this System, and One of the
Benefits Of Having this Platform Deployed For the Last Several Years
Before ALMRS Is Put on Top of it Or as an Additional Operational Need Is
That the Employees Have Learned How to Use this System. They Have Become
Comfortable Witness. The Office Automation Is Fairly Completely
Implemented. But We Talk a Little More about The Training and the Demand
on Staffs, Especially in Small Offices That May Only Have One Individual
That Supports this Entire System.

Chris: Certainly. We Can Put the Best System in The World in Place but
People Are the Most Integral Part of Making it a Success.

Leslie: Cathy Mentioned There Is Over 50 Training Classes Developed in
Support of ALMRS And the Initial Classes Will Be Attended by 3,000
People. So I Think That\'s a Good Indication That the Bureau Is Going to
Put the Investment in Training the People. So Not Only Will You Get a
System, You Will Know How to Work It, Too.

Gayle: Terry, One Thing That Will Be Critical Is for Management out in
the States Like to You Make Sure That the Right People Get to Training
and Get to it on a Timely Basis.

Terry: Certainly Being Here in Phoenix and Seeing this Facility And All
That it Has to Offer, I Think, Makes Me a Little More Confident That
We\'ve Got a Variety of Delivery Systems to Put the Training out There
Both in Automated Form, in Satellite Downlink Form and Online and Onsite
Mediums. Certainly It\'s an Impressive Site Here at the Training Center.

Robin: We Have Been Talking About Data and People and I Think There Is a
Closer Link Than We Mentioned Already, and That Is Who Owns this Data,
Who Is Responsible for Gathering It, Taking Care of It?

Chris: That Comes Back to My Data Standards Discussion. I Really Think
That the Users Closest to the Ground Own the Data, and They Should Be
Responsible for Updating That Data, Maintaining it and Really Using it
in Their Day‑to‑day Work.

Terry: We\'ve Certainly Seen Many Efforts over the Years Where We\'ve
Collected a Lot of Information and Used it for a Short Time and Because
it Wasn\'t Owned and Maintained, it Lapsed In Terms of Being Current and
Kept up to Date and the next Time You Have That Same Sort of Effort You
Have to Start All Over Again.

Leslie: That\'s the Hope of ALMRS, That it Will Develop a Corporate
Memory, by Having a System Where We Can Store and Retrieve Data Easily,
So We Won\'t Have Situations Where a Wildlife Biologist Leaves, They
Throw Away His File Cabinets and That Information Is Lost Forever.

Gayle: Lest You Remember When We Were at the Lan Conference in Billings,
We Were Doing a Demonstration and We Were Demonstrating Live Data from
New Mexico, and One of the People Who Was the Owner of the Data Was
Sitting in the Audience and Was Very Nervous. Then We Showed the Data
and Everything Went Just Perfectly, And You Could Hear the Sigh of
Relief. But I Think You\'re Right, That The More Use We Get of the Data,
The Better it Will Become. Chris: Well, We\'ve Never Done This Before.
You Have to Learn to Walk Before You Can Run.

Leslie: and We\'ve Made a Lot of Progress. There\'s More Literate ‑‑
Computer‑literate People in the Bureau than There Had Been. Some of Us
That Were Using Mainframes in College and Little Keypunch Cards Have
Come a Long Way to the Use of Personal Computers. I Think We\'ve Got a
Long Way to Go and We\'ve Gained a Lot of Information, and Whoever Works
On ALMRS in the Future Will Learn from Our Mistakes. Terry: You Could
Certainly Draw The Parallel to Early Releases Of Word Processing
Products like Wordperfect That Ran in Dos and I Would Say ALMRS Software
Development Is at Least as Big If Not More Complex than That. So You
Can\'t Expect it to Do Everything in That Initial Release.

Leslie: Very Complex Business Practices That We\'ve Had to All Agree on
What They Were So That We Could Develop the Processes For Doing That
Electronically.

Robin: Ok. Once Again, We Will Be Opening Up the Phones in about Five
Minutes to Hear from You. If You Have Any Questions, Give Us a Call or
Send Us a Fax. We Will Answer as Many Faxes as We Can Within the Allowed
Time, But We\'ll Always Take the Calls First. Do We Have the Graphic
Available That We Could Throw up on the Work Force Data and
Infrastructure? We Could Kind of Recap What You Have Been Talking about
Here. I Think Chip Will Get That for Us in a Second Here. This Is Trying
to Illustrate What We Have Been Talking about And the Importance of Data
as Kind of a Central Point in the Whole Teal. If You Look from the Top
on the Work Force, the Users out There, The Things They Are Going to See
Are the Applications like ALMRS, Gis, Afmss, Office Automation Systems.
Those Applications Are Going to Be Pointing to or Using Data, And the
Better We Do This, the More That Data Is Going to Be Common and
Nonredundant among All Those Applications. What Supports the Data in Our
Diagram Here Is the Infrastructure We Talked Earlier About, the
Operating Systems, The Hardware, the Telecommunications. You\'ll See
Throughout the Whole Schematic We Have Lifecycle Management That Needs
to Be Employed So That These Things Work Together, That They\'re
Seamless Transition from One Operating System to Another, One Version to
Another, and Between Applications, and Also You\'ll See on the Left
There There\'s Standards and Configuration Management. These Are the
Things That Pat Shea Was Talking about When it Comes to Managing IRM.
These Are the Ways We Have to Do It, Through Lifecycle Management
Standards and Configuration Management.

Gayle: Robin, I Would like to Make Another Observation about The
Schematic. It\'s Been Fairly Complex to Get At a Point Where It\'s
Working at Least on Most Days Within the Bureau. What We Are Trying to
Do Now Is Really Carry this to the next Step and Have it Make Sense with
Other Organizations. For Example We\'re Working on a Number of Prospects
to Make Sure That Our Infrastructure Melds Well with the Forest Service
Infrastructure and with the Other Land Management Organizations, Fish
and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service Specifically.
Likewise, We\'re Trying to Make Sure Our Data Is Available Today And in
the Future to These Other Organizations and Then Finally We\'re Looking
for Opportunities To Either Share Systems with Other Organizations or to
Adopt Their Systems as We\'re Looking For New Applications.

Terry: I Think There Is Also an Evolving Role for Managers at All Level.
I Certainly See it in My Office. The Responsibility to to Make Sure
Information Is Managed Correctly, the People Using it Are Aware What Kit
Do and That We Look at the Cost and Benefits Of Various Uses of
Information Technology, Whether It\'s to Put Up Web Pages to Get
Information To the Public or Make Sure We\'re Maintaining Land Data or
Wildlife Habitat Data.

Gayle: and the Last Section, There Was a Question from California to Al
Wright, and it Was, You Know, Asking What Managers Needed to Do, and I
Think There Really Is a Clear Responsibility of Managers Within the
Bureau to Be Asking Just Those Questions That You Just Went Through,
Specifically, As We\'re Looking at and Considering an Investment, What
Are the Expectations We\'re Going To Be Expecting from That Investment,
and Then Evaluate it As We Continue to Implement it Or Acquire it and
Make Sure That We\'re Really Getting Our Money\'s Worth.

Robin: Speaking of Questions, We Have Some Faxes from the Field. This Is
from Sherry in ‑‑ She Doesn\'t Say Where She Is from. Sherry Is out
There. If Districts Have the Money, Can They Buy Bigger, Better UNIX
Workstations, I.e., 43ps, 240 Dual Processes, Especially for Gis Use.
UNIX Is Great, but the Workstations Aren\'t.

Leslie: I Think the Easy Answer Is, Yes, You Need to Go Through The
State Management Board and Then Through the Appropriate Process.

Gayle: it Gets a Little Complicated, Because If You Do Acquire the Other
Workstations Off of a Source Other than Our Contract, and You Then Want
to Get Software, It\'s Likely to End Up Costing You More in the Long
Run. So What I Would Suggest Is If You Are Considering That to Get In
Touch with the Contracting Staff in Denver and Make Sure That You Are
Getting the Most Out of Your Invest.

Robin: this Can All Be Done Through the Configuration Management
Process?

Leslie: Yes.

Gayle: Yes.

Robin: Here Is Another One from Kevin: Why Is the Alms Billing System
Not Included on the UNIX Platform? This Results in the Need for a Pc and
UNIX Workstation for Personnel Responsible for Both Entries.

Leslie: the Billing Systems Weren\'t Included in the Requirements for
ALMRS in the Beginning. However, the BLM Is Looking at How to Do Those
Links to Make it More Efficient So That You\'re Not Having to Have a Pc
and a UNIX Box on Your Desk.

Gayle: I\'ll Get on My Soapbox Again on this Panel and Just Highlight
the Importance When The Organizations Are Coming up With Ideas for New
Systems, They Really Need to Make Sure That They Are Going to Be
Accessible By All of the Employees Who Need To Use Them.

Leslie: in Order to Do the Planning, You Need to Know What Kind of
Systems All the Programs Are Contemplating So We Can Make Sure They\'re
Integrated.

Terry: I Think this Is a Good Example of Where Managers and IRM
Specialists Need to Work Together. We Certain Live Have in California.
Many Examples of Pcs That Are Running a Product Called Zoftware Which
Allows Them to Connect to the UNIX Network Which Allows Them to Put One
Box On the Employees Desk and Give Them Access to Both.

Robin: Another Question from Washington. How Does a Corporate Data
Dictionary Relate to ALMRS?

Chris: Certainly the Data That\'s In the Data Tables That ALMRS Uses Are
Included in the Corporate Data Dictionary.

Gayle: Right. And the Corporate Data Dictionary Also Has the Information
That Was Collected For Other Resource Data Several Years Ago, and We
Have Started a Process to Review That and Make Sure That it Still Is the
Appropriate Information That We Need. The Corporate Data Dictionary Is
Ready to Be Deployed to the Field. Actually, I Was Assured Yesterday
That the Im Is Either Done ‑‑.

Chris: in the Mail?

Gayle: No, It\'s Not in the Mail. But We Really Are Ready to Get That
out There. The Corporate Data Dictionary Will Be Critical as We Try and
Do More with Data Standards.

Chris: Expand the System.

Terry: Will this Dictionary Come Out in a Pocket Form People Can Carry
with Them?

Chris: Depends on How Big Your Pocket Is.

Gayle: Actually ‑‑ No, but Hopefully it Will Be up to Each State to
Figure out Who Needs ‑‑ Who Can Benefit from Having Access to It, and it
Will Be Available.

Leslie: Electronically.

Gayle: Yes.

Robin: Ok. Another Fax Here from Bob in New Mexico: Has Anyone in the
Bureau Done Testing on the Feasibility of Running the ALMRS Application
in the Windows Nt Environment?

Gayle: What We Have Done Is to Identify at Least One Tool That Would
Enable Us to Do That, How Far However, We Haven\'t Acquired It or Tested
it Yet. But this Is Something Definitely On the Drawing Boards for the
National IRM Center.

Robin: There Is a Second Part to The Question Here: We Here in New
Mexico Have Been Receiving Excess Workstations and Work Terminals from
Other States Who Have Presumably Determined They Will Not Need These
UNIX Machines. Are We Still at the 70% Deployment Level for UNIX
Workstations with this Many Excess Machines?

Gayle: Well, What We Have Done Is to Within the Last ‑‑ I Guess It\'s
about the Last Month Is Send Information out to Each of The States
Identifying Who the Potential ALMRS User Will Be. It\'s Now up to the
States to Look at this and to Look at the Workstations They Have
Deployed In Their States and Make a Determination about Whether They
Have Sufficient Workstations or Not. I Think We\'re Probably Pretty
Close to the 70% Still.

Chris: I Think the 70% Was a Figure Mike Garratt Used Before. I Think
That\'s a Average for the Bureau. Some States Are Close to 100%, Other
States Are less than 70%.

Gayle: We\'re Expecting That to Shift over the next Few Years.

Leslie: and the Information About What Type of ALMRS User And What Kind
of Equipment They\'ll Need Is Contained in the Transition Plan So That
the States Can Take a Closer Look at What They\'re Going to Need and How
They Need to Configure Their State.

Robin: and There\'s Been Quite a Bit of Latitude in the Last Year On How
the States Want to Adjust That and How They Want to Manage That. So You
Will See Some Differences From State to State on How Those Decisions ‑‑.

Gayle: Such as Montana.

Robin: or New Mexico. This One Is from Stafford. For Many of the
Specialists, Geologists ‑‑ How Many of the Specialists Are Familiar with
The Requirements for the Ioc Conversion to Be Ready for the Deployment
Date? And They\'re Focusing on Arizona Because They\'re the next One\...

Leslie: One of the Things We\'re Putting Together at NIRMc Is a Detailed
Chart That Lists What\'s In the Legacy Systems as Far as Functionality,
What\'s in Release I and Then What Will Be in Future Releases So the
States Will Know What Kind of Functionality to Expect. There Are Some
Things That We Continue to Learn as We Go Through That Process, and as
Cathy Mentioned in the Video, We Need to Adjust Some of Our Business
Practices to Accommodate Some of the Changes In ALMRS.

Gayle: Leslie, Do You Want to Touch on Some of the Teams That Are Going
to Be Assembling this Fall to Look at the Business Practices?

Leslie: Yes, We\'re Going to Have A Series of Four or Five Teams Get
Together to Look at the Different Functional Areas, the Five Pathways
That Cathy Talked About in the Video, in Order to Do the Functional
Reviews from The Programs, to Take a Look at Release I and Tell Us What
Kind Of Functionality Is Missing, What\'s the Priority, What\'s the Most
Important Things We Need to Make Sure That Are in the First Modules and
the First Parts of Release Ii.

Robin: Ok. Another Question Here. This One Is from Larry. How Many Old
Cases Are Not Now In Orca? Will They Be Entered for ALMRS. Will a Land
Database like Eastern States Now Have Be Available Nationwide. He Has in
Parentheses, this Has Patent Information Now Available Only on the Cdi
Cards.

Chris: That\'s Not Mine.

Leslie: My Understanding Is That We\'re Not Entering More Information
into the Legacy Systems. That Any Additional Cases That Need to Be
Entered Will Be Entered into ALMRS. Eastern States Is in a Little Bit
Different Circumstance than The Rest of the States Because Of the Way
Their Businesses Differ. But We Can Research That Question a Little More
and Provide an Answer on Our Home Page.

Gayle: Yeah, One of the Items in That about Access from Other Locations
to a State\'s Information, That Will Be Available in ALMRS Release I.

Leslie:, in Arizona You Will Be Able to Call up Montana\'s Database,
Once All the States Are Deployed. Obviously Before We Deploy All The
States You\'ll Have Some in a Transition from the Old System To the New
System.

Robin: Ok. That Takes Care of Larry\'s There. The next Fax Here Is from
Pinedale Resource Area. Has There Been Any Thought about Extra Dollars
for Cleanup of Backlog Generated from Downtime Between the Two Systems
in Quality Assurance? This Will Be an Impact on Existing Employees in
Regards to Overtime, Temporary Help or Even Travel May Be Needed.

Leslie: Well, We Hope That the Time Period Where the Data Is Frozen in
the Conversion from The Legacy Systems to ALMRS Is About 15 Days. So
Hopefully That Downtime Won\'t Be Substantial. We\'re Trying to See If
We Can Lessen That Time Period at All. There Is a Cleanup Effort in the
Pcca Files That Cathy Mentioned. That\'s Efforts States Will Need To Go
Through in Order to Clean Up Their Data. It\'s the Old Garbage in and
Garbage out N Computer Systems You Need to Make Sure Your Data Is
Accurate. So There Is Different Estimates In Different States about How
Long Those Efforts Might Be. The Service Center Is Taking a Look at Can
We Help and Assist By Sending out Some Teams from The Service Center and
Helping Them Clean up Their Pcca Files.

Gayle: Yeah, We\'ve Identified Various Alternatives We Could Pursue If
We Had Additional Funding, and this Is Something That the Corporate Team
and Elt Will Be Evaluating over the next Six Weeks.

Robin: an Aside to What You Have Been Saying, Leslie, the Pcca Files Are
File Dumps or File ‑‑ Information Gleaned from Existing Data Before We
Transfer Into Al ‑‑ ALMRS and it Identifies States Can Be Doing Right
Now, Is That Right?

Leslie: Yes. There Is Different Categories Whether the Date Oz Was
Entered Incorrectly, Wasn\'t a Place for The Data, Didn\'t Convert
Properly. So the States Can Go Through Those, and Some Have, Arizona And
Idaho Are Two Examples of States That Have Gone Through And Cleaned up
Their Data to Make Sure When They Go Through The Last Conversion There
Will Be Very Few Left in the Pcca Files.

Gayle: it Will Be Much less Work After Conversion If We Can Identify and
Resolve the Problems up Right Right Now.

Terry: this Is Probably One of The Larger Lessons to Be Learned By Some
of the Resource Programs Where Data Standards Are Being Developed and
Emerge over Time For Other Programs. The Importance of Managing That
Data, Ensuring its Quality, Editing it and Editing Systems That Are
Available for Data and Probably Our next ‑‑ One of Our Next Large Tasks
in Terms of Gis Data Where a Lot of Our Resource Data Is Now.

Robin: Ok. The next One We Have Here Is From Will at the National
Training Center. How Is ALMRS Going to Work If The Bureau Doesn\'t Agree
on How The Firewall Should Be Configured to Allow Trusted Hosts to Get
Through All Firewalls?

Leslie: We\'re Going to Have to Agree on How to Work the Firewalls. I
Think That\'s Something We Need To Work on to Make Sure We\'re Headed in
the Same Direction.

Robin: Mike Might Have Had Some More Specific Answers for this. From the
Field Experience I Have Had, We Have Had the Firewalls In Place Not
Quite a Year, I Believe and There Are Still Bugs To Be Worked out and
They\'re Tweaking it out. But That Is the Goal and I Think We Will Be
Able to Get to That Point. The next Question Is from Darlene.

Darlene: Is the Bureau Look to Go Use Systems like Data Warehouses to
Summarize Data Which Can Be Used For Reports and Decision Making?

Leslie: I Think We\'re Looking at A Number of Different Options to
Improve Our Capabilities of Being Able to Do Queries and Reports. We\'re
Looking at Data Warehousing. We\'re Looking at the Spatial Data Engine
for Spatial to Help Us Store Data to Be Able to Retrieve It. I Don\'t
Think We Have All the Answers Now, but We Are Looking At a Number of
Different Ways in Order to Accomplish Those Goals.

Gayle: Actually Data Warehousing Is Referenced in the IRM Strategic
Plan. One of the Things That Is ‑‑ Not The Same as Data Warehousing, But
it Is Definitely Related, Is Producing Medi Data and Making It Available
Widely ‑‑ Not Wildly ‑‑ Widely. This Is Something We\'re Really Going to
Be Focusing on this Year, Especially with Resource Data. It\'s a
Requirement from the Federal Geographic Data Committee for Spatial Data
and It\'s Something That Makes Sense. We Have Collected and Generated A
Significant Amount of Data, And We Need to Make it as Available to a
Wide Variety of Potential Users.

Leslie: Our Data Is Going to Last a Long Time, So We Need to Make Sure
We Put the Effort There into Capturing and Storing It.

Terry: It\'s Even Valuable Internally. I Don\'t Know How Many Times I
Have Gone to a New Office or Had A New Employee Come, and People Aren\'t
Aware of the Data We Have In House Just to Have a System That Allows You
to Look up What\'s There, Where it Came From, Where It\'s Stored, What
Format It\'s in to Use it in Future Decision‑making Processes.

Gayle: I Used the Term Medi Data And I Didn\'t Explain What That Is, but
You Did a Good Job of Really Getting into Plain English What We\'re
Talking About.

Terry: Yes, Where the Data Came From, How Old it Is, What It\'s Quality
Is. The Things That Are Important Before You Use the Data.

Robin: We Have a Break We Have a Brave Person That Called In. Jack, Do
You Have a Question for The Panel?

Jack: Yes, I Do. It Regards Gis Tools. I Understand That There\'s
Negotiations Going on at the Service Center Level \'You a ‑‑ To Allow Us
to Convert UNIX Licenses for Arc Info and Arc View to Windows Nt. I Just
Wondered If Anybody Knew What the Progress Was on That And Also Are We
Going to Be Able To Buy Pcs and Put Arc View and Arc Info on Them?

Chris: Well, the First Question, I Understand There Are Negotiations
Going on as Well With the Contract. They\'re Fairly Sensitive. I Do Not
Know What the Current Status of Those Negotiations Are. In Addition to
Attempt to Go Free up Licenses or Maybe Cross‑platform Licenses from
UNIX to Windows Nt, We\'re Also Trying to Get Upgrades to Our Current
Gis Software. The Second Question Was ‑‑ What Was the Second Question?

Gayle: Gis on Pcs?

Chris: Oh, Whether We Can Move Gis Software to Pcs, and I Believe That
That Is Also in That Negotiations for Cross Platform Portability. I
Don\'t Know What the Status of The Negotiations Are, Though.

Robin: this Does Tie up with What Glen Coffman Has Been Working on with
the Upgrade to The Operating System, Looking at The Office Automation
Systems. He Also Has Been Working with The Service Center and Contract
Folks There on this Very Issue. So There\'s Progress Being Made, But ‑‑.

Leslie: We Don\'t Have All the Answers Yet.

Robin: That\'s Right. Does That Answer Your Question, Jack?

Jack: Yeah, as Well as I Can Expect.

Robin: Best We Can Do. Thank You. Got Another Fax Here from ‑‑ It\'s a
Comment, Actually, from El Centro. So this Is Directed Towards You,
Terry. Terry, You Look Skinnier on Tv ‑‑.

Terry: That\'s Good to Know. I Will Do this Again.

Robin: Will this Help with the Ratings Coming Up\... Next Fax I Have
Here Is Anonymous. What Type of Data Import and Export Capability Are
Planned as Part of ALMRS to Facilitate Data Sharing and Exchange with
Other Federal Agencies or Agency Partners?

Leslie: That\'s One of the Things We Have a Team Looking at Doing The
Requirements Was We Speak So That We Both Exchange the Information and
Make the Information Available via the Internet, and So Those
Requirements Hopefully Will Be Done by the End of the Month, And That
Will Be Something That Will Put an Emphasis on Early in Release Ii.

Gayle: Let Me Just Add, Leslie Has Done a Great Job of Assembling These
Teams and Having Them Move Ahead. That Particular Team, I Think We Have
Someone from the Forest Service On?

Leslie: and Bia as Well.

Gayle: I Would like to Encourage People in the States If You Are
Interested in Participating on These Teams as They Continue or Are
Revised in the Future, to Please Get in Touch with Us. Or If You Are
Interested in Participating on Some of the Business Teams Leslie
Described, It\'s Critical to Have as Much Involvement by Field Personnel
On this System as We Especially Move into Release Ii. Robin: Thanks for
Your Questions And Comments. At this Point We Would like to Shift Our
Folk Us to the Internet. The Internet Is a Fast and Easy Way to Find
Information. From Your Desk at Work or Home, The World Is Open to You
and Ready for Exploration. The Bureau Is Work to Go Manage This Fast
Technology and Has Established Three Internet Teams To Address These
Issues. Gayle, Would You like to Explain A Little Bit More about These
Internet Teams.

Gayle: I Think the Bureau Has Done a Great Job of Recognizing The
Potential of Internet, Particularly for Our Future. It\'s Obviously a
Great Way to Get Information out to the Public, but it Also Offers
Potential for Us to Do Business Differently in the Future. Margo Fitts
Will Be Talking More About That in Both the Video and In the Third
Panel. What We Have Done Is to Establish Three Teams. The First Is
What\'s Called the National Internet Initiatives Team, the Niit. This Is
a Team That Was Formed By Dan Sokalasky on Deputy Director Mat
Millenbach\'s Staff Last Winter. And the Intent Is to Encourage
Entrepreneurial Activities on Internet. We Want to Make Sure We Use All
The Creative Juices in the Organization to Come up with Potential
Applications. The Team Represents a Really Good Cross Section of Our
Employees and They\'ve Done a Really Great Job of Getting Us Going on
the Internet. That Team Had Identified Three Phases to Proceed. The
First Was to Encourage the Entrepreneurial Activity. The Second One Was
to Evaluate Where We Are. And the Third Phase Is to Make Decisions on
Specific Actions We Need to Take in the Future. What We\'ve Done Is to
Establish A Second Team to Help Us in the Evaluation Phase of Our
Entrepreneurial Activities. That Team Is Called the Bilt, Bureau
Internet Leadership Team. It\'s Headed by Acting Director In Utah Bill
Lamb and the Other Team Members Are Myself, Gwen Mason and Hord Tipton.
The Third Team Is a Team That\'s Led by Margo, and the Core of That Team
Is Represented ‑‑ Are Representatives from the IRMac Group, However,
That Team Has Been Expanded to Get Good Representation from the Entire
Bureau. What That Group Is Doing Is Focusing on Specific Issues or Areas
That We Should Be Focusing On in the Future. Margo Is Going to Be
Talking About Those Specific Areas When We Come Back after Her Video.

Robin: Thanks, Gayle. We Have Another Call Coming In. We\'ll Take That
Before We Move On. This Is from Jim in Cheyenne. Jim, Do You Have a
Question for The Panel?

Jim: Yes, How Closely Is the ALMRS/ioc Staff Staying Abreast Of the Rig
Rewrite Going on and The Impact That Would Have With, Say the Pathway
Analysis and Case View/case Type Coding That Exists with the System?

Leslie: One of the Things We\'re Doing to Make Sure Any Changes In
Programs Reflected in the Pathways Is Working with the Washington Office
Program Leads To Make Sure That We Can Make Those Adjustments.

Caller: Do We Expect That this Could Be a Pretty Substantial Impact
Recognizing We\'ve Got Data Cleanup, Pcca File Oriented. Then Also with
the Regs Changing This Could Become a Very Complex Circumstance? Leslie:
We Understand, Yes, That Any Time Our Business Practices Change, Then
That Will Result in A Change in the Pathways That Cathy Talked about in
the Video, And When the Regs Do Change, or Any Laws Change That We Have
to Update, We Have a Process for Doing That.

Jim: Thank You.

Gayle: Jim, it Sounds like You Might Be a Good Candidate to Work with Us
on That Issue.

Leslie: Just Give Us Your Last Name and We\'ll Get in Touch.

Robin: Thank You, Jim. Ok, Now Let\'s Take a Look at This New Technology
in the next Video Prepared by Margo Fitts.

Margo: for the next Few Minutes Join Me as We Go Serving Through Some Of
BLM\'s Home Pages. We\'ll Take from You the Director\'s Office in
Washington, D.c., to Arizona to Alaska, and Back to the National
Training Center, and the Best Part about It, You\'re Not Even Going to
Have to Leave Your Desk. So Let\'s Get Started. By Tape Typing in
www.ntc.blm.gov and Hitting the Return Key, You Will Access the BLM
National Home Page. Checking into the New ConfIRMation of Director Shea,
You\'ll See Here the Photographs That Were Taken That Can Be Enlarged as
You Click on Them. This Will Give You an Idea as to What Took Place.
Without Even Having to Be There. On the Right Side of the Home Page
You\'ll See Information Relative to Anything That\'s Going on Within
BLM. The National Home Page Is Really The Home Base for All Other Home
Pages. Let\'s Check into the Interagency Fire Information. What You See
Here Is the National Interagency Fire Center, Providing Their Roles,
Missions, Current Information And Hot News, All the Way from Current
Weather and Fire Information down into Reporting. Let\'s Continue Our
Tour on into Arizona. As You Can See with the Design Of this Home Page,
the Author Has Taken on the Essence of the Southwest Utilizing the
Cocopeli Figure. What You See on the Left‑hand Side Are Items That Can
Be Accessed by Clicking on Them, From News from the State Director to
the Electronic Reading Rooms, Fire and Aviation To Outdoor Recreation.
Let\'s Check out Outdoor Recreation Within BLM Arizona. Outdoor
Recreation Goes Through Camping, Trails, Off‑highway Vehicles, National
Back Country By Ways. Let\'s Check and See What the Camping Is. Camping
Within Arizona Can Be on Developed Campgrounds or Long‑term Visitor
Areas. One of Which Is the La Posa Long‑term Visitor Area, Which Is
Located by Quarts It\'s, Arizona. What You See Here Is a Picture Of That
Site, Descriptions on How to Get There. Any Types of Fees That Would Be
Applicable to That Site. Let\'s Just Click on Campgrounds And See Where
it Takes Us. Here Is a Listing by Field Office Where the Campgrounds
Are. As You Plan Your Summer Vacations, Now You Can Actually See What it
Will Look like When You Get There Before You Get There. Again, it Gives
the Descriptions Of the Sites, the Facilities Required and Provided, Any
Type Of Features, Any Type of Fees And Permits That Are Also Needed.
Next Let\'s Visit California\'s Home Page. As You Notice a Whole
Different Look and Feel to this Home Page, You Will See Similar Buttons
Across the Top That Link You to Information Contained Within the Home
Page That Are Similar to Arizona\'s. However, California Has Taken on
Active Pictures Within Each One Talking about the Different Programs.
Using Geothermal Leasing Program As an Example, You See a Picture Of the
Geysers. What Is Also Available Is a Link To the 43 Code of Federal
Regulations. This Is Information from Our National Archives and Records
Center on Any Type of Services That Are Available, Online Key Searches,
Books, Any Other Type Of Related Documents Regarding The Geothermal
Leasing Program Within BLM. The next Site on Our List Is BLM Idaho.
Welcome to BLM Idaho\'s Home Page. Idaho Has Done an Excellent Job In
Really Bringing Us into Their State. The Pictures That They Show Give Us
an Idea of the Vastness of The Mountains and the Water Rapids That Are
Available. Idaho Has Also Done Something Different than Any Other State
In Bringing up a Map of the BLM Boundaries Within Idaho. What this Does,
as You Will Notice It\'s Broken down by Each One of the Resource Areas.
By Clicking on Any One of Those Areas, it Welcomes You to That Specific
‑‑ in this Case Cascade Resource Area. It Provides You with the Address,
Telephone Number, Fax Number and Also Who the Area Manager Is. By
Clicking on the Public Involvement Opportunities, it Takes You into a
List of What Is Going on Within That District. Not Only That, but Who to
Contact and a Phone Number. This Is an Excellent Way of Getting the
Public Involved in What\'s Going on with BLM, Which Also Increases the
Communications. Backing out of There and Giving You Another Idea of What
the Whole State of Idaho BLM Looks Like. Let\'s Go Back to the Home
Page. Now off into a Recreation Site. Here You See All the Outdoor
Recreation That Is Available on Idaho\'s Public Lands. By Clicking on
the Idaho River Flows, What You See Here Are Different Links to Various
Pages. One of the Things BLM Is Starting to Do Is Link to Outside
Resources, Which Also Have a Wealth of Information. Let\'s Check on the
Idaho Outfitters Guide. What We Have Done Here Now Is Leave BLM\'s Home
Page and Go out On the Net and Found a Different Page for the Idaho
Outfitter Guided Adventures. This Takes Us off into a Whole New World of
Information. Let\'s Check River Running. If You Wanted to Go on a
Whitewater Rafting Trip on Vacation in Idaho, this Is One Way of Finding
out What it Would Be All about. This Tells You Outfitters Available,
Different Types of Activities and the Rivers and Regions and Any Kind of
Planning Tips. This Is Just an Excellent Outside Resource for BLM. The
Last Home Page We\'ll Be Accessing Today Will Be That of BLM Alaska. As
We View Their Home Page, Watch the Animation That Takes Place with the
Bird Flying in The Bush. And the Fish Jumping in the Stream. This Is a
Different Animated Approach That Alaska Has Taken To Drawing Attention
to Their Home Page. Moving on Down, You Will See They Have Selected the
Alaskan River Otter to Depict the Northern Territory. Let\'s Click on
the Alaska Points Of Interest. One of the Unique Things about This Home
Site Is That They Have Developed What They Call an Environmental
Education Home Page. This Was Done out of the Washington Office. And it
Was Noted in the Science And Children\'s Magazine Published by the
National Science Teachers Association for Elementary and Middle School
Science Teachers. What this Does Is Provide a Classroom Look into the
Variety Of Natural Resources in Alaska. For Classroom Presentation it
Talks about Temperatures. It Talks about Extended Learnings, Surviving
the Arctic Tundras. Let\'s Look at What They Have Under the Animal
Cards. Here They Describe the Arctic Ground Squirrel by Giving a Picture
and Telling What the Squirrel Is All about. Same with the Antelope
Ground Squirrel the Arctic Fox. Keeping in Mind this Is for Classroom
Involvement of Children to Provide Them No Matter Where They Are a Look
and See of What Type of Animals Are Living in Alaska. Another
Interesting Point in Alaska Is the 7 Known Dinosaurs. Notice Here That
Alaska Has Also Taken this Opportunity to Use The Animated Dinosaur to
Bring Your Attention to That. This Is Really a Unique Feature. What That
Does, Then, Is Draw Your Attention down to the Descriptions and the
Pictures of The Variety of Dinosaurs That Existed in Alaska Millions of
Years Ago. Let\'s Change Our Focus for a Moment and Visit a Site That
Was Developed in Cooperation with a Variety of Agencies with the Bureau
of Land Management to Create a Management Plan for the Desert Tortoise.
The Arizona Strip Field Office And the Arizona State Office in
Conjunction with ‑‑ with the Arizona Department of Fish and Game, State
Land Department and Forest Service Came Together to Create a Management
Plan to Provide Information Not Only to BLM, but Also to the Public.
Let\'s Take a Look at That Site. What You See Here Is the Background
Artwork Done by the Bureau of Reclamation. By Clicking on Any One of the
Subjects Will Take You into Descriptions, Habitats, Causes For Decline,
Distribution Relative to the Desert Tortoise On the Arizona Strip. As
You Notice as We Go down Through This, the Majority of This Document Is
Text Related. It Does Not Contain a Lot of Graphics or a Variety of
Links. However, by Providing with You a Table of Contents and a Click on
Any One of These Topics, it Takes You Directly to That Point Within That
Document and Allows You to Do the Research. This Type of Activity on the
Web Is Becoming Very Popular Within Bureau of Land Manage the. It\'s an
Excellent Way to Be Able To Share Information Not Only With Other
Agencies, but with The Public. By Going Back to the Home Page, You Will
Notice They Have Also Created an E‑mail Section. Within This, Comments
Are Mailed Back to Roy Murray, Who Is Part Of the State Arizona Game and
Fish Department. Roy Then Monitors These Comments, Ensuring They Are
Answered and Coordinates with Other Agencies Involved. Again, this Is a
New Way of Using the Web to Allow Access And Increase Our Communication
Throughout BLM. The next Site We\'re Going to Visit Is Currently under
Construction. It\'s Being Developed by the Information Resources
Management Advisory Training Team. This Site Will Provide a Training
Opportunity for All the Users to Learn How to Use the Internet. Let\'s
See What They\'ve Done. As You Can See They Have Designed the Home Page
with Various Categories of Activities. By Clicking on \"Using
Netscape,\" This Brings up an Actual Picture Of the Browser, Which Is
Interactive, Allowing You to Click on Any One of the Keys Taking You to
a Full Description Of What Will Happen During That Session. The Arrow
Takes You Back and Allows You to Continue Your Search. By Going All the
Way Back to the Top of the Page and Clicking on Return to the Home Page,
it Will Allow You to Then Select Another Training Portion. Clicking on
E‑mail and Selecting Internet Mail via Groupwise Brings up a Picture of
What Looks like in Groupwise When You\'re Sending E‑mail. This Allows
You to Type in the Correct Address to Send Mail Over the Internet. This
Is Something We Can All Utilize since this Is Becoming a Very Active
Part of Our Day‑to‑day Lives. This Site Will Be Available from The
National Training Center\'s Home Page in the Upcoming Future. Our Final
Site Visit for Today Takes Us Back to the National Training Center. What
You\'re Going to See Is a Demonstration of the Virtual Reality
Technology. This Technology Is Not Available Just under the Normal
Netscape Browser and Requires Additional Software in Order to Be
Executed. So Let\'s See What They\'ve Done. By Clicking on a Photograph
of The National Training Center and Using the Mouse Button, I Can Then
Move 360 Degrees to Give You a Panoramic View of the Training Center. I
Can Slow it down as Well as Speed it Up. Through the Use of the Control
Key Allows Me to Zoom out. The Shift Key Allows Me to Zoom Back In. This
Type of Technology Will Be Seen Greatly Throughout BLM in The Upcoming
Home Pages. Thanks for Joining Us Today. As You Can See, the Internet
Has Tremendous Capability for the BLM in Sharing Information. Whether
You\'re an Advanced User Or Just a Beginner, There\'s Something for
Everybody. So Sign On. Have Fun. And Stay Tuned. There\'s a Lot More
Where this Came from.

Robin: Welcome Back. I\'m Sure You Probably Notice Some of the Reception
Is Having Some Problems. There\'s a Pretty Good Thunderstorm Raging
Right Outside. Sounds like 1812 Overture Is Going on Outside. You Hear
the Cannons Going off. Is Something Happens and We Go Off the Air,
That\'s Probably the Reason. Before We Get Started, Back with Us from
the First Panel Is Al Wright.

Al: Good to Be Back. That Last Panel Was Really Interesting, the
Discussion on Data, I Think Is Probably One of The Most Important Things
We Need to Be Focused On.

Robin: All Right. Also I Would like to Introduce Margo Fitts, the Star
of Our Last Show, Who Just Demonstrated The World of Internet. She Is
the IRM Chief at the Arizona State Office. Thanks for Coming on the Show
to Talk with Us, Margo.

Margo: I Wouldn\'t Miss It. After Having Gone Through Firsthand What it
Takes to Put a 15‑minute Video On, It\'s Great To Be Here.

Robin: Margo, Add a Little More Information to Give Us about the IRMac
Internet Teams.

Margo: Yes, the Council Was Established as a Working Team Within BLM to
Address Four Major Topic Areas. What We Focused on Was Not Really
Participation from Every State, but to Ensure That We Have the
Appropriate Skills That Would Cover These Topic Areas. One of the Things
That We Were Working on Was the Ensuring We Had Representation from Not
Only Management, but Also from External Affairs, Graphic People. We Have
People out There Now Known as Webmasters. We Wanted to Include Them as
Well as the Technical Side to Address Hardware and Software. The Four
Major Topic Areas, the First One Addresses Management, And as We All
Know, the Internet Is Another Workload Impact of ‑‑ On Top of What
We\'re Already All Doing, and What this ‑‑ this Is Supposed to Help
Address Not Only the Policy That Goes along With This, but Also the
Position Descriptions, Defining Roles and Responsibilities, Getting
Management Really Involved in What That Is Involved. The Second Topic
Area Is Content ‑‑ Excuse Me ‑‑ Content Audience And Design, and What
this Is Is Really Trying to Define Who Our Public Is. Oregon Took a Real
Unique Approach in That They Actually Went out and Met with Some of The
Outside User Groups. They Called in the Hiking Members, Hiking Club
Members, And the Wilderness People and Said \"What Is it That You Want
To See from Us?\" Not Necessarily What BLM Thinks You Want to See, but
What Do You Want to See When You Access Our Home Page, Which Turned out
to Be an Excellent Way to Do That. This Team Is Also Looking at
Awareness, Marketing Strategies, How Can We Link to Other Pages, Not
Only Other Agency Pages, but Also Other Outside Facilities. The Third
Group Is Dealing with Training, Taking a Look at the End‑user Training,
Management Training, Not Only Technical Training, but Also Public,
Trying to Help the Public Use The Internet Capabilities for Sharing
Information. And, of Course, the Fourth Topic Is Technology, and this Is
the Hardware, Software. We Mentioned Lifecycle Management, Configuration
Management, Everything That Happens on the Internet Is Not Just a Free
for All. It Really Does Have to Come Under Some Type of Lifecycle
Management Process and Cm in Dealing with That. Some of the Action Items
the Team Is Working on Are Working With the Budget Process, the Pawp,
Not Only in the Washington Office, but in the States, to Try to Help
Ensure Monies Are Available to Participate on the Teams and Work on
These Projects. We\'re Also Looking at Trying to Design a Format That
Will Allow ‑‑ a Constant Look and Feel, but Yet Not Stifle Creativity
Within The Design of That Home Page. Of Course, as You Saw from the
Internet Video, the Team Put Together a Training Site That Is Available
to All Users and Will Be Shortly So That Whether You\'re a Beginner,
Advanced User, You Should Have Information on There on How to Use the
Internet. Then We\'re Also Looking at Developing Some Type of Corporate
Data Integration Procedures for the Software and Hardware. So the Team
Is Really Active and Really Are Trying to Work on the Issues That Deal
Specifically With What\'s Happening on the Ground.

Gayle: Margo, I Hope the Results Of the Team Will Still Enable Us To Do
Some Unique Location Approaches Such as We\'ve Seen With Arizona That
Has Such a Southwestern Touch to the Page.

Margo: Oh, it Will and That\'s a Good Point, Gayle. There Is a
Uniqueness to Each Home Page That Helps Try to Draw The User in and Feel
a Part of That.

Al: the Approach We Used in California Was to Have the People in the
Field Offices Create Their Home Pages So the Recreation Planners,
Geologists, Some of the Administrative People Got Involved and Actively
Did and That Gives Them a Lot of Ownership in What Is on Those Home
Pages as Well as They\'re Going to Require Some Maintenance, So You Have
Commitment There to Make Sure We Maintain Them.

Gayle: Al, Didn\'t Have You a Training Session Where You Had Everyone
from the Field or Representatives from Each of the Field Locations Come
in and Learn How to Bring up a Home Page?

Al: Yeah, We Had Several Training Sessions, People Actually Came In,
Went Through The Training, Started to Create Their Home Pages, and Then
They Went Back to the Offices. There Was a Framework We Started With,
but from There the Creativity Was Left up to the Field, and They\'ve
Done Some Really Nice Things.

Margo: One of the Things That I Think Is Important to Note Here Is What
We\'re Trying to Focus on Is Information Sharing, How to Do Our Business
Better, and How To Get Our Image out to the Public. While Still Trying
to Do the Creativity and Bring Them In, We Want to Really Try to Focus
on The Information We\'re Trying to Get Across, Because the Internet
Does Not Replace Any Other Type Of Tool We\'re Using I Know There Was
Some Concern, Now We Have The Internet, We Don\'t Need Groupwise or
E‑mail. That\'s Not the Case. The Internet Is Just Another Tool We Need
to Manage along With Other Information Technology We Have to Do Our
Business Better.

Al: I Think One of the Fascinating Things about the Internet, What We
Have Discovered, Is We Are Exposing BLM to Tremendous Numbers of People
That Before this Didn\'t Know Anything about BLM. You Always Hear People
Don\'t Know about BLM, but They Know About the Forest Service or Park
Service or State Parks. So Now We\'re Putting this Information up on the
Internet And for the First Time I Think a Lot of the Public Will Be
Exposed to the Wonderful World Of BLM.

Gayle: for Perhaps the First Time We\'re Able to Come One a National
Constituency.

Chris: So, Margo, I Have ‑‑ We Talked about the Internet Here And Talked
about Making Information Available to Our Other Public\'s. I Have Heard
Other Terms from Home about Intranet and Recently Heard a Term Call
Extranet. Can You Explain the Differences? Margo: You Were Doing Good up
Until the Extranet Marc the Difference Between the Intranet And
Internet, the Intranet Is Really BLM\'s Business. It\'s What We Do
Internally to Portray Information to and Give Information to Our
Internal Customers, Being Us. Once You Enter the Internet World, Then
That Now Opens You Up to the World Wide Web. So That Is Information
Accessible to Anybody.

Chris: So the Intranet Is for Internal Use?

Margo: Yes.

Chris: and the Internet Is Information Available to the Public. My
Understanding of Extranet Is That the Extranet Is Available To Multiple
Agencies, but Not Available to the Public Still. So We Can Share
Information Between, Say, Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service,
Bia, Park Service, Other Federal Agencies.

Gayle: One of the Things That Struck Me as I\'ve Looked at Many Of Our
Internet Home Pages Is That There Is Really Great Information on There
That Really Should Probably Be Available on The Internet Also.

Margo: Marc That\'s One of the Things the Team Is Looking At, Trying to
Say Again, Who Are Our Audiences and What Type of Information Should We
Sharing on A Consistent Basis but Not Limiting Creativity.

Robin: I Do Have a Fax That Came In Earlier That Relates to the
Internet. Let Me Throw it out to the Group Right Now. This Is from Wendy
in Denver. I Understand That ‑‑ Let\'s See. I Understand That Many
Functions And Software Packages Need to Do Work on Home Pages Don\'t
Work on UNIX Machines but Only on Pc\'s Or Other Types of Computers. Is
this True? If So, Is There Any Move to Look At UNIX‑based Software to
Build And Maintain Home Pages?

Margo: That\'s a Good Question. It Takes Us Back to the First Panel When
We Talked about the Infrastructure and What We\'re Doing in the Bureau.
Also Ties into Configuration Management and Looking at What Packages Are
Available and Will Run on Our Current Hardware Platform. What You Saw in
the Internet Video, We Tried to Really Focus On the Ability for Anybody
Wherever You Are Within BLM to Access That Information. We Didn\'t Do a
Lot of Bells and Whistles and Try to Add a Lot of Different Software
Packages on There for That Very Reason. Sometimes People Will Take it on
And Load a Different Type of Netscape ‑‑ Not Netscape, a Different Type
of Browser, Internet Browser. What You See on One Browser May Not Be
What You See on Another Browser. So this Is Really Where We Have To Be
Conscious of Our Audience And Who We\'re Trying to Reach. So the Answer
Is, Ultimately, No Matter Where You Sit, in Front Of a Pc or UNIX, You
Will Be Able to Access That Information.

Gayle: You Have a Home Page Supporting Your Team, Don\'t You, Margo?

Margo: We\'re Working on It.

Gayle: it Seems as If Some of This Information about Which Software
Works on Which Platforms Would Be Useful to Put Throughout for Our
Employees to Go in and Look At.

Margo: I\'m Glad You Mentioned That. We Are Doing a Software Inventory
and I Know That\'s Another Data Call for a Lot of People out There, but
We Are Trying to Get at Least an Idea Of What Software Is Running and
What it Does, the Function Al Tease of That So People Can Access That
Information and Know When They Go to Get That Type of Package.

Al: I Think One of the Other Great Benefits of the Internet Goes Back to
What I Said in the First Panel about Data Sharing And Making Data
Available with Other Agencies and Entities, and That\'s Going to Happen
Through The Internet. A Number of States Are Creating Agreements with
Other Agencies, Federal Agencies as Well as State Agencies, about Who Is
Going to Be the Custodian of Certain Data. For Instance, BLM Would Be
Perhaps Response for Land Status. Another Agency Responsible for
Vegetation. Another One for Soils and So Forth. The Great Attribute of
the Internet Is That this Information Will Be Available Not Only at Our
Employees but to A County Planner, a County Commissioner, Supervisor, or
Somebody from the Fish & Game, So When We\'re Addressing an Issue in the
Field, We\'re All Looking at the Same Piece of Information to Start
with. So Often I Think Controversy Exists Because We Have Different
Pictures about What the Data Is. Now We\'re Going to Be Able to Start to
Look at the Same Data And Go from There and I Think It\'s Going to Be a
Tremendous Asset to Us for Managing Public Lands. I Think over the Long
Run It\'s Going to Be a Tremendous Savings Because We\'re Not Going to
Be Creating Data on Top of Each Other, Going out and Collecting The Same
Thing in the Future.

Chris: it Helps to Deal with the Facts and Takes Some of the Emotion out
of the Arguments We Have.

Gayle: We May Not Agree on the Interpretation of the Data, but At Least
We Will Agree That the Base ‑‑ What Is the Base for ‑‑ Al Value a
Starting Point.

Robin: I Would like to Take Another Moment Here to Mention That During
the next Few Minutes We Will Be Answering Any More Questions You Have
about Anything in the Content of Today\'s Program, Not Just this Panel,
but the Earlier Ones, Too. So Please Give Us a Call. Send Us a Fax.
We\'ve Got a Few in Front of Us And We Will Try to Answer as Many as We
Possibly Can. The next One I Have Here Kind of Relates To What You Were
Talking About, Al, with the Forest Service. This Is from Tracy in Grand
Junction. Her Question Is: What Is BLM Doing in Coordination with the
Forest Service Modernization Contract to Make the Two Systems, Forest
Service and BLM, Their Operating Systems, Architecture, Software,
E‑mail, Compatible for Sites That Are Co‑located or Interagency with BLM
and Forest Service System.

Gayle: I\'ll Talk about That. We Have Really Good Dialogue Going on with
the Forest Service. We Had a Joint Meeting of Our IRM Staffs a Number of
Months Ago and We\'ve ‑‑ We\'ve Formed a Number of Teams to Address Just
These Issues of What Do We Need To Do to Make Sure That We Can Work
Closer Together. On My Home Page, There Is a List Of What These Projects
Are, a Description and Kind of Where We Are. I Won\'t Go into Those
Right Now. But Getting Back to the Question About Grand Junction, this
Is an Issue Particularly in Colorado. Even Though We Have Very Common
Technology on Both of Our Contracts, the Way We\'re Deploying it or the
Architecture Is Different. What We\'ve Done, We\'re Meeting With the
Forest Service, the Last Week of October Right Here In Phoenix and What
I\'ve Done Is To Ask John Foster to Work with IRM People in the Forest
Service And Be Able to Describe What Is The Difference in ‑‑ in Our
Architecture, the Way We Are Deploying the Systems and Then Come up with
Options for Us to Consider. This Is Something That We\'re Concerned
about and It\'s Come to The Attention of the New Director. He Is Very
Interested in Making Sure That Our ‑‑ We Can Work as Closely Without
Technology and Data Barriers with Our Other Resource Management
Organizations. Actually He Met with Mike Dombeck Just Last Weekend and
Will Be Continuing the Dialogue Not Only with Mike but Also with Fish
and Wildlife Service and Park Service.

Al: Tracy, If I Could Add to That, in Some Places BLM and the Forest
Service Are Sharing Training Facilities and Also Opportunities to Share
Equipment And Then There Is Other Places Where Forest Service and BLM
Are Working Jointly on Projects, Perhaps Their Watershed Projects,
Larger Projects, like On the Northwest Forest Plan, Where We Are
Developing Joint Databases, as Well as Sharing Equipment as Well. Chris,
You Might ‑‑.

Chris: There Is Still a Lot of Work to Do. I Think Also Weren\'t We
Attempting to Work it out So That We Could Buy Equipment off Of Each
Other\'s Contracts?

Gayle: That\'s Right. That\'s Proceeded Well. Forest Service Can Use Our
Contract and We Now Can Be Using Their Contract, Too.

Chris: Ok.

Robin: Good. Here Is Another One, and it Does Mention the Forest
Service, Too. In Terms of Configuration ‑‑ I\'m Sorry, this Is from Bill
in Phoenix ‑‑ in Terms of Configuration Management, When Will BLM
Standardized a Office Automation System Between UNIX And Pcs as the
Forest Service Recently Has Done. I Would like to Jump on this One. One
of the Things We\'re Working On Is Exactly What Glen Coffman Talked
about Earlier, and That\'s To Look at Our Whole Office Automation Suite,
Where Are We At, What Do We Have to Upgrade? When He Looks at That, He
Is Going to Be Looking at How it Fits the Bureau Platform, and The
Bureau Platform Includes UNIX, the Non‑UNIX Platform, the Pcs, and How
They Are Going to Fit into the Whole System. So I Don\'t Think We\'re
Going to See a Software Application or ‑‑ An Office Automation Suite
Come Down That Will Not Work on Part Of Our Equipment. Glen\'s Going to
Be Looking at How it Works on Everything. So ‑‑ I Think That\'s an
Important Shift from Where Things Have Happened in the Past. So Again,
Our Goal Is to Get Away from this Problem of Having Multiple
Workstations on a Person\'s Desk, and That\'s Where We\'re Headed.
Somebody Want to Add to That?

Gayle: Great Answer.

Robin: Ok. I Have Another One on the Internet from Jim Sorenson. The
First Question Is: When Will Dns and Firewall Issues Be Resolved in
Order to Access All The BLM Intranets?

Margo: I\'ll Jump on That, Dns, And the Firewall Issue. Just like Any
Other Type of New Technology, it Takes Time to Work out. The Bureau
Installed this Firewall Which Is Really Our Security for BLM\'s Data
Internally in Every State, and Not Only Do Those Have to Work Within the
State, it Also Has to Work among the States. So They Are Working on That
Individually. They Have All Been Installed, And They Are Working on
Those, And to My Knowledge, You Know, If it Hasn\'t Been Resolved, it
Should Be Shortly. They Work on Them Now Kind of on A Case‑by‑case Basis
to Ensure That That Communication Is Happening.

Gayle: the Domain Name Server Is One of the Issues We\'re Grappling with
with the Forest Service. It\'s One of Our Team Efforts, And Martin
Quinlan from the Office Has Been Taking the Lead On That, and That Is
Proceeding Very Well. If You Go to the Home Page and Look That Up,
You\'ll See the Latest on It.

Robin: as a Tag‑on to That, I Know There Is Concern How Well We\'re
Working Together with the Forest Service. Recently in the Last Month or
Two the Department\'s Come out With a Report Really Criticizing Not Just
this Bureau but the Whole Department on How Well We Were Sharing
Telecommunications Equipment. So There Is a Real Strong Push From High
Levels to ‑‑ for the Bureaus and the Different Departments and the
Different Agencies to Work Closer Together On Sharing Equipment
Technology And All That. Not Only Is There a Ground Swell From the
Co‑located Offices, I See it Coming down from the Top, Too.

Gayle: Actually, Robin, You Said The Department Had Come out with A
Report. It Was a Gao Report. Their Criticisms Were Valid. We Need to
Make Sure We\'re Sharing Resources and Saving as Much Money We Possibly
Can. We Are Looking Hard a Looking For Opportunities. It\'s Not as Easy
as the Report Made it Sound, but There Are Definitely Opportunities out
There.

Robin: Jim Has a Second Question On the Fax Here. Will Hardware and
Software for Web Servers, Including Security Software, Be Made Available
to The State?

Margo: Jim, I\'ll Try to Touch The Surface on That One, but Again it
Goes Back to the Infrastructure and What We\'re Trying to Focus On.
Ultimately it Shouldn\'t Mat Fur You Are Sitting in Front of a UNIX Box
or PC Windows Environment. Wherever You Need to Access That Information
Will Be There. Again, I Am Saying Ultimately, And That\'s Our Goal, and
That\'s What We\'re Working Toward.

Robin: All Right. Next Fax Here Is from Utah. I Guess this Is Salt Lake
District Office in Utah. Glen Mentioned a Shrink Wrapped Integrated
Package to Bring Back Dbase, Applix and Wordperfect But Didn\'t Mention
What Perfect. Do We Have Some Idea Whom the Vendor Would Be? I Will Jump
on That One, Too. Glen and I Have Talked about This for Quite Some Time
the Last Few Months. I Have a Little More Information On It. Glen\'s
Goal Here Is to Evaluate Several Office Automation Suites, Core Ol\',
Which Is ‑‑ Corel, Microsoft Has an Office Automation Suite, Applix Has
an Office Automation Suite and Lotus or Ibm Has an Office Automation
Suite. And the Goal or Plan That Glen Has Is to Evaluate All of Those By
Involving Users, Involving Technical Folks and Then Make a Decision.
They\'re Not at a Decision Point Yet. There\'s Still Some Evaluation
That\'s Coming. So We\'re Working Towards That.

Chris: Do You Have a Target Date?

Robin: Soon! Actually He Did Mention ‑‑.

Gayle: Why Don\'t We Make Sure That in the Follow‑up Comments And
Answers to this Video That We Get His Time Schedule.

Robin: They Are Working Hard, Because the Aix Upgrade Needs to Be Really
Quickly Done. Because a Lot of Things Are Dependent upon That. Once
That\'s Taken Care Of, Then The next Implementation Would Be The Office
Automation Suite. But Tied into All This, of Course, Is Timing with
ALMRS Implementation, the Budget Issues. So There\'s a Lot of Things
That Have to Fall into Place but I Know Everybody Is Pushing for This
Upcoming Fiscal Year to Get This in Place.

Gayle: the Aix Upgrade We Are Intending to Have That Start in November,
and the Only States That Probably Will Not Have the Upgrade Immediately
Will Be the Ones That Are Having the ALMRS Deployment in the Early
Months.

Margo: I Think the Focus, Robin, Is That We Really Are Aware. The
Awareness Level of the Interdepend Sees of the Types of Software and
Hardware That We Have Is Really Come to Go Surface and Really Trying to
Manage That.

Gayle: and Going along with That Is Also a Frustration, Too, of Why
Can\'t We Move Ahead with the Next Product? But We Can\'t Because of the
Interrelationships, and this Is One Thing If We Want All the Pieces to
Fit Together, Which I Think We All ‑‑ since We Depend On the Technology,
We Want it to Work ‑‑ We Need to Be Patient, And this Isn\'t Always the
Easiest Thing to Do.

Robin: Ok. I Have One More Fax Here. Let\'s See If We Can Clip it off.
This Is from David. He Says, Industry Is Moving Back To Mainframe
Because the Cost Is Less for Labor and Security, and The Security Is
Better. Will the Bureau Move to Mainframe in the Future?

Gayle: Actually We Are Still Using Mainframes. Some of Our
Administrative Systems, Specifically Our Ffs, Our Financial Management
System, And Our Payroll and Personnel Systems Are Both on ‑‑ Running On
Mainframes and Will Be in the Future. I Wouldn\'t See a Wholesale
Replacement of Our Configuration With Mainframes, but Certainly As
We\'re Developing New Systems, We\'ll Be Looking for the Best Plat Form.
As a Matter of Fact, with the Idea System, One of the Options We Did
Consider Was Running it On a Mainframe. So I Think That That\'s a Good
Point to Bring Up, but What We Need to Do Is to Make Sure We Have the
Right Platform for What We Want to Achieve.

Margo: Maybe Just Kicking in on That, Robin, the Server, the Client
Server Environment We Are Trying to Promote and Work Through, Does Allow
a Lot of That Mainframe Mentality Without Really Having a Full Sort of
Mainframe Environment.

Chris: Somehow You Have to Balance Your Network Load to Your Cpu and
Where the Computers Exist, Too.

Robin: That\'s Right. I Was Going to Agree with Margo There.
Conceptually the Mainframe Is ‑‑ The Way the Mainframe Worked
Historically with the Application Residing in One Spot Is People Logging
in Is Similar To the Way We Are Trying to Resolve Some of Our Problems.
And Chris Is Right, Too, with That Bandwidth, That\'s Not Always
Possible. Some of the Things Happening With the Internet Is Almost the
Same as the Mainframe. That Mainframe May Be Sitting Out There in
Another Agencies or The Department Level, but We\'re Actually Accessing
a Single Application Software Remotely Through the Internet Site. So
We\'re Going to See a Mixed Bag of Things, I Think.

Margo: Which Is One Thing, I Will Quick Mention on the Internet, Talking
about Platform Specific, That Is One Real Use Of the Internet, Is Being
Able To Put That Data in a Repository, If You Will, and Allowing Access
to That No Matter What Platform You\'re Setting On.

Robin: We Have a Call on the Line Here. This Is Greg in Las Cruces.
Welcome to the Conference, Greg. Do You Have a Question for the Panel?

Greg: Yes, Sir, Gayle Mentioned That the States That Were Going to Be
Having the ALMRS Implementation Were Going To Have to Stay with a Lower
Versions of Aix. Is That My ‑‑ Is That Understanding Correct?

Gayle: I Think I Have That Right. What We\'ll Do Is to Verify That, But
it Would Only Be Temporary, Until the ALMRS Had Been Brought Up. Now, as
Far as ‑‑ Let\'s See. At Las Cruces, That Would Be New. I Don\'t Think
You Would Have the Upgrade but I Think the Best Thing to Do Is Check
with the National IRM Center to Make Sure I\'m Right.

Robin: Roger Whatley Mentioned He Didn\'t Want to Upgreat Grade The
Operating System at the Same Time Some States Would Be Implementing
ALMRS. So ‑‑.

Al: but it Will Follow Deployment?

Robin: Well, it Will Follow Deployment for Some States and Precede
Deployment for Other States.

Margo: Depending Where You Are On the Schedule.

Robin: That\'s a Scheduling Problem, How Many People Do You Have to Do
the Work and We Are Going to Try to Balance That but Roger Is Working on
That Schedule.

Greg: Thank You Very Much.

Robin: Thank You, Greg. Ok. We Do Have Another Call. Ok. Another Call
from Paul in Tulsa. Paul, What\'s Your Question for The Panel?

Paul: I Have a Question about Odbc. Is That Being Considered as ‑‑ Or in
Consideration for Standardizing the Access to Data Basis Across the
Internet ‑‑ Databases Across the Internet to Display Various Databases
Throughout the Internet, I Guess With a Web Browser?

Robin: Ok. Part of Your Question Got Cut Off at the Beginning. It Was My
Fault. I Think What You Were Asking Is The Way Awcp Is Being Distributed
from the Department Via Internet Set ‑‑ Caller: No, Odbc, Open Database
Connectivity, Structure for the Web Browsers.

Margo: That\'s a Really Good Question, Paul. You Kind of Learn Something
New Every Day. I Don\'t Believe I Have the Answer for That, but That\'s
Something We Can Certainly Check Into.

Gayle: Sounds like He Might Be a Good Member for this Team.

Margo: Just Because You\'re Not On It, You May Be.

Robin: Thanks, Paul. Sorry We Couldn\'t Give Abetter Answer.

Margo: but Leave Your Name and Address.

Paul: Do I Hang on the Line?

Robin: Why Don\'t You. I Will Put You on Hold and Maybe You Won\'t Get
Lost. Good. I Have Got One More Fax Here in Front of Me. This Is from
Glen in Phoenix, And I Will Give this One a Shot. Please Name the Three
Components That Will Run as a Front End Loader Processor for Informix.

Chris: Is this a Test?

Gayle: Well, I\'m Not Going to Volunteer to Answer That One. Robin or
Margo?

Margo: Please Name ‑‑.

Robin: If I Understand His Question Right Now, the ‑‑ Some Of the
Problems We\'ve Had in the Field and Glen Had Mentioned This Earlier
Today, We Didn\'t Supply a Really Good Replacement Or Substitution for
Dbase, and ‑‑.

Margo: Is this a New Era Versions They Are Talking about?

Robin: That\'s What I Am I Thinking about. We Have New Era out There
Being Used by Programmers to Develop More User Friendly Gui Interfaces.
But Glen Is Also Trying to Look At More User‑friendly Front Ends That
Have the Same Look and Feel As Dbase to Where We Can Access These
Applications in Informix.

Margo: Which Is What I Think Glen Was Trying to Get To, We Want a Truly
Integrated Package Instead of Just Interoperability, Which We Mentioned
Didn\'t Quite Get There When We Went to Informix. There Was Not a
Low‑end Database Users Could Use. So this Whole Suite He Is Looking at
Should Take Care of That Problem.

Robin: and Glen Mentioned Four Components of That Suite, Word
Processing, Spreadsheet, Graphics and the Database Front End to
Informix. Thanks a Lot for the Questions Right Now. Al You Wanted to
Close and Kind Of Wrap up from Your Perspective.

Al: I Just Want to Say, First of All, I Really Appreciated the
Opportunity to Visit with You Guys Through this Forum. I Have Certainly
Learned Some Things. There Were Only a Few Times You Were Way in over My
Head. I Just Thought I Would Say a Few Words and Wrap the Forum Up. We
Started off by Talking about The Goals of the Strategic Plan And We\'ve
Certainly Stressed the Importance and the Recognition Of an Integrated
Architecture And While We\'re Not Completely There Yet, We Have a Lot of
Work To Do. But I Think We Have a Good Focus Where We\'re Headed. The
Panel Just Before this One Focused on Data Management, and As I Said
Earlier, Is Probably One of the Most Important Things That Management
and the Bureau Can ‑‑ Needs to Pay Attention To. It\'s Sort of the Basis
of What We Do to Manage the Public Lands. Then the Third Thing Is the
Investment in the Work Force and The Importance of Continuing to Do
That. We Also Recognize That Information Technology Is Going To Be
Ever‑changing, and While We Always May Want Something More That Just
Came Out, There May Be Times When We Can\'t Go That Far. We Need to
Recognize That We Need to Develop the System and Bring it Together So We
Can Continue to Operate on Two or More Platforms Certainly in the
Interim. We Need to Establish Priorities. Not Only Within Information
Technology and the Things We Need to Do, for Instance, ALMRS Being
Significantly Important This next Year, to Make Sure We Get it Deployed,
but We Also Need to Establish Priorities Between How Much Information
Technology We Can Afford to Help Us Get Our Job Done at the Same Time
Keep Our Focus on the Land Management Responsibility That We Have and
Why We\'re Here for The Public. I\'ve Said Several Times and Several
Others Have Talked about The Importance of Partnerships In Data
Management, and I Think This Is the Wave of the Future. No One Agency
Can Do it All Themselves. I Think We\'re Going to Have to Be Very
Aggressive in Finding Partners That Will Help Us Develop the Data, Help
Us Manage It and Maintain it and Emphasize The Importance of Sharing
Date Across Lines So Information Is Available to Counties and Others And
Make it Accessible to Everybody Who Is Interested in It. In Closing,
Maybe I Would Go Back to What the Director Said In His Opening Remarks,
Three Comments That Caught My Attention. First of All, What I Remembered
Him Saying, Let\'s Use Technology, but Let\'s Don\'t Chase It. There
Needs to Be Cost Controls. In Other Words, We Need to Be Cost Conscious
about the Benefits We\'re Getting Relative To the Land Management Job We
Have as BLMers. So, Again, I Just Want to Say Thanks. It\'s Been a Good
Forum for Me And Glad to Be a Part of It.

Robin: I\'m Really Glad You Could Join Us.

Gayle: Al, Does That Mean You Will Participate next?

Al: Absolutely Not. This Wires Are Coming off.

Gayle: We Have Talked a Lot About Change Today, Talked about Changing
Technology, You Just Mentioned It, Al, We Talked About Change Systems,
Changing Partners and Even Changing Management. I Think We All Recognize
That Change Is Part of Our Life, Especially Our Business Life. What We
Are Trying to Do, Though, Is Make Sure We Have a Stable Environment, a
Stable Framework and Strategic Goals to Recognize this Change but Move
Us in the Right Direction in the Future. I Think the Bottom Line for All
Of Us Is We Want Our Employees To Have Access to the Right Tools, the
Right Systems and the Right Data to Do the Best Job Possible.

Robin: I Think We\'ve Accomplished a Lot Today.

Gayle: Yes. Speaking of Accomplishments, Robin, That Was a Good Queue, I
Think We Have Talked a Lot about Progress Today. Certainly the People
That Have Participated in the Panel Have Made a Contribution to That
Progress. There Are a Lot of Other People Out in the Field Who Have Also
Made Contributions. I Would like to Mention a Couple, Specifically in
Denver Roger Whatly, the NIRMc Director And Co‑director of ALMRS along
With Dave Little Have Made a Major Contribution and We Hope They Will
Keep it Up, Too. Certainly the Washington Office Staff Is Doing a Lot.
And Then Especially All the People out in the Field, the People Involved
in Systems and Then the IRM People Who Make it All Work. Finally, this
Forum Would Not Have Been Possible Today Without Our Great Producers,
Ruth Welsh, My Assistant, and Mike Nedd, Deputy Director of IRM.
They\'ve Done a Great Job, along With the NTC Staff, Chip, and All of
the Wonderful Production People Here at the Training Center.

Robin: Thank You. That about Wraps it up for this Edition of the IRM and
ALMRS Forum. We Appreciate All Your Calls and Faxes. We Will Be
Publishing All of the Questions and Answers That We\'ve Received on the
Air Today. The Questions and Answers Will Be Consolidated into One
Document and Posted on the Ad For IRMs Internet Home Page. That Address
Is Web.BLM.gov/wo500. We Receive Many Faxes Today. If We Did Not Have
Time to Get Your ‑‑ to Your Specific Question During the Forum, Please
Check Gayle\'s Home Page In the next Couple Weeks for This Document and
Other Documents Related to this Forum. I Would like to Remind Our
Downlink Sites to Have All Viewers Sign the Attendance Roster and Fax it
to the National Training Center Immediately after Today\'s Show. All
Viewers Will Be Receiving an Evaluation Form via E‑mail on Today\'s
Telecast. Please Complete the Evaluation As Soon as Possible Following
The Instructions Provided. I\'d like to Mention Some Upcoming Satellite
Events. Next Week on September 17th and 18th, the Two‑day Course on
Mining Claim Use and Occupancy Management Will Be Broadcast. A Telecast
on October 30th Will Discuss Changes on Oil and Gas Policy. And on
November 19th, NTC Will Broadcast a Seminar as Part of The Second
International Conference on Natural Resources And Cultural Heritage.
This Interactive Telecast Will Also Be Transmitted to Central And South
America and Simulcast In Spanish. To Help Your Office Participate In
Future NTC Broadcasts, See The BLM Satellite Downlink Guide Or Visit the
NTC Home Page on The World Wide Web. The Internet Address Is
www.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of this Program and Other NTC Broadcasts
Are Available on the Home Page. For More Information on Upcoming
Distance Learning Events and Traditional Courses, Call NTC at
602‑906‑5500. Or Visit the Home Page. I Would like to Thank All the
Panelists Who Participated in Today\'s Telecast. I Would like to Also
Acknowledge The People Behind the Scenes That Worked to Prepare this
Forum. It\'s Through Programs like this That We\'re Able to Inform BLM
Employees of the Most Recent Developments in IRM Information Technology
and it Has Become Quickly Indispensable in Management of BLM\'s Land and
Resource Management Programs. We Will Be Broadcasting Another IRM and
ALMRS Forum Sometime in 1998. Thank You for Joining Us and So Long.