**The IRM and ALMRS Forum**

**BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**February 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 &
ALMRS Forum. A Discussion of the Goals and Objectives of Future IRM
Activities. And Now, the Host of Your Program, Robin Stoebe.

Good Morning, Everyone, and Welcome to the IRM and ALMRS Forum. In this
Program We Will Be Visiting with BLM\'s New IRM Management Team and
Hearing from Them about Our Long‑term IRM Strategy. We Will Also Take a
Look at ALMRS Ioc. That\'s Initial Operating Capability and What it
Means to You. Before We Begin, I Would like to Mention to All of Our BLM
Downlink Sites That NTC Is Currently Recording Secretary Babbitt\'s Fire
Management Briefing Which Is Originating From Boise, Idaho, this
Morning, While We Are on the Air. NTC Will Retransmit the Speech This
Afternoon on the Same Satellite, Galaxy 9, but on Transponder 22. The
Broadcast Will Begin at 1:00 P. m. Mountain Standard Time. Now, Joining
Me for Our First Segment Today Is Gayle Gordon, Assistant Director for
Information Resources Management And BLM\'s Chief Information Officer.
Gayle, We\'re Glad You Could Be With Us Today.

Thank You, Robin. It\'s Always Nice to Come to Phoenix, Especially in
February. Robin, We Thought about Delaying This Forum, the ALMRS Staff
Management Has a Very Full Agenda These Days, but We\'ve All Got
Together and Decided it Was Really Critical at this Particular Point of
the Project We Get this Dialogue Start with The States. So Here We Are.

Thank You, Gayle. With Us from the National IRM Center in Denver Is the
New Director, Roger Whatley. Roger Is Also the Co‑director of The ALMRS
Program. Roger, Welcome.

Thank You, Robin. It\'s a Pleasure for Me to Be Here Today, and
Especially to Have the Opportunity to Meet Later on with the ALMRS Ioc.

Thanks, Roger. We Also Have with Us from Denver Dave Little. Dave Is
Currently the Co‑director of the ALMRS Program And He Will Be Giving Us
an Overview of How the Program Will Now Be Managed. Good Morning, Dave.

Good Morning, Robin. I Am Excited to Be a Part of This ALMRS Team and I
Am Really Interested in How this Program Is Going to Go Today.

Thanks, Dave. Before We Begin Our Discussion, I Would like to Mention
That Throughout this Program You Will Be Able to Communicate with Us Via
Telephone and Fax. Using the Numbers Provided to Your Offices. You Can
Send Us a Fax Question At Any Time. Use the Form Provided with Your
Written Materials. Please Print Your Question with A Dark Marker. You
May Call Us Whenever You Would like. Our Operators Are Standing By. In
Most Cases, However, We Will Only Be Putting Calls on the Air During Our
Schedule Interactive Segments. The First Thing We Would like to Do this
Morning and Let Each of Our New Managers Visit with Us About Their
Changing Roles in The IRM Program. To Kick Things Off, Gayle, Will You
Give Us ‑‑ Gayle Will Give Us Her Version of the Changing Role of IRM in
the Bureau.

Thank You, Robin. It\'s Noteworthy the Bureau of Land Management Has
Established An Assistant Director for IRM. It Reflects Appreciation of
the Critical Role Technology and Information Will Play in Accomplishing
the Bureau\'s Mission in the Future. When I Use the Phrase Information
Technology, I Am Referring to Hardware, Software, Telecommunications and
Systems. IRM Includes the Technology as Well as the People and Other
Resources Necessary to Make the Information Technology Work. In My
Position as Chief Information Office or Cio, I Serve as the Bridge
Between Senior Management, the IRM Community and the Potential
Beneficiaries of Information Technology in the Bureau. In BLM, the
Potential Beneficiaries Are Rapidly Approaching Almost All of Our
Employees. It\'s My Responsibility as Cio to Advise and Assist Senior
Managers in Ensuring That Our Information Technology Resources Are
Effectively Acquired and Managed. I Further Need to Ensure That as
We\'re Planning Our Future Programs We\'re Considering How They Can Be
Helped by Technology. I\'m Responsible for Establishing Goals for Using
Information Technology to Improve Our Operations and Service Delivery.
Not Only Do We Need to Establish Goals but We\'re Going to Have to
Report to Omb and Congress on How Well We\'re Meeting Them in The
Future. It\'s My Job to Monitor Our IRM Programs Against Performance
Measures. This Assumes Performance Measures Have Been Established And
Although We Haven\'t Done Very Well in the Past, We Will Be Doing More
and Better in the Future. With Reduced Budgets, It\'s Incumbent on All
of Us to Make Sure We\'re Getting Our Money\'s Worth from Our
Information Technology Investments. I\'m Responsible for Assessing Our
IRM Knowledge and Skills and Making Sure That We Address Any
Deficiencies That We Find. Our Recent ALMRS Staffing Reviews That Dave
Will Be Talking about Later Clearly Illustrate this Responsibility.
Finally, I\'m Responsible for Setting Bureauwide IRM Policies And
Strategies and Overseeing The National Information Technology
Infrastructure and Systems. Dave, Do You Want to Put up My First
Graphic? Here We Go. My Vision for the Bureau in the Future Is an
Organization in Which Information Technology Is Intrinsic to Our
Business Activities. I See an Organization in Which The Bureau\'s
Customers, Managers And Staff Have the Information And Services They
Need When They Need Them. This Vision Can\'t Be Attained by The IRM
Community Alone. It Requires a Partnership among The IRM Community,
Customers, Managers and Staff. In Constructing a Common Vision, We Need
to Project How Tomorrow Will Be Different than Today and How Technology
Can Make this Happen. I Think this Graphic Illustrates The Role I See I.
t. Playing. I See Information Technology as Not Only Supporting the
Bureau\'s Mission and Programs, but Also Creating New Business
Opportunities. We\'re Going to Be Talking about Internet in a Little
While and I Think this Discussion Will Illustrate What I Mean about
Creating New Opportunities for The Bureau. I Think the next Schematic
Illustrates the Evolution We\'re Going Through. We\'re Moving from What
We Can Call Islands of Technology to an Environment in Which Technology
Is Dispersed Across the Organization and Is Embedded in Our Programs and
in the Way We\'re Conducting the Bureau\'s Business. The Impact of this
Change Is That We Need to Give All Stake Holders a Role in Identifying
The Technology They Need, Implementing it and Then Evaluating Whether
It\'s Really Making a Contribution. We\'re Also Evolving from Computing
and Communicating Within the Organization to Doing So with Other
Organizations. Our E‑mail Connectivity with Other Bureaus and the Forest
Service and Our Trading Post Initiative Clearly Illustrates This. To
Attain this Vision, Our Managers Need to Have a Basic Understanding of
Information Technology. Over Time They Need to Be Accountable for
Effectively Acquiring, Managing and Evaluating Information Technology
Investments. They Also Need to Ensure Adequate Staff Are on Board and
Effectively Trained to Support And Use Technology. Likewise, All Our
Employees Need To Have a Basic Understanding of Information Technology.
And, Finally, the IRM Community Needs to Understand Their Customers\'
Needs. The IRM Staff must Have an Ongoing Dialogue with Our Other
Employees. Over Time We Need to Develop a Common Vision of Where Our
Programs Are Going and How Information Technology Can Help Achieve this
Vision. Now, Robin, These Ideas Have Evolved in My Mind over My Four
Months Being with the Bureau and At this Point I Would like to Ask the
Field If You Have Any Suggestions for Issues or Directions That I Seem
to Be Missing, Please Let Me Know.

Thank You, Gayle. For Starting Things off. Now next Roger Will Provide
with Us His Perspective on the New Role of the National IRM Center In
Denver, Formerly Known as the Office of IRM Modernization. Roger, What
Can the Field Expect Now?

Well, Robin, \'View My Role as One of Providing Direction and Guidance
in IRM Related Matters. It\'s to Take a Perspective Leadership, a
Proactive Role in Providing Modern Technology, Whether it Be Software or
Hardware and to Provide Better And More Efficient Ways of Doing
Business. My Role Is to Work with the States and the National Centers To
Improve Their Business Processes. Making Recommendations in Some Cases
and Providing Support in Others Cases. We Are Here First and Foremost To
Provide a Service to Our Customers, You. It\'s up Us to to Make Sure
National Systems Are Efficient And Effective and They Are Meeting Your
Needs, the Needs of The Bureau and the Needs of the Department. It\'s My
Goal to Work More Closely with the States and Business Centers and to Be
Sure That I\'m Kept Aware of the Problems We Can Help Solve. When I Say
We, I Mean You and Us. There\'s a Lot of Innovation, Creativity out
There, and I Think We Owe it to Each Other And to the Bureau to Share.
Some Ideas I\'m Considering Including Outreach by Rotating People to and
from the Field for A Period of Time. That Will Help Us to Better Know
Your Business and for to You Know Ours and Why We Make Certain
Decisions. For Example, I Know That the Field Is Moving from a
Three‑tier to a Two‑tier Type of Organization and That Means Doing More
with less as We All Are. I Would Also like to Explore Sharing Certain
Responsibilities With the Field, for Example, There\'s No Reason Why
Some Testing of New Applications Software Couldn\'t Be Done in the Field
Instead of in Denver. In Other Cases, the Field May Want to Take the
Lead in Developing a New Bureauwide Application. The Possibilities Are
Really Endless and I Think We Need to Explore Them Together. This Is the
Only Way We Can Walk Down the Information Highway as Really True
Partners. Don\'t You Agree, Robin?

Completely. Thank You, Roger. As You Know, During the next Few Months
BLM Will Be Deploying the ALMRS Software to the Field. This Effort Will
Be Coordinated By Roger Whatley and Dave Little As the ALMRS Program
Co‑directors. Dave Will Now Explain His Role In Putting this Together
and Bringing this System on Line. Dave?

Thanks, Robin. As a Career Bureau Employee, I\'d Like to Take Just a
Minute to Share with You Some of My Personal Thoughts about ALMRS. I
Mentioned Earlier That I Was Excited to Be a Part of this Team and I
Really Am. Many of Us Have Been Waiting Many Years for Something to Be
Produced from this Project. We\'ve Heard about Things. We\'ve Seen Bits
and Pieces. But We\'re Finally Coming to the Point Where Those Bits and
Pieces Are Coming Together. This Spring for the First Time We\'re Going
to See this Really Operate in a Field Environment. Over the next Year
We\'ll Be Deploying this to the Rest of The Field. I Think That Really
Adds a New Dimension to How We\'re All Going To Face Our Jobs in the
Coming Years. In Trying to Think about How to Describe My Personal
Feelings I Thought about Maybe Describing Approaching a River. If
You\'re Approaching That River And There\'s Something on the Other Side
You Have Some Choices To Make Before You Decide Whether You\'re Going to
Jump in The River and Attempt to Swim in It. One Thing That You\'re
Dependent On or You\'re Motivated by Is What May Be Behind You. We Have
Many Years Behind Us in The Bureau, Many Good Years, but We Also Have
Some Things That We Know That We Haven\'t Been Able To Provide Very Well
That We Would like To. Across the River Might Be the Proverbial Pot of
Gold. I\'m Not Sure That I\'m Ready to Describe ALMRS as Gold Yet,
Robin, but it Is Something That I Think We\'ve Been Waiting For, It\'s
Highly Desirable, There Are Some Very Significant Benefits Across That
River. But How You Approach the Edge of The Stream Also Depends or
Influences Whether You Make it To the Other Side. If You Stick Your Big
Toe in and Back Off, it Isn\'t Going to Happen. If You Wonder \"Can We
Make it Happen,\" it Probably Won\'t Happen. But I Think the Thing Today
Is We Have a Team That\'s Prepared To Make this Happen. We\'re Going to
Work Together. We Have a Lot of Good People in The Field Combined with
Those in Denver, Washington That Are All Dedicated and Committed to
Making this Happen. One of the Other Things You Might Consider in Terms
of Whether You\'re Going to Jump in That Stream Is the Risk That You
Perceive. Some People Perceive a Major Risk of Failure. But, Again,
You\'re Not Going to Reach That Pot of Gold If You Don\'t Take Some
Level of Risk, And the Point Is, Be Prepared For Those Risks, and
That\'s Where We\'re Putting a Lot of Our Effort into Today, Is Trying
to Prepare for Those Risks and Minimize Those Risks to Assure Success.
In Terms of My Role, I Have a Rather Unique Role with this Team. I\'m
Here for a Transition Period Of Approximately 18 Months. I\'m Here
Because I\'m an Old‑line Manager in the Bureau. I Understand the
Operations of The Bureau. I Know Many People in the Pure Owe. A Good
Share of My Role Is Going To Be Talking to You Folks in The Field,
Trying to Find out What You Would like Us to Accomplish, If There Are
Issues That We Aren\'t Taking Care Of. Can You Use Me as a Lynn Took
Roger and Gayle to Try to Focus Those Concerns and Try to Communicate
Those Concerns More Effectively. My Major Roles Will Be in Coordinating
Some of the Future Planning and Assisting the Team That\'s Working on
the Bureau Strategic Plan and the IRM Portion of That Strategic Plan,
Assisting with Some of the Tactical Planning Required, Such As We Just
Went Through with the Staffing Analyses, and That We\'re Going to Be
Doing with Deployment Planning, and Working With Other Agencies. Those
of Us Who Are Involved With the ALMRS Program Really Think We Have a
Product That Others Can Share. We\'ve Made a Tremendous Investment and
Many People Are Concerned about the Level of That Investment. But I
Think What We Haven\'t Seen Yet Is How Broadly‑based the Benefits of
ALMRS Can Be. Thank You for an Opportunity Just to Share a Couple
Personal Thoughts.

Thank You, Dave. Now That We\'ve Given You the Overview from the Denver
Offices, We Would like to Shift Our Focus to the Field. The Field
Committee Has Appointed an IRM Subcommittee Composed of Associate State
Directors to Focus Management on IRM Issues Critical to Field Offices.
You May Have Heard Them Referred To as the Triad or the Quartet. While
Working with Them the Last Year and a Half, I Have Been Very Impressed
with Their Ability to Learn and Grasp the IRM Issues That Are Now
Critical To the BLM. They\'ve All Expend Add Great Deal of Energy to
Focus the Field Committee on These Issues. Because of this Group, the
Bureau Is Now Better Able to Make Informed Decisions at the National
Level. With Us Now from That Committee Is Alan Kesterke, the Associate
State Director in Wyoming. Alan, We\'re Glad You Could Join Us Today?

Thanks, Robin. Appreciate Being Here. The IRM Irc Has Been in Existence
for Quite a While, and On That Committee We Have ‑‑ as The ChaIRMan, the
Deputy Director of the Bureau, We Have Representatives from Each One of
The Assistant Directors, as Well As Representatives of All the Associate
‑‑ All the Associate State Directors and Center Directors, the
Headquarters Budget Lead Is on the Group and The ChaIRMan of the IRM Ac,
the Advisory Committee, Robin, Is Also on That Group. Because There\'s
Been So Much Activity over the Last Several Years and There Needed to Be
Fairly Significant Management Involvement in That, a Subgroup Was Formed
by the IRM Rc the Review Council and it Was Composed of Four Associate
State Directors, Gary Bower from Here In Arizona Is on That Group, Al
Wright Is Also on It, Dave Little Was on it until Recently, And We\'ve
Recently Added Sally Wisely from Alaska. There\'s Been Again a Great
Deal Of Activity in the IRM Arena and So We as a Subgroup Agreed to
Focus on Really Four Primary Issues: One of Those Are ‑‑ One Of Those
Was IRM Budgets in the Context of the Bureau Budget as A Whole. We Spent
a Great Deal of Money In the Bureau on Information Resources Management.
We Need to Look at it as it Relates to Funding for All Other Programs in
BLM. Our Second Primary Focus Item Was to Maintain or Enhance Those
Relationships with the Department, Omb and Gao Who Have Been Major
Players in How We Have Worked in the past and Have Been Very, Very
Supportive of This Effort Bureauwide. The Third Item That We Wanted to
Look at Was a Transition of the Project Office to the National IRM
Center. I Think You\'ve Seen a Great Deal Of Activity over the Last
Several Years And, in Fact, the Last Six Months in Particular, As That
Transition Occurs. Last and Perhaps Currently Most Important, We\'re
Looking at Guiding the Long‑term Planning Of Where We Want to Go in the
Bureau with Information Technology and Information Resource Management.
And this Really Deals at this Point in Dealing with the Strategic Plan
for IRM and the Bureau. We Want to Move the Focus from What We Have Had
the Last Several Years from a Hardware/software Folk Us to a Support to
All the Mission‑critical Activities That The Bureau Does. Robin, Back to
You.

Thanks, Alan. At this Point, I Would like to Step out of My Role as a
Program Moderator and Put My Hat as IRM Advisory Committee ChaIRMan. The
IRMac Is Currently Composed Of the Branch Chiefs and Points Of Contact
for All the State Offices and National Centers. Over the Years IRM
Management Has Moved from Dealing Solely With Technology, the Nuts and
Bolts of Computing, to the Managing of the Information Itself. We\'re
Now Taking an Active Involvement in Information Dissemination,
Information Access Centers and Web Services. Through These New
Partnerships With Roger and Dave at the National IRM Center, Gayle at
The Washington Office and Field Committee Members like Alan, the IRMac
Will Become More Closely Involved in the Strategic Planning, Policy
Development and Implementation. I Believe this Will Lead Us to a Bureau
IRM Structure and Purpose That Is United and Supported by All the
Offices. We Should See Standard Ways of Doing Business, but Encourage
Entrepreneurial Activities at All Levels of the Organization. This Is
the Opportunity for Individuals to Utilize this New Technology to
Reengineer Business Practices at Both the National and the Local Level.
This Is the Opportunity to Continue Sharing Technical Knowledge and
Mutual Support Across State Boundaries. This Is the Opportunity When BLM
Can Accomplish True IRM Modernization. An Integral Part of These
Opportunity Is the IRM Strategic Plan for the Bureau, Which Has Been
Developed under the Leadership of Alan Kesterke. Alan, Perhaps Could You
Give Us A Quick Orientation of What it Means for Our IRM Users.

Okay, I Sure Will, Robin. We Right Now Have a Draft Plan And I Want to
Really Stress That It\'s Draft. We Don\'t Have a Great Deal of Review
Bureauwide on It. But We\'ll Be Working this Week With the IRM Chiefs
Here in Phoenix. We Need to Work Carefully to Tie It to the Bureau
Overall Strategic Plan That\'s Being Developed, Again, Across the Bureau
for All of Our Programs. There Was a Lot of Earlier Work That Went into
Some Strategic Planning ‑‑ Some Planning Efforts, and What We Needed to
Do Was Pull Some of That Together and Really Look at an Update of the
Plan. What We Did Was Put Together a Team. The Team Include Burt
Williams, The Billings Area Manager, Judy Nelson, Who Was the Eugene
District Manager, John Foster, Who Is the Colorado IRM Chief, And Tim
Foley and Rene Duval From the Washington Office, and Kurt Ballentine and
Deborah Dever from the National IRM Center. What We Have Come up with
this Point and I Want to Stress It\'s Draft, Is Really Four Goals. The
First Goal Is to Make Sure We Have an IRM Structure That Can Deal with
Cross‑jurisdictional Information Sharing, in Other Words, We Can Work
Well with Others. We Have Strategic Emphasis Items Focusing on Land and
Title Records, Resource Data and Analysis and Business Enterprise,
Business Enterprise Being Things like Grazing Billings, Tracking of
Property And So O the Second Primary Goal Is to Meet Mission Needs with
up To Date Information Technology. We Want to Make Sure We Use Good
Technology, Current Technology As We Reengineer and Reinvent Our
Business Processes. But a Second Factor We\'ve ‑‑ We Believe Is
Important to Look at Is Continuity of Operations. In the past the Bureau
Has Moved Onto New Systems and Perhaps Not Taken Care of the Systems
They Had in Place as Well as They Should Have. We Believe Continuity of
Operations Is Really Critical. The Third Goal Is Increased Integration
of IRM into the Bureau\'s Program Activities. With a Strategic Emphasis
on the Increased Use of Data Management. Again, Data Is a Corporate
Resource. We Need to Treat it That Way. And Work Carefully to Make Sure
We Have Quality Data. The Second Is to Increase Partnerships to Maximize
Our Investments. We Need to Work Carefully with State Agencies, with
Other Federal Agencies, to Make Sure We\'re Not Duplicating Efforts. And
the Third Strategic Emphasis Is to Encourage the Use of Common Data
Standards So We Can Talk among Ourselves. The Last Goal, Goal Number 4,
That We Believe Is Critical, Perhaps More Important than the Rest, Is to
Achieve a High Level Of Competency of BLM Personnel To Maintain, Operate
and Apply Information Technology to the Bureau\'s Mission. Again, Within
That We\'ve Got Three Strategic Emphasis Items. One Is Management
Awareness and Support. Two Is IRM Skills and Awareness For Our Entire
Work Force. That Means All of Our Program People So They Know How to Use
It, How it Can Make Their Jobs, Hopefully, Easier and Provide Better
Customer Service. Third Is IRM Support Staff Skills and Training. It\'s
Essential We Have the People in Place That Can Support The Systems and
Keep Those Operating Effectively as We Use Them in Our Business. And
Fourth Is Really to Deal With Those Special Considerations for Our
External Customers, Those with Disabilities, Those with Special Data
Needs. I Believe That at Least We\'ve Got a Good Start on a Strategic
Plan at this Point and with the Help of the IRM Ac, Robin\'s Group,
Others in the Field, I Think We\'re Going to Have a Plan That\'s Going
to Make Some Sense For the Bureau in the Long‑term. Thank You. Robin?

Thank You, Alan. Resource and Data Sharing Is an Important Part of How
the IRM Program Will Relate with Other Bureaus in Land Management
Agencies. Part of this Includes the Already Rehosted Systems in the
ALMRS Release 1 System. Dave Will Discuss How the Bureau Playing Their
Part in the Department\'s Initiative to Increase Data Sharing among
Agencies Is Also Working Towards Meeting the Bureau\'s Resources Option.
Dave?

Thanks, Robin. Resource Data, Resource Data Collection, Is Something
That\'s Going to Be Going on for Many, Many Years. Those of Us Who Have
Been Waiting for ALMRS Release 1 May Have Been Thinking That That Was A
One‑time Project. We Get it All. That Was Never Really a Part of The
Vision of ALMRS. We Knew That this Was Going to Be an Evolutionary
Process. The Focus Today Has Been on Rehosting the Current Legacy
Systems and on the Development And Deployment of ALMRS Release 1. It\'s
Taken a Long Time but We\'re Almost There. We Really Feel like There Is
Going to Be a Product at the End Of this That\'s Going to Be Beneficial
to the Bureau and to Our Public. But Let Me Remind You Just a Minute of
the Original Vision of ALMRS as it Was Developed in the Early
\'Mid‑1980s. ALMRS Was to Stream like the Responses to Land and Mineral
Inquiries. It Was to Facilitate Processing Of Applications and Permits.
It Was to Improve Access, General Access, to Ownership and Use Records.
It Was to Improve Our Security Of Records. It Was to Protect Proprietary
And Confidential Information. It Was to Ensure Accuracy and Consistency
of Data. And, above All, it Was Supposed To Reduce the Costs of Resource
Management. Now, Most of Us Still Have Somewhere in Our Office One of
Those Original Color Posters That Attempted to Display the ALMRS
Process. If You Look at Your Screen, this Is a Picture of That. The
First Layer above the Ground Layer Is the Basic Public Land Grid.
That\'s Something We All Recognize, Particularly Those of Us West of the
Mississippi as Township, Range, Subdivision. We Have to Start with That
Very Basic Information. We Have Been Working Many Years Collecting
Geographic Information Coordinated Database Information That Will Tie
Each Of Those Reference Corners to The Surface of the Earth. The Second
Layer Is the Layer That Deals with the Uses That Are Occurring on the
Land, the Permits, the Leases, the Rights‑of‑way, the Withdrawals. ALMRS
Provides the Link Between Those Layers. In ALMRS We Also Are Looking
Forward to the Resources Layer And Being Able to Link More Strongly to
it than We Have in The past. The Resources Layer Where You Have Wildlife
Habitat, You Have Other Kind of Information That Either Is Changing over
Time or Is Data We May Be Collecting Parcel by Parcel, Project by
Project, but ALMRS Is Intend to Do Provide the Links So up and Down
Through Those Layers There Is a Way to Integrate That Data. For the
First Time We Will Be Able to Look at Data on a Landscape Basis, Deal
with Whole Ecosystems, Not Just Grazing Allotments or Watersheds. I Was
Impressed Last Week in the Department\'s Discussion of Their Budget at a
Press Release the Secretary Made a Very Significant Point of One of the
Three Major Points He Wanted for People to Carry Away from That
Auditorium. He Said: We Have to Look on a Landscape Basis and an
Ecosystem Basis Before We Can Really Understand Issues, Let Alone Deal
with Issues. As We Progress in this Program, That Ability Is Going to Be
Greatly Enhanced and I Think That\'s Going to Have a Major Impact on Not
Only Our Management but Our Data Sharing With Our Other Agencies and
Coordinated Management Across Boundaries. A Little Bit Late Inner this
Broadcast You\'ll Get a Chance to See in Much More Detail What it Is
We\'re Going to Get Through Release 1. But Let Me Just Give You a
Summary Right Now. Release 1 Will Provide a Single System to Store,
Access, Process Lands and Minerals Data. It Will Provide Improved
Reporting by Putting That Data In a Single File. We\'ll Have a Decreased
Need to Refer to Other Media Such as Aperture Cards, Microfiche,
Microfilm. Those of You, Particularly Who Operate Public Rooms, Know How
Difficult it Is for People to Come in and Search for Information and
Then Get a Copy Of That Information with Our Existing Media Sources.
We\'ll Have Enhanced Data Integrity by an Improved User Interface.
Simply That Means We\'ll Have Much Friendlier Screens. Can You Call up
Data in the Way You like and it Will Be Much, Much Easier to Enter Data.
The ‑‑ There Will Be a Determination of Land Status Through Display of
Graphical Land Status, and in Release 1 We Don\'t Get Everything We
Would Like in the Way of Bells and Whistles and Graphics, but There Will
Be a Way to Graphically Display Land Ownership and Give That to Us Our
Customers. We Will Be Able to Produce Spatial Plat Graphics. We\'ll Get
Much of What We Want In Release 1 but We Won\'t Get All of It. It Never
Was Intended That ALMRS Was Only Going to Include One Release. For
Example, We Knew That We Had Learned a Lot Through Just Deployment of
the First Release. We Have to Be Prepared to Correct Any Flaws That We
May See or Those Enhancements That The Field I Just Know Are Going To
Come Forward with and Say \"But Why Didn\'t You?\" We Need to Have Some
Time to Filter Those and Where They Make Sense We Need to Build Those
Into Release 2. How Much We Can Accomplish in Release 2 Really Is Going
to Be Dependent on the Level of Funding That\'s Provided by Congress.
We\'ve Been Very Fortunate So Far. The President Did Include \$11
Million in His Budget That He Presented to Congress Last Week For ALMRS
Release 2. Of Course, That Still Has to Go Through the Congressional
Appropriations Process, but I Think It\'s Indicative of the Kind of
Commitment Throughout Government That We Have for this Project. In Times
of Decreasing Budget, This Is a Project, a Program, That Is Looking at
Increases. We Would Hope That in Release 2 We Would as a Minimum Be Able
to Correct Those Flaws, We Would Be Able to Add More Survey Types. There
Are Many Unique Situations Throughout the Country. I\'m Just Amazed by
the Differing Kinds of Data That Comes from Differing Regions. The
Challenge Every Trying to Assemble That in One Database Is Just
Horrendous. I Think We Can Make Another Major Step Forward Through
Release 2. We\'ll Be Able to Add More Ad Hoc Query Capability. Release 1
Will Have Some Standard Reports. Release 2 Hopefully Will Have a Query
Capability So That When a Customer Comes in the Office, May Ask for
Something That Right Now We Just Have to Say \"I\'m Sorry, We Can\'t Put
Together That Information for You,\" and Release 2 We\'ll Have More
Flexibility to Respond to Those Kind of Individual Requests. My
Understanding Is with Release 1 There Will Be Some Ability to Link Gis
Resources Data to the Land Ownership and to the ALMRS Database on Uses.
But It\'s Going to Take a Rather Expert User to Be Able to Use Those
Links. The Hope Is That Through Release 2 We\'ll Be Able to Make Those
Links Usable in a Much More Friendly Manner, More Click and Point Kinds
of Options. And There Will Be a Greatly Enhanced Capability of Sharing
That Data with Other Agencies. I Think until We Can Do That, We Really
Cannot Meet Secretary Babbitt\'s Goal of Looking at Things on a
Landscape Basis Because Right Now Our Data Often Goes up to a Boundary
and We\'re Not Aware of the Data That Occurs on the Other Side of That
Boundary. We Need to Erase the Boundary And Just Share Data. Thank You,
Robin. I Hope That Gives at Least a Brief Overview of What People Might
Be Able to Expect with Release 1 and Just a Little Bit About Release 2.

Thank You, Dave. Now That We\'ve Covered the IRM Long‑term Strategic
Plan and Data Sharing I Would like to Respond to Some Questions You Have
I Sent In. Remember, the Fax Lines Are Open. Feel Free to Use It. The
Information Is There in Your Room. So Please Fill Those out and Send
Them In. Some of the Questions That We\'ve Gotten from the Field over
the Last Couple Weeks We\'ll Try to Respond to Now. Gayle, One of Them
Is: What Additional Hardware Can We Expect to Receive from the 4550
Account?

Okay. Robin, When the Contract Was Awarded in 1993, We Realized That it
Would Take Time to Develop the ALMRS Software That Dave Was Just
Describing. What We Decided to Do Was Have a Phased Deployment of the
Technology. The Initial Technology, Which We\'ve ‑‑ Have Installed
Across The Bureau Is Primarily Supporting Day‑to‑day Operations And
Office Automation. Now, the next Phase of Software Deployment Will Be
the ALMRS System. Now, We Recognized That from the Very Beginning We
Would Need Significant Upgrades to Our Current Technology in Order to
Support That. We\'ve Withheld \$20 Million in The ALMRS Budget to
Accommodate Those Upgrades. During the next Couple of Months We\'re
Going to Be Doing Testing And the Testing Will Determine Exactly How
Extensive the Upgrades Need to Be and Then We Will Go Ahead and Acquire
the Additional Hardware and Software And Install it in the Field.

Thanks. Another Question That\'s Come Up, Gayle: What\'s the Status of
the Forest Service Link‑up? Are We Going to Be Compatible With E‑mail,
Gis and Other Software Applications?

Actually the Forest Service Has Been Undertaking a Major Acquisition
over the Last Few Years. It\'s Referred to as Their 615 Project. The
Government Procurement System Doesn\'t Always Work, but In this
Particular Instance it Did Work out Quite Well. We Have Very Similar
Technologies on Both the ALMRS/modernization Contract and The Forest
Service Contract. For Example, We Have ‑‑ Both Have the Ibm Risc
Workstations, Have Compatible E‑mail Systems And So On. So We\'re Going
to Be Able to Work Closely Together. Now, We\'ve Already Seen the
Beginnings of this Happening in Our Trading Post Initiatives. I Know
Colorado, for One Example, Is Working Closely with The Forest Service to
Figure out How We Can Work Together in Training and Doing Cross‑training
and Cross‑support. There Is a Training Session Right Here at the
National Training Center Several Weeks Ago, and I Know Several Forest
Service Employees Attended It. The Forest Service Has Just Hired Their
First Chief Information Officer. This Is a Gentleman Who Had Been At the
Forest Service a Number Of Years Ago and Then Most Recently Has Been at
Omb. He Is Going in And, as a Matter Of Fact I Have Talked to Him
Several Times in the Last Couple Of Weeks, He Feels as If We Have Not
Proceeded as Rapidly as Possible in Working Closely with The Forest
Service and He Is Very Interested in Pursuing That. I\'ll Be Meeting
with Him in Two Weeks and Talking about ALMRS. So Far We\'ve Been
Primarily Talking about the Technology That We Can Be Sharing Between
The Forest Service and BLM. We Have Opened up Our Contract To the Forest
Service and We Expect Their Contract to Be Open To Us in the next Couple
of Months. But Jack and I Will Be Talking About over the next Few Weeks,
Next Few Months, Probably, Will Be How Can We Move Faster to Take
Advantage of Our Common Technology.

Thank You. One More Question Here. I\'ll Get Your Opinion on It. This
Probably Came from a Range Con out in the Field. Should Every Employee
Have a Computer and Internet Connection?

as Far as a Computer Connection Goes, I Think Some of Our Employees
Probably Don\'t Need Computers to Do Their Jobs. But for Those of Us ‑‑
for Those Employees That Do Have Computers And Use Technology, We Are
Moving to a Future That Will Have Internet Connectivity for All of Our
Employees, or at Least the Ones That Have Computers. I Know Some of ‑‑
We Feel ‑‑ We Want to Do this for Several Reasons. First of All, Having
Access to The ‑‑ All the Information That\'s Available Through the
Internet Will Help Many of Our Employees to Do Their Job Better.
Secondly We\'re Going to Be Using The Internet Technology, Our Own What
We Call Intranet, That Mike Nedd Will Be Talking about in a Few Minutes,
to Do More and More Of the Bureau\'s Business. I Know the Business and
Fiscal Management Assistant Director Is Planning on Using Internet to
Distribute ‑‑ They Have Used it For Distributing the Budget this Past
Year and They Have Plans to Have the Intranet Become More And More a
Part of the Way They\'re Doing Business. This Goes Back to the Graphic
That I Had Before Where We\'re Seeing Technology Actually Embedded in
the Way We\'re Doing Business. I Think the Internet Use in the Future
Illustrates this and It\'s Already Taking Place.

Thank You. I Got Another One Here That\'s a Little Bit Tougher, Gayle:
Are There Any Plans ‑‑

When Do We Start Sharing Questions and Move ‑‑

We\'ll Get to It. Are There Any Plans to Increase IRM Support Staff at
the Field Office Level? If So, Will Funding Come Forth From the Bureau?

Okay. Funding for Staff Is Primarily a Responsibility of the State. What
We\'ve Done Is Just to Complete a Quick Review of the Staffing
Assessments That the Field Conducted over the Last Year in Anticipation
of ALMRS Deployment. I Think That These Studies, and Dave Will Be
Talking about in That a Little Bit, Identified Some Deficiencies and We
Have Asked the States to Make Sure That the ‑‑ That They Are Planning to
Address the Deficiencies and We\'re Bringing On the Appropriate Level
and Number of Employees to Get the Job Done in the Future. Having the
Technology Is Really Only the First Step. The Final Step or What We Need
To Make a Successful Picture Is We Need to Make Sure We Have the
Training and Support to Take Advantage of It. Again, Dave Will Be
Talking About the Staffing in More Detail in a Couple Minutes.

Thank You. I Got a Fax Hot off the Press Now from the Field. Roger, I Am
Going to Put You on The Spot on this One.

Thanks, Robin.

the Question Is: Where Does Gabs and Rips Fit in with the ALMRS Program?

You Did Put Me on the Spot, Robin. Actually Being New to the
Organization I May Have to Defer Back to Gayle on this One.

Yes, I\'m So Much Older with The Organization. I Have Two Weeks ‑‑ I
Would like To Talk a Little Bit about and That Again I\'m Not Very
Familiar With Those Systems, Either. One of the Things That We Are Going
to Be Doing this Year and This Is Going to Be One of Dave\'s
Responsibilities, Will Be To Look at the Other Systems That Are Kind of
Peripheral to ALMRS, but Definitely Have a Relationship and I Think
These Two Come in That Category. What We Need to Do Is to Make Sure,
Again Going Back to My Earlier Schematic, We\'ve Had Islands of
Technology. This next Phase Is Integrating These Islands and I Think
That These Systems Illustrate What We\'re Going to Be Trying to Do
There.

Okay. Another Fax: Please Explain Exactly What Graphic Capabilities Will
Be Available For the Typical ALMRS Users in Release 1. Please Include
Any Comments About Graphical Capabilities With Gis Also. I\'ll Leave
That Open. Who Wants to Jump In?

Want to Try Again?

Okay. Arc Info, Which Is a Gis System, Is Embedded in the ALMRS Software
That\'s Being Developed Right Now. So There Is a Core Capability That
Will Be There. Now, the ‑‑ Someone Who Is Familiar, as Dave Said,
Someone Who Is Familiar with Using Arc Info Will Be Able to Go into the
ALMRS Software and Take Advantage of the Gis Capability. Now, We Are
Going to Be Somewhat Limited on the Types of Graphic Displays That Will
Be Available. For Example, Dave Was Talking Again about the Resources
Data. There Also Are Other Geographic Data That We\'re Very Interested
In Depicting Visually, for Example, the Elevation Data, Roads,
Hydrogaphy. We Will Have the Capability of Importing That Data the in
the First Release into the System. However, it Will Take a Gis Person to
Be Able to Manipulate And Display It. But, Again, the Core Capability
Will Be There in Release 1 and We\'re Hoping to Expand it So That a
Broader Audience Will Be Able to Take Advantage of this Capability in
Release 2.

Thanks, Gayle.

I Might Mention, Robin, as Gayle Started to Point Out, That For the next
Release We\'ll Be Including Much More Friendly Interface to That
Package. So That the Common User Can Be Able to Go Ahead and Access it
And Just the Real Power User Won\'t Be the Only One Restricted To Using
It.

Robin, \'Eye Think the Question Asked for Exactly What The Graphic
Display Will Be with Release 1. I Think the Demo We\'ll Be Seeing In a
Little Bit Will Show That Pretty Clearly.

Troops. Okay. We\'ve Got One More Fax We\'ll Address. This One Is from
California: How Will Ioc Rehosted Applications in Office Automation
Interface with Each Other after Deployment of Ioc? At Present with
Existing Equipment and Networks, We See Functional Problems Applying the
Office Automation and Rehosted Phases of Deployment.

Well, Robin, I\'ll Try to Address That.

Can We Pass That over?

the Two of You Might Want to Jump in on this One. There Is Problems out
There, and We Are Aware of Them. We Are Taking It, to Use an Old
Cliche\', One Step at a Time. We Realize We Are Going to Have To Make
Some Upgrades and Changes in the Software That Allows the Hardware and
Software Interface a Lot Better than What It\'s Doing Right Now. You Can
Be Assured by the Time We Start Deploying the Technology, We Will Have
Found a Common Platform for These Software Packages to Work with Each
Other. Do Any of You Have Any Comments You Want to Make on That?

the Only Thing I Would like To Add to That Is ‑‑ as I Think Robin
Mentioned Earlier, the IRM Advisory Council, the IRMac, the Collection
of IRM Coordinators In the States, Is Meeting Here This Week and They
Are the Ones That Really Have the Good Handle On What Technology We Have
out In the Field and How it Does Need to Be Working Together. So
Hopefully this Will Be a Topic the IRMac Will Be Talking About this
Week.

and We Will Be Addressing That.

So Why Didn\'t You Answer These Questions?

You Guys Are Doing Great.

Another Comment I Might Make Along Those Lines, Robin, Is That We Have,
in Fact, at Least I Have, I Have Gotten a Lot of Good Information from
the Field Already. So That\'s That Partnership I Was Talking about with
You All. I Will Be Expecting a Lot of Input from You. You\'re Doing a
Good Job Right Now. Keep up the Good Work.

Thanks, Roger and Gayle. All Right. We Would like to Now Take a Look At
Some New Directions for Managing IRM Technologies as We Move Towards the
Year 2000. But First I Would like to Introduce Mike Nedd. Mike Is a
Newly‑appointed Deputy Assistant Director for Information Resources
Management. We\'re Glad Could You Join Us Today, Mike.

Thank You, Robin. It\'s Good to Be Here. I Would like to Say Good
Morning To My Fellow BLMers West of the Mississippi and to Those of You
East of the Mississippi, Good Afternoon.

Just How We Will Fund Future Technologies in BLM Will Continue to Be a
Challenge. Now, Gayle Will Give Us Her Perspective on Where We Are
Headed and How We Will Get There.

Thank You. The Bureau Has Been Very Fortunate to Have Had a Major
Infusion of Funding and Technology Through the ALMRS/modernization
Project. This Has Provide Add Common Technology Infrastructure upon
Which We Can Run Software to Support Our Day‑to‑day Operations and Build
Our Systems. This Common Technology Infrastructure Provides a Single
Telecommunications Network, an E‑mail System That Enables Us to
Communicate Across the Organization and with the Outside World. The
Common Technology Infrastructure Has Also Given Us Common Software That
Enables Us To More Effectively Use Human Resources. We Can Achieve
Economies in Training and Support Because We Have this Common Software.
As We Move Forward to Enhance And Eventually Replace the Technology, We
Need to Do So Within the Context of this Common Infrastructure. To Make
Good I. t. , Information Technology, Investment Decisions We Need to
Have Have Good Planning. We Need to Clearly Identify Where We\'re Going
in the Future. We Need to Do this Planning Together. Certainly the
Process That Alan Discussed a Little Bit ‑‑ a Little While You a
Something a Real Good Start on this Planning Effort. It\'s Highly
Unlikely We\'ll Get a Budget Increase as We Did with The
ALMRS/modernization. I Think the Probability Probably Approaches Zero.
So We\'re Considering Several Different Options for Replacing Technology
in the Future. One Option Would Be to Fund Hardware Replacements as
We\'re Doing with the Radio Narrowband Equipment. We Collect
Collectively Defined Our Needs and Came One a Common Acquisition
Approach, However, Budgeting and the Actual Purchasing of the Equipment
Will Be Done Through the States.

Could I Interrupt for a Minute, Gayle? We Have a Live Call and it Fits
Right in in with What You\'re Talking about Right Now. I Will Take it
Right Now. I Have Bill in Phoenix. You Have a Question?

Caller: Yeah. My Name Is Bill. I Represent Idaho. Idaho Is Number Three
on the Bureau\'s ALMRS/ioc Implementation Plan. So the Bureau Has a Lot
Riding On the Success of Idaho along With New Mexico and Arizona. Idaho
Has Been Largely Deployed With Power Pcs, Approximately Two‑thirds of
Our Equipment Is Of this Power Pc Nature. The Bureau Knows That the
Power Pcs Will Not Run ALMRS Adequately at this Time. Will You Upgrade
or Replace All Of the Power Pcs That Idaho Has And Put Us on Parity with
Deployment with the Other States In this Area?

Thank You. Rog Is That in Your Bailiwick?

Thanks for a Question. That\'s a Concern We\'ve Heard About Before. Let
Me Respond by Saying That, Yes, We Do Intend to Upgrade the Power Pcs.
One of the Concerns That I Keep Hearing out There Is Whether or Not
We\'ll Be Able to Effectively Deploy ALMRS/ioc to the Field, And Believe
Me, We Will Be Able To Do That. If You Have Hardware Right Now That
Isn\'t Working, We\'ll Get it Working for You by the Time We Deploy
ALMRS/ioc.

Caller: Thank You.

You Bet. Thanks for Your Call.

Thank You, Bill. Okay, Gayle. Sorry for the Interruption. It\'s Nice to
Know There Really Is Someone out There on the Other End.

Yes, More than Three.

I Was Just Talking about the Alternatives That We\'re Looking At to Fund
Hardware Upgrades in The Future. I Talked about the Narrowband ‑‑ Using
the Narrowband Equipment Replacement as a Model. An Alternative Model Is
to Use a Working Capital Fund. This Has Been Used Very Effectively by
BLM for Nontechnology Investments, However, Other Bureaus and Agencies
Are Effectively Using Working Capital Funds for Information Technology
Investments. For Example, the Department\'s Telecommunications Network,
Doinet, Uses a Working Capital Fund. Each Year, in Addition to Covering
Ongoing Operating Costs, Bureaus Also Pay an Amount for Subsequent
Equipment Replacement. In Our Case We Could Have the States Contribute
Some Amount Each Year That Could Then Be Used for Technology Replacement
In the Future. We ‑‑ We Would Have to Construct The Fund, If We Do Take
this Approach, in a Way That\'s Consistent with the Bureau\'s Culture.
Perhaps We Could Establish Subaccounts by State. We\'re Currently
Developing Several Options That Will Be Discussed with the Corporate
Team and the Field Committee Later this Year. However We Eventually
Proceed, We Need to Recognize Information Technology Will Play a More
Critical Role in the Bureau in The Future. Our Programs and States Need
to Appreciate this and Plan Accordingly. Again, Robin, These Are a
Couple Of the Options We\'re Looking For. If Someone out in the Field
Has A Silver Bullet to Solve this Problem, Please Let Us Know About It.
We Really Do Want to Come up With a Creative Approach and Some Our Best
Creativity Is Not In Washington Ask Denver but Elsewhere in the Bureau.
So Give Us Your Ideas, Please.

Thanks, Gayle. Thanks for the Offer. How Our Systems Connect with the
Rest of the World Is an Important Part of How We Can Improve the Way We
Do Business. Mike Will Now Inform Us of the Latest Developments
Regarding The Internet/intranet as Well as Electronic Information
Management. Mike?

Thank You, Robin. You Know, Before I Begin My Discussion, I Think My
Fellow BLMers Will Agree with Me, in 1994, When We Spoke of ‑‑ Including
My Panel Members ‑‑ in 1994 When We Spoke of Internet Or When We Thought
of Internet In the Bureau We Were Using a Dial‑up, a Pc and a Modem to
Dial in N 1995 We Saw a Lot of Talk about Internet and We Heard A Lot
about What\'s Coming and Then Around Mid‑1995 it Took Off. With the
Explosion of Internet Use Within BLM, There Are Many Opportunities. So
What I Would like to Do Is Direct Your Attention to this Overhead Slide
and Try to Depict Some of Those Opportunities. Individual
Communications. This Entails Providing BLM Staff With Access to Internal
and Other BLM Application. We Look at Using this to Make Sure You Are
Kept Informed and You Are Always Informed. BLM Message. I Prefer to Call
this Telling The BLM Story, Using a Just in Time Approach. That Is,
Giving Our Customer to Get Needed Information on BLM When They Need
Identify It. ‑‑ When They Need It. Existing Business ‑‑ Looking at The
Way We Do Business with an Eye Towards Enhancing and Adding Greater
Value. New Business Opportunities. This Means Asking Ourselves: How Can
We Integrate the Use of The Internet for That New Business While
Reducing the Operating Costs? Some of the Way We\'re Doing this Is
Changes Within the Internet World Seems to Be Never Ending. As a Result,
There Has to Be a Continued Assessment to Ensure Maximum Return on Our
Investment. We Can No Longer Afford to Attempt to Solve All the Various
Issues Without Our Individual States/center. At this Time I Would like
to Draw Your Attention Again to One More Overhead, and I Asked My Fellow
BLMers to Bear with Me in Trying to Display Many of My Points from a
Graphical Perspective. For the past Couple Years or So We Have Seen Lots
of Positive Results in Using Multi‑function Teams to Implement New or
Enhanced Technology. In Line with Our Continued Assessment, We Recently
Made Some Changes and Combined the National and Washington Internet Team
to Form the Bureau Management Internet Team. Additional Information on
the Roles and Responsibilities of This Team, along with National ‑‑
along with the National Internet Initiative Team and the IRMac Internet
Technical Team Will Be Forthcoming. How Are We Enhancing Internet
Capabilities? From the National IRM Perspective and I Would like to Call
Your Attention to the Overhead Again, We Have Taken Steps to Ensure the
National IRM Center Is Capable of Providing Top Notch Service and
Support For the Bureau\'s Internet and Intranet Operation. This Entails
Having Adequate re Soars, Hardware, Software, Connectivity, Staff, to
Accommodate States\' Home Pages And Data. We Encourage Each State to
Consider the Alternatives When Up Grading or Implementing Internet
Activity. National Newsgroups. Several Proposals Are on the Table to
Perform Subject Matter Newsgroups. The Intent Is to Use These Newsgroups
to Show Ideas and Reduce Redundancy in Solving Like Problems. Sharing
Resources. Bottom Line, Our Resources Are Finite, and Customers
Expectations Continue to Increase. We must Think Global and Increase Our
Sharing of Knowledge, Skills and Resources. Supporting ‑‑ How Will We
Support the Existing Business Programs and Activities? We Will Continue
to Work with Program Office in Promoting the Use of Internet for
Conducting Business with Their Customer. In Addition, We Will Continue
to Form Alliances with Other Program Areas to Ensure the Bureau
Information Technology, That Is, Hardware, Software, Communication, Can
Accommodate And Meet Their Requirements. I Would like to Draw Your
Attention to One Slide Again. Electronic Commerce. The Automated Fluid
and Mineral Support System Has an Effort Underway to Explore the Use of
Electronic Permitting and Reporting with Oil and Gas Operators on
Federal Land. Conducting Procurement Type Transactions over the
Internet, The National Business Center Is Exploring this. And Last but
Not Least, Access To Glo Pattern Database. Environmental Education,
Migratory Song Bird Blue Box Electronic Forum out of the Washington
Office Is an Example Of How We Can Provide Our Customer with Thinned
Kind of Information. The New Mexico Interactive Public Land Information
Center. Again, this Is an Effort in New Mexico to Is He See How We Can
Have Interactive Communication With Our Customer. Access to Geographic
Coordinate Database. We Have Gotten Good Reports on Several States\'
Success in Making this Information Available via the Internet. This Is
Just Another Example of Finding New Ways to Serve Our Customer. Access
to BLM Information Products. Over the Last Year We Have Had Over 150,000
Visits to Our External Home Page. About 59%, or a Little over 89,000, of
Those Visits Were From External Customers. You Would Be Surprised,
Breaking News, What\'s New and Links to Other States Seems to Be the
Most Frequently Visited Area. How Will We Improve Internal
Communication? In Essence, and in Line with Gayle\'s Vision, We Would
like to Ensure That We Can Provide Information to All of Our Customers.
Most of Our States Are Online With Their Home Page. With the Bureau
Purchase of Netscape Software We Continue to Make Great Strides Towards
100% Bureauwide Connectivity to the Internet. As a Result We Now Have a
More Informed Work Force and Having An Informed Work Force Has
Translated into Numerous Success Stories. Again, this Is Just Some of
the Things We Are Doing on the Internet and at this Time this Concludes
My Short Session on The Internet and I Would like to Turn it over to My
Panel Member For Some Comments or Discussion They May Have.

I Would like to Add Two Illustrations of Internet That I\'ve Learned
about Recently. The First Is in Wyoming, and I Understand That in the
First Five Months of Wyoming Making Their Gcdb, Geographic Database
Coordinate Data Available over Internet They Filled More Requests than
They Had in the Previous Seven Years They Had Been Providing Data. I
Think That\'s Pretty Significant. Another Example I Just Learned About
in California Several Weeks Ago Was California Using Internet to Support
the Mount Soledad Project. What They Are Doing Is Using Internet as a
Way to Get Comments from the Stakeholders About What They\'re Doing with
The Resource Plans and They Found That They\'ve Gotten Some Really Good
Comments and That They Have Certainly Reduced the Number of Requests for
Planning Activities Because They\'re Providing More Information in a
More Timely Way to the Public. Those Are Two Examples I Think Really
Illustrate Doing ‑‑ Providing a Better Service to Our Public and Doing
Business Differently.

Thank You.

Thank You, Gayle.

at this Time ‑‑ at this Time I Would like to Shift Our Focus To
Accessing Information. The Way We Access Information And How Fast That
Information Is Provided, Is Part of Our Customers\' Determining Factor
as To Whether or Not We Are Meeting Their Expectations. I Would like to
Direct Your Attention to the Overhead. We Need to Shift the Way of
Thinking ‑‑ We Need to Shift the Way We Have Been Doing Business In the
Bureau. In the past or Previously Most Information Was Requested Through
the Public Rooms and That Information Would Then Be Retrieved from Some
Sort of Records or Hard Copy File System. Today We Need to Look at a
Different Paradigm. We Need to Folk Us and Providing That Information
Not Only in the Hard Copy Format but Being Able To Make it
Electronically Available from the Public Room And from Offsite Customer.
Again, this Is One of the Ways We Have to Change Our Focus in Providing
Information. Many of You Have Heard of the Electronic Freedom of
Information Act as Amended in 1996, or Better Known as the Electronic
Foia Amendment. You May Be Wondering What Are We Do to Go Comply with
this Law or What Should You Be Doing? Some of the Things We\'re Doing. .
. We Have Formed the Bureauwide Team to Address the Implementation
Questions. Some of the Issues the Team Is Addressing Are Use of the
Internet and to What Extent Should There Be Consistency Among the States
and Identifying User Requirements for a Document Management and Foia
Tracking System. In Terms of the Foia Act, There Is Certain Paper
Records That Must Be Made Available by March 1997. In Both Cases ‑‑ I\'m
Sorry ‑‑ And Selected Foia Documents must Be Made Available in
Electronic Form by November \'97. That\'s Hard Copy by March \'97 And
Electronic Copy by November \'97. In Both Cases this Category of
Information Already Exists in The Public Room. The Electronic Foia Law
Does Not Require to You Make All Public Room Records Available
Electronically Except Statement Of Policies and Interpretation Adopted
by BLM and Not Published In the Federal Register, Public Portion of
Administrative Staff Manuals and Instructions To Staff That Affects a
Member Of the Public, And Frequently Requested Foia Requests. That\'s
Normally Three or More of The Same Requests, Regardless of Form or
Format. Offices must Review the Information to Determine Whether A
Portion Needs to Be Deleted or Better Known in the Foia World As
Redaction. Electronic Reading Room. . . Again, Certain Documents must Be
Made Available. These Documents Are Basically The Same Type of Documents
as Referenced in Electronic Foia Documents, Which Are the Statements of
Policies and Interpretation as I Stated Before, Public Portion of
Administrative Staff Manuals or Frequently‑requested Information. How
Are We Accommodating the Things That Needs to Be Done? There Is a Bureau
Team Looking At the Technical Requirements Relative to Implementing the
Electronic Reading Room. Also Looking at Using the Internet. That Team
Is Presently Conducting Meetings and Conducting Conference Calls and
Providing Information via Electronic Mail on How They Are Working the
Various Issues. Information Access Center, Some States Have Already
Started Their Transition from Public Rooms to Information Access
Centers. While Others Are Still in the Planning Phase. Thanks Good
Start. The next Step Is for States to Start Preparing for ALMRS Release
1 Implementation. I Would like to Direct Your Attention to the Overhead
Again. Simply Stated, States Should Be Preparing for ALMRS
Implementation in Their Information Access Center. This Entails Planning
Accordingly for Installation and Providing Training. A Recent Document,
the Concept Of Operation Document, Was Sent Out under an Ib from the
National IRM Center. That Ib Is Ni 97‑4001 Dated January 29th, 1997.
Again, We Have Many Issues Before Us in the Bureau. Whether It\'s
Internet Issues, What Is Electronic Foia Information, What Is Electric
Reading Room Access. We Believe Working Together as a Team We Will Be
Able to Overcome That. Robin, That Concludes My Portion Of the Internet
and at this Time I Would like to Earn at this Time Back over.

Robin, I Would like to Make One Observation. I Think Some of the Things
You Described Are Our Response to Congressionally Mandated Actions,
However, I Think They Also Reflect the Need to Respond To a Public and
to Customers That Are Becoming Increasingly Sophisticated in the Type of
‑‑ And the Quality of Services They Want. For Example, If I Can Order a
Book on the Internet, Why Can\'t I Order the Same Information From BLM?
Another Example Would Be I Can Track Using Internet a Ups Package. Why
Can\'t I Get the Same Service On an Application for a Permit To Drill to
Find out the Status Of That? I Think These Are ‑‑ We\'re Starting to See
this Pressure Coming and I Think Actually the Legislation Reflects the
Pressure. But It\'s Going to Be Coming More And More in the Future. This
Will Be One More Thing We Will Have to Figure out How to Do with Our
Limited Resources.

Okay, Thank You, Gayle. Roger, Did You Have Something to Add?

a Couple Comments on the Internet Part of It. There Is a Lot of Really
Good Stuff out There Right Now. I Had the Opportunity to Look At, for
Example, New Mexico and Colorado and Had Some Really Good Home Pages out
There. It\'s Significant to Note Also That the President\'s State of The
Union Address Indicated That ‑‑ about the Link‑up of All the Public with
the Internet. I Mean, Things Are Really Happening and Are Happening
Fast. You Have Heard the Cliche\' about Moving at the Speed of Change.
We Get out on That Information Highway That You Keep Vice‑president Gore
Talk About, If We Don\'t Move Fast Enough, We Will Get Moved over. So We
Really Do Have to Speed Up.

Robin, One Comment. I Know Many of My Fellow BLMers Reads the Trade
Magazines, the Trade Journals and Have Internet Connectivity at Home and
So Forth and Sometimes it Seems as Though the Internet Connectivity With
the Bureau Is Not Moving Fast Enough or a Fast Enough Pace. We Have Been
Doing Good Things, Using Teams to Help Facilitate Some of the Issues or
Some of The Technical Solutions. We Need to Continue to Work Together.
We Need Input. We Need to Hear Your Comments. We Need to Hear What Is
Working, What Is Not Working. But at the Same Time, We Ask You To Be
Patient with Us Because Our Resources Are Finite. So, Again, Thank You,
Robin.

Thank All of You. Okay. Even Though it Sounds like It\'s Far in the
Future, the Year 2000 Is Just Around the Corner. It Is Important That
the BLM Keeps Pace with Emerging Technologies and Data Networks So We
Can Meet the Needs of Our Public Land Customers. Roger Will We Be Ready
for the Year 2000?

this Isn\'t a Trick Question, Again, Is it Robin? Actually That\'s a
Question That You Keep Hearing More and More Of and You Also Keep Seeing
a Lot More of it in the Press. The Year 2000 Compliance Is Getting a Lot
of Press this Year. These Days I Should Say. Not Just this Year. You
Keep Hearing about Entire Computer Systems Crashing Because of Failure
of Computer Systems to Handle the Year 2000 Properly and Actually Much
of What You Here Is True. For Those of You Who May Not Know about this
Problem or up to This Point Haven\'t Cared, It\'s a Concern. To Digress,
Many of the Computer Programs That Are Part of Many Of the Systems
Today, Both in Government and in Private Industry, Were Written Years
Ago, Back with the Cost of Computer Memory Was a Premium. To Save Money
‑‑ Save Memory Space Which Translates to Money, The Dates Were Coded as
Two‑digit Fields. While That Was All Well and Good Up to a Point, So
Long as the Dates Were Used ‑‑ That Were Used Were Still in this
Century. Now Most Generally Calculations Took Place Using These
Two‑digit Fields Didn\'t Hurt Anything Because Projections or Forecasts
Were Not for about Five Years ‑‑ Went out for about Five Years at A Time
and Don\'t Forget We Didn\'t Get Started Using Computers Big Time until
about The 1960s. Well, Now Here Comes the Year 2000 and the Two‑digit
Field Just Isn\'t Going to Work Anymore. Does 05 Mean 1905 or 2005? Many
Systems, Including Our Financial Systems Are Date‑driven. So Can You See
the Problem. We Have Programs and Data Basis That Have to Be Modified to
Allow for a Four‑digit Field. Well, to Get Back to Your Original
Question, Robin, Will BLM Be Ready for the Year 2000? Let Me Give You a
Straightforward Answer. Yes and No. The Department Will Soon Be Issuing
a Policy Regarding Modification of the Contracts That Require Compliance
after a Certain Date. Unfortunately We Don\'t Really Have Any Idea What
That Date Is At this Time. However, the ALMRS Contracting Staff Is
Researching Just What The Language Might Be and Is Discussing That with
Our Contractor, Computer Sciences Corporation, Csc. Our Csc Contractor
Has Already Researched the Status of the ALMRS Cots for Compliance and
Identified the Software Which Doesn\'t Comply. A Related Issue Is the
Cost of An Upgrade to Applix Software. A Csc Is Forwarding Cost
Alternatives for BLM Consideration. This Estimate Is Going to Be
Reviewed with Respect to Our Current Budget And, Believe Me, That Can Be
a Problem Because Our Current Budget Constraints Will Be Have to Making
a Decision on Which Alternative to Pursue. As Far as ALMRS Developmental
Software Is Concerned, the Patches Ibm Provided Makes Us Compliant with
the Current Release. We Have Been Assured by Ibm That The next Release
Was Engineered With the Year 2000 W Regard to The Legacy System, NIRMc
Has Assigned Analysts for Year 2000 Compliance. So in Summary Robin, I
Believe BLM Will Be Ready for the Year 2000. Anybody Else Care to
Comment?

Roger, I Think You Did a Good Job Answering it from the National System
Perspective, However, this Is Probably a Good Opportunity to Remind
Those of You out in the Field That You Need to Take a Look at Your
State‑specific Systems to Make Sure They Will Be Compliant, Too. Okay?

Thank You. In a Few Minutes We\'ll Be Opening up the Phones So That We
Can Hear from You. So If You Have a Question or a Comment for Our Panel,
this Would Be a Good Time to Start Calling In. To Avoid an Echo Effect
When You Call, Please Stand Away from Your Television Set or Turn the
Volume down. Don\'t Get Too Frustrated If You End up on Hold for a
While. We Will Get to You as Fast as We Can. We Have Received Quite a
Few Faxes, and I Can Take One Right Now. Okay. This One Is New Mexico
State Office and It\'s Addressing Tight Gayle. Okay? : Now That it Has
Come to Light That Technology ‑‑ Technically Competent Computer
Personnel Are Vital to the Success of ALMRS Release 1, Will BLM
Recognize And Fund IRM as a Program?

I Think the BLM Already Is Recognizing and Funding IRM as a Program.
However, I Don\'t Think That We Have Made Enough Progress in Giving the
Recognition and the Value to Our IRM Employees as We Need to in the
past. One of the Things That We Are Doing Right Now and Will Continue to
Do in the Future Is To Take a Look at Not Only the Staffing Levels, but
the Grade Levels of Our IRM Employees. These Are Critical Positions, And
this Is Something That We Want to Make Sure That We Are Recognizing and
Supporting Sufficiently in the Future. I Think the Deputy Director, Mat
Millenbach, on a Number of Occasions Has Made it Very Clear As We\'re
Reducing Staff in the Future We Have Got to Make Sure We\'re Not Doing
this at the Cost Of the IRM Commitment That We\'re Making.

Thank You, Gayle. I Would like to Add to That, One Of the Strong Things
I Have Seen As Far as Bureau Commitment to The IRM Program Is the
Creation Of Your Position, a Brand‑new Ad For IRM, and That Speaks a Lot
At the Washington Office Level And I Think the Impact Is Going To Be
Felt out in the Field as You and Roger Come up to Speed With All the
Issues That Are Pressing Us So Hard. Okay. Dave Is Going to Take a
Closer Look at the State\'s IRM Staffing And Skill Assessments. Dave,
What Have We Learned So Far?

Well, One of the Things I Learned Is to Stay out of the Lion\'s Den. A
Couple Weeks Ago I Kind of Felt like I Was the Proverbial Daniel and We
Had All These Lions Around Us and Maybe it Ties in a Little Bit to My
Illustration Earlier about Approaching the River and Deciding Whether to
Jump In. I Said One of the Things That Helps Motivate You to Decide
Whether to Jump in Is What\'s Behind You. There\'s Lots of People Who
Are Absolutely Committed to Ensuring That this System Works. For
Example, We Gave a Briefing To the Secretary Just Last Week About the
System Because the President and the Vice‑president Had Asked Each of
the Secretaries to Check in on the Status of Each of Their Major
Automation Systems and Interior, We Happened to Be It. We Have Other
People, Big Bears, Back There, That Are Looking at Us and That Aren\'t
Going to Let Us Go Back. We Have to Go Forward. And That Led to a Hiring
Freeze. The Hiring Freeze Really Came About Because of That Commitment
At the Highest Level That We Are Going to Succeed. They Wanted to Ensure
That with Limited Budgets That the Bureau Was Prepared to Spend Whatever
It Took to Make the Staffing and The Skills That We\'re Required To
Deploy Operate and Maintain Available. I My Task over a Period of
Several Days Was to Communicate With Several States to Get a Review of
Where Each State Stood And Their Own Assessment of Where They Stood
Against Their Identified Needs. There Had Been Two Previous Bureauwide
Assessments That Were Made of the Staffing and Skill Requirements, and
Then Each State Followed up with Their Own Internal Review. Part of What
I Learned Was That We Cannot Take a Cookie‑cutter Approach. It Isn\'t
Just a Numbers Game. Sometimes a Skill Can Be a Collateral Duty Assigned
to Someone. Sometimes a Skill Requires That It Be a Full‑time Position.
Sitting in Denver, It\'s Impossible, Really, to Make That Judge the.
That Can Only Be Made by Those People Who Really Understand the
Operation of the System and Their Own Local Area. But Just in Very
Summary Fashion, When They Did the Reviews of the Individual States With
the Denver Staff and the Mitretek Staff Last Year, They Came up with
about 85 New Skills And/or Positions Needed for Deployment, Operation
and Maintenance. We Have That Number down Now to About 25 to 30. So
We\'ve Made Some Really Significant Progress, and of the 25 to 30, There
Were about a Dozen of Them That Had Already Gone Through Most of the
Recruitment Process and Were Just Being Held Because of the Freeze. I
Really Appreciate the Quick Response That the States Gave to Me. We
Assembled That Information. Gayle, Roger and I Were in Washington Last
Week. We Met with the Deputy Director And the Director. We Met with the
Department to Present That Information, and We Were Able to Clearly
Demonstrate That, in Fact, Our Field Managers Are Committed to Success.
They Do Recognize How Essential It Is to Provide the Staffing Out There
in the Field, and the Skills to Operate this System. We\'ve Made a Major
Commitment to Training, to Upgrade Our Skills. In Many States, They
Can\'t Afford to Bring in New People Into Their Organization. They\'re
Concentrating More on Training the People That Are Already There,
Improving Their Skills, Bringing Them in Perhaps Even to a New Career
Path at the Bottom Level. Many of the States Are Meeting Their Needs by
Zoning Their Higher Skill Types, by Interagency Sharing, Those States
That Are Involved in the Trading Post Concept, There May Be
Opportunities to Share System Administrators with the Forest Service.
Some States Have Provided Statewide Teams So That They Have Back‑up If
Something Occurs At the Local Area and Someone\'s Not There or Doesn\'t
Have the Skill to Respond. They Have a Quick Response Team That Can Come
in and Take Care Of That Problem Immediately. There\'s Possibility for
Further Developmental Assignments and Roger Mentioned That Earlier. We
Have Some Good People in Denver. We Have Some Excellent People in The
Field. Sometimes Their Perspectives Are A Little Different Based on
Where They Are in the Organization. I Think We Can Share Those
Perspectives with Each Other and Take Advantage of the Experience If We
Can Find a Way to Develop That Through Assignments, Through Training
Assignments Back and Forth. And We\'ve Made a Major Commitment to
Training for ALMRS And Modernization Here at the Phoenix Training
Center. We Have Spent Almost \$3 Million A Year the Last Two Years, and
Nearly That Much Again this Year, to Be Sure That We Have Our People
Trained and That They Have the Skills So That When We Do Fully Deploy
the System, We\'re Just out There Waiting for It, Not in a Panic
Worrying About It. Thank You, Robin.

Thank You, Dave. At this Point We\'re Going to Go Into Our next
Interactive Session, and Instead of Taking Some Calls, Which Haven\'t
Let up Yet, We Are Going to Take Some Faxes That Have Come In. We\'ve
Gotten Some Faxes. Some We Will Save until the Second Session Because
They Are More Technical. We Will Try to Address the Others this Morning.
The First from Lewistown, Montana, Why Are So Many New New Or re
Designed Applications Coming out as Pc‑based Dos or Win 95. This Puts a
Stress on Personnel And ‑‑

re Designed or New Applications, Pc‑based?

I Think They Are Referring to The Remis and Fms, the Two Supposed to Be
Coming out in August.

this Is an Issue That Was Brought to My Attention Very Vividly When I
Met with Some of The New Mexico People Several Weeks Ago, and It\'s
Something That I must Admit We\'re Just Getting up to Speed On. We Have
Mad ‑‑ We Have Made a Commitment to Having Systems Be Developed on the
Unix Platforms, And So What You Are Describing Appears to Be a
Contradiction in This. If Things Are Being Developed And Approached
Using the Lifecycle Management Approach That We\'ve Been Advocating, If
a Potential Applications Should Be Thoroughly Researched and Then
Presented to the IRM Review Council for Their Consideration. If a System
Is Being Brought up On a Pc, We Need to Really Look At That Very Closely
Because That Contradicts the Strategy That We\'ve Had in Place So Far.
New Mexico, Again, Is a Real Good Example. They Have Made a Decision to
Deploy the Unix Workstations in Their Field. They Do Have Pcs, but They
Are In Their State Office. Again, Robin, I Am Going to Turn This over to
You and the IRMac This Year. I Hope You Will Really Discuss This. In the
Meantime, Kurt Ballentine On Our Staff Is Taking Another Look at Our
Lifecycle Management Policy, and I Think this Is a Good Agenda Item for
the Quartet And IRM Review Council When They Have Their next Meeting.
But We Recognize this Is an Issue.

Okay. Thank You. Thanks, Gayle. Another Question Here or Fax That\'s
Come In: When Is ALMRS Release 1 Coming to the Field?

You Mean in Terms of Deployment to the First States?

That\'s What I Think They\'re Looking for. What Kind of a Schedule That
We Have Right Now for the States.

We\'re Scheduled to Deploy ALMRS to the Field in July, Beginning with
New Mexico. That\'s Our Test Site. You Probably Have All Heard About the
‑‑ at Least the First Two States Being Scheduled Arizona and Idaho That
Would Fall on the Heels of New Mexico. We Will Be Taking a Closer Look
At That to Determine Whether or Not We Will Be Doing That Exactly on the
Schedule That We\'ve Indicated Right Now. We Do Hope to Have the next
State Deployed in the Fall, but Whether or Not it Follows Right
Immediately Behind New Mexico We Haven\'t Really Made That
Determination. I Think it Makes Sense That We Look to See Exactly How
the Test Goes in New Mexico and Make Any Corrections That We Have to
Make Before We Deploy to Any Other States.

Okay. Thanks, Roger. We\'ve Got a Call Coming in Right Now. I\'ll Take a
Fax First. We Will Wait for this Guy to Get Lined Up. This Fax Is from
the Wyoming State Office: in the First Release You Say We\'ll Have
Graphics Capabilities. Will the Field Be Able to Use These Capabilities
for Preparing Eiss or Environmental Impact Statements?

Well, Robin, I Don\'t Think That the Response Changes Much From the
Earlier One and the Comment That Gayle Also Made and That Is That for
the Power User, The Capability Is There to Use The System for Gis. What
We Will Be Looking at a Later Date after We Have Finished the Deployment
First States Is Providing a More Friendly User Interface So That Those
Who Are Not Power Users Can Go Ahead and Use It. But the Capability Will
Be There To Do Gis and it Should Be Able To Handle Environmental Impact
Statements as Well.

I Might Make a Follow‑up Comment. When Gayle Was Talking Earlier about
the Funding That Was Provided Through ALMRS, and We Have the Backbone of
the System in Place. We Have a Network in Place That Can Share Data, and
That Is Going to Be Available Through Release 1. As We Upgrade That
Hardware, as We Go into the Testing Option, My Understanding Is There\'s
Going to Continue to Be Some Capability to Piggyback Other Systems to
the Extent That They Don\'t Infringe on Our Ability to Successfully
Deploy and Operate ALMRS. So We\'ll Have a Lot of Capability We Don\'t
Have Today.

Okay. Thanks for That Response. The Call Is Ready. I Have Dennis in
Missoula. Do You Have a Question for Us, Dennis?

Caller: Yeah, I Do. I Also ‑‑ I Faxed this in but Didn\'t Know If You
Would Get to It or Not. What I\'m Interested in Is We Have this Database
on Unix Called Informix That No One Knows How to Use and Our D‑base And
Pcs Are Dying off Slowly to Where We Have Know Database. I Am Wondering
When We Will Get A Database That Is Usable by Resource People like a
Dbase or Foxbase, Something like That?

Thank You. I\'ll Make a Stand ‑‑ Statement. I\'ll Start this Answer, at
Least. I Think It\'s a Little Bit Discouraging That Here ‑‑ to Hear That
People Don\'t Know How To Use Informix. I Understood There Were Classes
Available. I Think this Gets Back to the Previous Question of Pcs and
Our Unix Mixed Environment. Originally When We Awarded the Contract We
Had Thought We Would Have the Same Platform Across The Pure Owe. We Were
Not Able to Afford That And So We Did Come One a Split Unix Workstations
and Pcs. To Add to the Complexity of That We Also Have Some Groups That
Are Die‑hard Mac Fans and Refuse To Go Away. Actually Having a Mac at
Home I Can Appreciate Why They Do like The Macs but We\'re in a
Situation Where We Do Have this Mixed Environment and Given the Budget
Constraints and Our Previous Commitments, this Isn\'t Going to Be
Changing in the Future. We Are Going to Continue to Have A Heterogenous
Environment. We Will Be Taking a Look and Each of the States Needs to
Look, Too, at How Their Current Mix of Different Platforms Should Evolve
in the Future. You Talked about Different Database Management Systems.
Again, this Brings up the Need To Be Able to Communicate among Each
Other. We Need to Make Sure That as Systems Are Being Brought up on One
Platform That If There Is a Need for the System to Be Accessed by
Someone Who Is on a Different Platform They Can Do It. This Gets Back,
Again, to What I Talked about a Couple Minutes Ago, Lifecycle
Management. You Need to Take a Holistic Approach to a System as It\'s
Being Conceived and Developed And Make Sure That You Really Do Recognize
All the Potential Stakeholders and the Future Impacts of Developing on a
Certain Platform. Roger, You Want to Add Anything?

Dennis, I Might Ask, Did You Have Any Problems Getting Training from the
Training Center? Is That One of Your Concerns?

We\'ve Had No Training on Informix at All. Nothing. There Is One Person
in Our District That Had Training on Informix and He Found it Difficult
to Use at Best.

Okay.

Caller: I Have Looked at the System and I Have Used Other Databases and
It\'s a Really Difficult System to Use.

I Will Tell What You ‑‑

Caller: I Don\'t See How We Can Put the ‑‑ the Stuff We Are Presently
Using That over the Years People Have Been Told to Use Dbase Iv. Put the
Programs on Dbase. They Can\'t Function Now Because The Pcs Are Dying
and We Can\'t Afford to Fix Them. We\'re Looking at this Unix System.
That\'s What Supposed to Work for Them, but It\'s Not Working.

That\'s Been a Continuing Problem as We Continue to Upgrade the
Platforms That We Don\'t Take a Closer Look at Upgrading the Supporting
Software as Well. But There Shouldn\'t Be Any Reason Why You Shouldn\'t
Be Getting Training out There. If That Is a Problem, I Would Encourage
You to Give Me a Call Late or this Week When I Get Back into Denver and
I Will Certainly Find out Why You Aren\'t Getting the Kind of Training
You Should Be Getting.

this Also Sound like Another Good Topic for the IRMac this Week, Robin.

Okay. Dennis, Thanks for Calling In. We Have One More Quick Call and
Then We\'re Going to Be Taking a Break. This Is from Mark in Tonopah. I
Got You, Mark. Okay. Mark, Do You Have a Question for Us?

Caller: Yes, I Do. If You Heard about the Recent Industry Sources, the
Novell Has Decided to Pull out Supporting Unix Wordperfect and
Groupwise. What Is Going to Be Our next Step for BLM?

Okay. I Believe the Question Was That Novell Support of Unix,
Wordperfect on the Unix Platform, Is in Question. Right Now Corel Is the
Support That We Receive for Wordperfect Unix and Novell Is Supporting
The Groupwise. I\'ll Field It. We Had Some Conversations Last Conference
Call I Believe with The IRMac on this and There Were Some Rumors
Floating Around That The Support Was Questionable. The Line That I Had
Got or Feedback I Had Gotten Was That That\'s Not True, That Both Novell
and Corel Are Supporting Both Groupwise and Wordperfect On the Unix
Platform. I Do Know That the Contracting Officers, They Are Trying to
Look Ahead in the Future to Catch Any of These Things That If a Vendor
Is Not Going to Be Supporting Us, Whatever the Application or Cot
Software Is That They\'re Going to Be Looking For What Can We My Great
to and Where Can We Go from There. So There Are People Watching This,
but It\'s Always Good to Get Field Input to Find out If We\'re Missing
Something. I Think We\'re Safe for the Time Being on That That One.

Caller: Thank You.

Okay. At this Point We Would like to Take a 15‑minute Break and When We
Come Back We Will Take a Closer Look at the ALMRS Program And See a Live
Demonstration of ALMRS Release 1. But Before We Switch Gears to The
Technical Part of Our Program, I Will Once Again Be Opening up the
Phones to Hear From You. So Give Us a Call If You Have a Question or
Comment for Our IRM Specialists. We\'ll See You in a Few Minutes.

Welcome Back to Our IRM and ALMRS Forum. We Are Going to Start the
Second Half of the Program with Our Interactive Segment to Allow You To
Call or Fax in Questions or Comments for the Panel. If You Have
Something Would You Like to Discuss, Call Us Now. Joining Us Is Terry
Brokovich From the National IRM Center. Terry Is the Bureau\'s
Contracting Officer\'s Technical Representative for the Computer
Sciences Corporation Contract. Glad You Could Be with Us Today, Terry.

Robin, It\'s Good to Be Here Today in Phoenix. I Want to Say Hello to
All My Friends in Alaska and All My Friends in Denver and to the Entire
Bureau, and I Look Forward to this Broadcast. Thank You.

Thank You, Terry. Also Joining Us for this Segment Is Judy Bright. Judy
Is the Chief of the Division of Data Management at The National IRM
Center in Denver. Welcome, Judy.

Thanks, Robin. It\'s Really Nice to Be Here in Denver with All the Green
Grass And the Beautiful Flowers. I Hope We Have a Good Time Late Or this
Afternoon.

Okay. Also Returning from the National IRM Center Is Roger Whatley.
Welcome, Roger.

Thank You, Robin. Good to Be Back.

Mike Garratt from the National IRM Center Is Currently The Acting
Technical Specialist For ALMRS. Mike Couldn\'t Be with Us So Roger Will
Bring Us up to Date On the Current System\'s Architecture. Right Now We
Would like to Take A Call. Number 2 Here. Don from Medford, Do You Have
a Question for Our Panel?

Caller: Yes, I Do. I\'m a Realty Specialist Here in Medford, Oregon, and
I Find ‑‑ I Have a Little Bit of a Dilemma Wondering Myself to What
Extent I Would Need to Develop Support Applications Through Informix
With Regards to ALMRS. I Would at Least Hope in the Future with ALMRS to
Be Able to Query According to Watersheds And Land Use Allocations and
That Sort of Thing. Maybe this Is Segment Will Show Us More about That.
But I Have Found So Far, I Have Used Informix and I Find it to Be Quite
User‑friendly and It\'s Tracking These Watersheds and Land Use
Applications as Field Attributes Would Be Quite Helpful. That\'s about
the Extent of My Question.

I Will Be Glad to Answer That.

Thank You. The Informix Database for ALMRS Is Built So it Can Be
Queried, And So You Will Be Able to Pull The Information from the ALMRS
Database to Use it in Relation To the Other Information That You Want to
Display for Your People in Your Office. Does Anybody Else Have Anything
They Would like to Add?

No. I Guess the Key Point to Make Is That You Will Have the Ability To
Do Queries on the System. There Will Be an Initial Query That Is Being
Developed for the First Release and There Will Be Additional Query
Capability with Release 2.

Caller: Thank You.

Thank You, Don, for Calling In.

Caller: Good‑bye.

We Have Nicholas in Tonopah. Do You Have a Question for the Panel?

Caller: Yes, I Do. I Was Just Curious as to What\'s Going to Happen with
the Old Aspen Database That a Lot of People Have Information In. Is it
Ever Going to Be Converted?

Okay. I\'ll Take That One. I See Some Confused Faces. Over the Last
Couple of Years There Has Been a Lot of Effort, Mostly by the States,
and for Some of the Major Applications By the Service Center, to Move
These Apps, Aspen Applications Over to the New Informix Databases. Some
of Them Won\'t Be Moved. They\'re Not in Use and Won\'t Be Ported over.
Others That Are Currently Being Used to Some Degree Are Being Ported
over. There Is Still Some Time Left. If You Have Some Applications on
The Aspen Database You Need to Be Thinking about Working with Your Local
IRM Staff, Programmers to Get Those Things Ported over Because Aspen
Won\'t Be with Us for Too Much Longer. Any Additions to That? Okay.
Thanks, Nicholas, for Your Call.

Caller: Thank You.

We Have Chris in Santa Fe. Do You Have a Question for Us?

I Saw down There Where You Can Do Comments? I Got a Comment.

Comments Are Good.

Caller: the Question about How to Handle the Database Stuff, One of the
‑‑ I Believe It Was Brought up Earlier, Tools That We Have That Can
Really Help Us Work with Informix, Which Is Our Database Manager, And I
Hope We Get to Get the Upgrades, Is the Applix Tool. The Applix Tool Has
Got a Very Nice End‑user Frontend That Can Substitute for a Large Part
for Some of the Functionality That Dbase Used to Have and it Still Talks
to Informix but it Has a Frontend That Allows You to Integrate Your Word
Processor \'Your Database, Spreadsheet to Your Database, as Well as
Having Its Own Data Query Capabilities.

Okay. Thanks for the Comment. Terry, You Have a Comment on That.

Yes, I Do. Chris, I Can Answer the Applix Issue. Just Last Week I
Received from The Computer Sciences Corporation Tentative or Rough Order
of Magnitude Price Quotes For Upgrading the Applix Suite That We
Currently Have on the System. They Have Given Us Offers for The Upgrades
for the Entire Length of the Contract, and We Would Remain Version
Current for The Remainder of the Contract Until 2003. They Have Given Us
Offers to Upgrade on a One‑time Basis and Then If We Opt for Maintenance
For the Remainder of Those Years, Then We Could Remain Version Current.
I Have Those Price Figures with Me. I Will Share Them with the IRMac. As
I Said, it Is a Rough Order Of Magnitude. It Could Come in a Little
Lower, A Little Higher. But It\'s a Good Figure to Work With for
Budgetary Purposes and So the IRMac and the BLM Management, as Roger
Explained Earlier, It\'s a Budget Issue. So We Have to Look at it Very
Strongly.

Thanks, Terry. Thanks for the Question and Comments, Chris. At this
Point We Would like to Turn Our Attention to Some Specific ALMRS Topics,
Including A Discussion of Hardware and Software Maintenance. Csc
Delivery Orders, System Architecture and We Will Be Taking a Look at
ALMRS Release 1. Terry, I Understand That There\'s Been a Lot of
Questions Regarding the Details of the Csc Contract, Especially Pricing,
Maintenance, Procurement Processes. Perhaps You Could Expand on Some Of
the Frequently‑asked Questions You Have Been Receiving from the Field.

Yes, Robin. There Have Been a Lot of Questions on the Process of the
Hardware and Software Delivery Orders. First, I Would like to Address
What BLM Is Currently Doing with The Prime Contractor, Computer Sciences
Corporation. Last Year Csc Consolidated Their Procurement Activity into
One Central Activity with the Headquarters Located in Falls Church,
Virginia. We Have Been Working with Csc to Improve the Process. I Would
like to Go ‑‑ to Briefly Go Through That Process. When Csc Receives a
Delivery Order from BLM, the Order First Will Be Delivered to the
Computer Sciences Corporation\'s Contracting Office Located in Golden,
Colorado. The Delivery Order Is Then Delivered to Csc\'s Rockville,
Maryland Office, Verified for Accuracy and the Procurement Request Is
Completed and Forwarded to the Procurement Activity for Processing. As
You All Can Plainly, Clearly See, this Is Currently a Very Complex and
Time‑consuming Process. To Speed up the Entire Process, BLM Has Been
Informed and Is Currently Working with Csc, That They Will Be Working
with Their Large Suppliers in an Effort to Put Blanket Purchase Orders
or Bpas, as We Refer to Them, in Place. Once We Receive an Order from
BLM, the Golden Office Can Place The Office Directly with the Suppliers.
Now, this Will Be Putting More Responsibility on BLM to Correctly
Prepare the Delivery Orders. So Once Csc Receives Them, No ‑‑ Or Limited
Modifications to Those Orders Will Be Necessary. Hopefully this Process
Will Be To Put in Place in the near Future. However, If the State
Offices Require Products Within a Limited Time Frame, the National IRM
Center Will Work with the State and Csc to Achieve That Time Frame. If
Csc Cannot Meet the Time Frame Requirements, We Will Work With the State
Office on a Case‑by‑case Basis. Now, I Would like to Address the Issue
That Has Been Brought to My Attention Repeatedly over the Last Two
Years, and That Is, I Can Buy it Cheaper. Currently There Are over 7,000
Contract Line Identification Numbers on the Contract for Hardware and
Software Items. Technology Is Constantly Changing and Prices Are
Constantly Being Driven down. During the Operations and Maintenance
Briefings Held Last Summer Throughout the United States, BLM Was
Informed That If Anyone Finds a Cheaper Price for The Identical
Make‑model of Any Device on the Contract, They Are Encouraged, Send the
Information To the State Office or Center IRM Chief. The IRM Chief Will
Research the Information, and If it Is Valid, We\'ll Forward the
Information to The National IRM Center. It Is Extremely Important That
This Process Be Followed. Over the past Several Months We Have Chased
Technology and Prices Only to Find out That We Were Not Inquiring about
the Same Products. Now, Not Only Is this a Waste of Time, but it Is Very
Embarrassing When Dealing with The Vendors. Once We Receive the
Information And Validate It, BLM Will Send The Information to Csc and
Request That They Reduce the Cost of That Item. Lastly, I Would like to
Address The Maintenance Process Through The National Help Desk. The
National Help Desk Has Improved in Customer Support Over the past Year.
But We Have Noticed That Many States Are Calling the Help Desk With
Hardware Maintenance Problems. By Doing This, the Results ‑‑ This
Results in a Longer Maintenance Response Time by the Vendor. If a
Hardware Device Fails, the State Office Help Desk Has the Authority and
the Ability to Call Csc Maintenance Help Desk At 1‑800‑csc‑help Once Csc
Receives All the Information About the Failed Hardware, They Will
Dispatch a Customer Engineer to Repair the Device. This, of Course, Is
Dependent Upon the Fact That BLM Has Paid The Maintenance for That
Failed Device. The State Office Is Required to Enter the Failure into
the National Help Desk Database Remedy. Every State Has Access to It.
This Is Very Important to the Fact That If this Is the Bureau ‑‑
Bureau\'s Official Tracking Tool. Once the Problem Is Reported, it Is
Important That the State Office, District Office or Resource Office
Track the Response Time of the Customer Engineer. This Is a Contractual
Requirement That the Vendor Arrive at a Site During a Set Period of
Time. Each State Should Maintain a Log, Recording the Response Time Of
the Customer Engineer, and on A Monthly Basis Should Send the Logs in
the Form of a Report to The National IRM Center. The National IRM Center
Is Required to Validate the Maintenance Invoices from Csc to See If BLM
Is Due Any Rebate of Maintenance Costs Due to the Fact That Response
Times Contractually Were Not Met. Over the past Two‑and‑a‑half Years it
Has Been a Pleasure Working with You All as Your Contracting Technical
Representative. It Has Been Both Rewarding and Challenging. And I Look
Forward to Working With Everybody in the Future. Thank You.

Thank You, Terry. Next Roger Will Cover Some Basics of the Unix
Operating System Architecture and the Engineering Process. Roger?

Thanks, Robin. One of the Many Questions That We Get Asked Relates to
Systems Architecture. What We\'re Getting, When We\'re Getting and it So
On. This Isn\'t an Easy Question to Answer, as One Might Think, and As
Most of You Are Probably Aware, the World of Technology Consistently
Changes. There Is Always Something Newer, Something Faster, Something
Better, and Trying to Manage User Expectations, as You Might Guess, Is a
Tremendous Task. What I Would like to Do Is to Provide You with
Information on The Environment as We Know it Today. I\'ll Try to Do this
Without Becoming Too Technical or Detailed. If You Look at the Graph,
the Integrated Systems Architecture Document, Defines the
ALMRS/modernization Architecture. It Identifies Critical Operational
Issues. The First Document Was Produced In Jewel of \'96 While the
Latest Update Was in November of \'96. It Contains a Description of the
Information Necessary to Support ALMRS. Contains What Was Needed for
Office Automation and Support Needed for Automated Systems. What We\'ve
All Been Referring to As Ioc or the Operating Capability. We\'re
Currently Finalizing this Data, and after a System Performance Testing
in March We Will Revise the Document to Include the Test Results. We\'ll
Also Revise it Accordingly After Cda, the Capability Demonstration
Assessment. This Is a Period of Discovery. I Also Mentioned the Isat
Identified Critical Operational Issues. This Information Is Needed for
Certification Process by Our Contractor Mitretek, Who Has the
Responsibility for Certifying The System as Operational and That It\'s
Within Performance Specifications. Some of the Acronyms You Might Here
Related to Effort, Oat&e, Which Is Operational Assessment Test and
Evaluation and Iv&v, Which Stands for Independent Verification and
Validation. So as You Might Have Guessed, Isat Is a Living Document
Which Will Be Updated Again When We Have the Results of the Pilot. When
It\'s at the Site Being Deployed. Now, this Ensures That the Current
Hardware Is Deployed to Support the System. One Other Comment I Might
Make Is with Regard to Acronyms, Robin, Is That We Will Be Having
Another Initiative out of the National Office You Might Want To Hear
About, It\'s Called Rau, And That Stands for Reduced Acronym Usage. Now
Let Me Talk a Little about The System Itself. Another Term You May Have
Heard About Now and Again Is the Exit Criteria. This Is When We Look at
Performance Requirements. As You Know Ioc, the Initial Operating
Capability, Was Tested In New Mexico in May of \'96. System Performance
Was Horrible And User Response Times Were Poor. In Many Cases, it Was
Faster Than Manual System, but a Lot Slower than the Legacy Systems.
Mining Claims, Recordation and Case Recordation Are Good Examples. While
We Couldn\'t Allow Something That Poor to Be Deployed, and So We Took it
Back Into Development. We Determined What End‑to‑end Response Time
Should Be, That Is, the Measure of Response from The Time a User Begins
a User Process and the Final Result, Be It a Report, a Listing or Any
Other Number of Expected Results. Response Time Is a Little Tricky To
Explain as it Pertains to ALMRS. It\'s a Response Time One Got From a
Legacy Application plus Any Value Added by the ALMRS. This Increased
Capability Is a Factor That\'s Measured. Let Me Use Data Entry as an
Example. The Old System, the Legacy System, Had No Edits. The System
Would Accept Any Data Entered and it Was No Integrity Check. The
Adjudicator Was Heavily Relied upon to Enter the Data Correctly. Now
with ALMRS That Are Built in Edits Which Improves the Data Integrity and
the Reliability. System Performance Measurements To Date Are Very, Very
Encouraging, in Fact, Testing So Far Has Provided Us with a Degree of
Confidence That System Performance Will Meet or Will Exceed Our
Expectations. Well, We\'ve Also Determined That This Performance Comes
as a Price. It Will Probably Require Additional Servers and Network
Upgrades. For Example, We Expect the Testing in New Mexico to Be
Accomplished on Ibm J40 Mups. That\'s the Multiple User Processers for
the Database Server. For ALMRS Users it Will Require Upgrading
Workstations. I Emphasize ALMRS Users Because This Applies to Probably
less Than Half of Our Users. It Will Also Require Increasing The Band
Width of the Data Communications Lines Because Our Findings So Far
Indicate That The Current Data Calm Capability Is Too Slow to Support
ALMRS. Also for as Far as Schedules Are Concerned, All I Can Tell You We
Are Scheduled to Complete New Mexico Statement Deployment of ALMRS
Release 1 by the End of July. If All Goes Well I Would Expect We Can
Begin Deploying to the The Other States in the Fall. Thanks a Lot,
Robin.

Thank You, Roger. To Give Everyone a Look at How ALMRS Will Operate,
Judy Bright Will Provide Us with Some Background Information Regarding
Release 1 Deployment and Data Management. Judy?

Thanks, Robin. I\'m Going to Cover Three Areas To Bring You up to Date
on ALMRS Release 1. I Am Going to Bring You up to Date on What the
Status Is, the Data, and Some of the Deployment Information That We Have
Available. First of All, I Would like to Redefine ALMRS to Everybody.
It\'s the Automated Land and Minerals Record System. What We Were
Supposed to Do Is Provide the Functionality That We Had on the Legacy
Systems Such as Case Recordation and Mining Claim Recordation plus We
Would Have Some Added Value. One of the Added Values or Value‑added
Items We Would Have Would Be That We Would Have All Of Our Data in an
Integrated Database. We Would Have Ad Hoc Query. And We Would Have
Spatial Capability That We Did Not Have Previously. Where We Are in the
Status of ALMRS Right Now Is That We Have Finished the Integration
Testing Which Concludes the Development Cycle, and That Means That All
Of the Various Modules Work Together and We Have Gone into The Test
Phase Now. Where We Are Now Is We\'re Doing Regression Testing. As We
Test the ALMRS Application And We Find a Problem, We Call Them Bugs, We
Go Back to the Developers, We Fix Those Bugs And Then We Retest to Make
Sure That While We Were Fixing One Thing We Didn\'t Break Something
Else. Along with Regression Testing, We Are Also Doing Confidence
Testing, and That\'s Where We Are Using the Complete Database, the New
Mexico Database. We\'re Bringing in People from The Field. We\'ve Had
People in from California, from Oregon, Idaho, Arizona and Several Other
States So That They Can Run Our Tests For Us and Make Sure That What
We\'re Testing Is, Indeed, How We Do Business in the Bureau. They Also,
as They\'re Testing, Identify Any Bugs That They See. Those Are Software
Problem Reports. And We Turn Them In, and They\'re Treated the Same as
All of Our Other Reports. Part of What We\'re Getting in ALMRS Release 1
Are Some of the Reports That We Had with the Legacy Systems, the
Standard Reports Such as Case Abstract And the Register Page and in
Addition We Will Have a Land Status Report. Our National Reports, Such
as The Land Activity Report and the Acquisition Summary, and Other
Reports Such as the Public Land Statistics, the M 11, the M 13 Reports,
as You Know Them Today In Case Recordation. We Will Also Have the
Additional Capability of the Ad Hoc Query. We Get into the Data for
ALMRS Application. We Have Various Kinds of Data. Of Course, We Have
Been Collecting it for a Number of Years, as Most of You Are Aware. The
Geographic Coordinate Data, Which Is Our Base Layer, Connected to Our
Land Data, Which Tells You How it Looks Between Those Coordinate Points,
Whether It\'s Lots, Special Surveys. We Have the Case Data, and We\'ve
Brought it in from Case Recordation and from Mining Claim Recordation.
And Our Status Project, Where We\'re Getting All the History of The Land
of the Bureau When it Left Our Jurisdiction or When it Returned to Our
Jurisdiction. All of That Information Will Be In One Integrated
Database. Along with the Customer Information. Currently We\'re Running
State Trial Runs, and We\'ve Run Them On All of the States. We Don\'t
Have the Results from a Couple of Them, but We\'re Doing Very Well. We
Thought We Would Come up with About 10 to 15% Error Rate, and What We
Found So Far with Our First Runs Is That It\'s less Than 10%, Usually
Around 6. 9%, Or as Low as 1. 9% for the Idaho Data. All of the States
Have Done a Really Good Job and It\'s Going To Make Their Lives a Lot
Simpler as We Deploy ALMRS, Because it Means the Quality of Their Data
That They Used in Making Their Decision Oz a Daily Basis Will Be Much,
Much Better. The People on ‑‑ in the ‑‑ in Our Office Now Are Continue
to Go Right Test Scripts to Be Used In the Operational Tests Which Will
Be Held in the Pilot Site In New Mexico in April, May, and In the
Operational Tests That Mitretek Will Be Conducting this Summer. For
Deployment We Need to Be Very Careful That Our Software Is Ready and
We\'re Doing That by The Testing That We\'re Doing. That Our Sites Are
Ready to Receive It. That They Have the Skills Needed To Support. That
They Have the Proper Data. And That Their People Are Fully Trained and
Ready to Support the System and to Run the Application. We Will Probably
‑‑ We Will Deploy New Mexico by the End of July and Hopefully by the End
of The First Quarter of Fy‑98 We Will Have the Rest of the Bureau
Deployed. Part of the Deployment Process Is Data Conversion, and That\'s
Probably One of the Major Things, Because We Have over a Billion Records
to Convert, and So We Will Begin That about Three Months Prior to
Installing A State. After We Install the State, We Will Stick Around for
a Week, at Least, and Help You Get into Your Post‑conversion Clean‑up
Effort and Help You Prepare for Your Maintenance and Operation Efforts.
One Other Subject I Would like To Talk to a Little Bit about Is
Configuration Management. What Is It? We Have it Both at National Level,
Where We Determine ‑‑ Make Decisions on What We\'re Going to Have on a
Bureauwide Bays, and That\'s Because We Need To Make Sure That We Don\'t
Bring Any of the Rest of Us down with An Application or a Package That
We Might Put on Our Hardware Platform. We Have it at the Local Level So
That We Can Accomplish the Same Thing at That Level. The Way it Works Is
That When You\'ve Decided There Is Something, New Technology That You
Need to Test to See If it Will Work on the System, That You Do Test it
and That You Do The Research on it and Make Sure That You Don\'t Bring
Anybody Else down. Also That You Have the Documentation So That You Can
Support That Application or That New Piece of Hardware. We Need it
Because All of These Different Cots Products and Applications We Are
Developing We Need to Make Sure They Work Together and We Need to Make
Sure We Have the Money to Buy It. Budget Is Tight and We All Need To
Keep Close Eye on It. Make Sure Everything We Have Works Together. Now,
the National Training Center Has Put Together a Video Of ALMRS
Release 1. They\'ve Done a Really Great Job And We\'re Really Proud of
Them. Manny Rojas Will Be the Narrator, and I Hope You Enjoy It.

Welcome to a Demo of ALMRS Release 1. Since Not Everyone Has Had a
Chance to See ALMRS, We Thought This Would Be a Good Opportunity To Take
a Look at It. We Don\'t Have Time to Go into Any of the Processes in
Detail, But I Would like to Show You Some of the Features of Release 1.
We Recently Installed Version 3. 4 Here at the Training Center Along
with the Arizona Database. The Software and the 9 Gig Database Are Both
Running on a 580 Mup. This New Version Has Significant Performance
Enhancements and Should Be a Valuable Tool for BLM Employees. So Let\'s
Go Ahead and See How it Works. I\'ll Launch the Application. Each Time
the ALMRS Is Launched The First Window That You Will See Is the ALMRS
Session Management Window. As You Can See, this Window Looks like Any
Other Windows‑driven Application Where You Can Move the Window Around,
You Can Size It, Or, If Necessary, You Can Go Ahead and Minimize It. The
Session Management Window Allows a User Access to One or More of the Six
ALMRS Applications, Depending on That Userser\'s per Missions. The
Applications Are Case Processing. This Application Is the Primary
Working Environment for Recording Case Information. We\'ll Look at this
Application a Little Close Inner Just a Minute. The Queries and Reports
Application Allows a User to Query Reports on the Land and Mineral
Records Aspect of the ALMRS Database. Spatial Maintenance Provides an
Environment for Creating and Updating Spatial Data. The Land Maintenance
Application Allows Certain Users to Maintain Alphanumeric Land
Descriptions. The Customer Maintenance Application Is, of Course, for
Maintaining Customer Records. And a Segment Administration Application
Provides the Primary Working Environment for the Segment and Data
Administrators. This Is Where User Permissions Are Set and Mass Inserts
of Case Information Are Performed for Mining Claim Case Types. The
Segment Managing Window Allows the User to Set the Area Of Interest,
More Commonly Referred to as the Aoi. The Area of Interest Is the Area
That Represents the Geographic Extent of Data to Be Processed. The Aoi
Will Have a Default Setting but Can Be Changed to a Specific Area of
Land That You May Want to Work with. To Change an Aoi, You Can Change It
by Alphanumeric or You Can Load a Saved Aoi from the Previous Session of
ALMRS or You Can Set the Aoi at the Session Level Which Then Becomes the
Aoi For the Remainder of the Session. As an Example I Am Going to Change
the Default Aoi to Another Setting Using Alphanumeric. As You Can See,
the Default Aoi Setting Appears Here in the Selected Lands Area. First
Thing I\'ll Need to Do Is Click on it and Clear it out. At this Point I
Can Go Ahead and Select the Land from Either a Geopolitical Location, a
Rectangular Land or by Case. I Am Going to Go Ahead and Select
Rectangular. The next Step I Need to Do Is to Select a State in Which I
Want To Set the Aoi In. As I Mentioned Before, the Only Database That We
Have Running Right Now Is Arizona. There May Be Some States in Which You
Have More than One State in Which to Select from. I Click Ok. I Am Going
to Close this Database Just to Illustrate How This Little Button Works.
As You Noticed, it Looks Just Like a Closed Folder, and When You Open
It, it Appears as an Open Folder. Now I\'m Going to Go Ahead and Open up
the Navajo Meridian. At this Point I Can Either Scroll Using the Bottom
Scroll Bar to Scroll Left to Right or The Right Scroll Bar to Scroll Up
and down. There Is a Neat Little Feature Here Called a Panner F I Click
On this and Hold the Left Mouse Button down I Can Pan Around Here, up
and Down, Left and Right. Now I\'m Going to Go Ahead and Open the Folder
for Township 7 North. And, Again, You Will Notice the Panner Has Kind of
Decreased in Size and I Am Going to Use Tight Scroll over down to Select
Range 11 West. Once I Select It, You Notice That this Description Now
Appears in the Selected Lands Area. Once I Say Ok, Again, You Will
Notice in the Area of Interest Selection Window That New Aoi Now Appears
in the Selected Lands Area. When I Say Ok, the Area of Interest Is Now
Set. This Area Right Here Is the Active Applications Area. This
Indicates Which Applications You May Have Actually Running All at One
Time. Down at the Bottom of the Window Is the Error Message Area, and
This Gives You Any Error Messages on Any One of These Applications.
Let\'s Go Ahead and Launch Case Processing. Notice How It\'s
Initializing. Now I\'m Going to Pull this over A Little Bit. Again,
Here, You Can Set the Aoi In the Same Fashion as I Did in A Session
Management Window. I\'m Going to Go Ahead and Create A New Case. To Do
this I Will Select New From the Case Dropdown Window And the First Thing
I Need to Do Is a Little Data Entry. The Case Group, Which Indicates
Here If You Can See this O, That Indicates That this Case Group Data
Entry Field Is an Optional Field. Now, I Can Either Do this Data Entry
off the Keyboard, or I Can Pick this Ellipsis Button and it Will Open up
a Selection Window. I Will Open this up So Can You See it a Little
Better. This Selection Window Can Be Sorted. All this Information Can Be
Sorted Either by Type, Meaning The Code, or by Description, If I Click
Description, it Puts it In Alphabetical Order. For Now I Will Go Ahead
and Select Acquisitions. Now I\'m Going to Click Ok. Notice That the
Case Group Code Now Appears in the Data Entry Field. I\'m Going to Do
the Same Thing For the Case Type. I\'m Going to Open this up Just a
Little Bit, and I\'m Going to Select Acquisition Flpma Case Type. Again
You Can Sort by Either Type or Description. I Will Go Ahead and Say Ok.
When I Say Ok, Here We\'ll Get The next Process Window. I\'m Going to Go
Ahead and Resize This Just a Tad, Drop it down. For this Particular Case
Type, I Have Preauthorization, Authorization and Post Authorization
Process Groups. Notice the State Column and this Type Column ‑‑ Let\'s
Talk about That for a Second. The State Column Is Not the State That You
Actually Live in Or Work In, but it Refers to the Actual State of this
Particular Process. If it Was Norm ‑‑ Normally Indicates and We Will See
this In a Second, Whether or Not It\'s Incomplete or Complete. The Type
Column Indicates Whether or Not this Process Is Mandatory or Optional.
Let\'s Go Ahead and Open up Preauthorization. I\'m Going to Raise this
up a Little Bit Just So You Can See These Process Selections Here. Under
this Process Group You Have All These Subprocesses, I Guess Could You
Call Them. They\'re All Listed in a Single Group, as You Can See, and
this Application Defaults to That Type of Listing. You Can Also Change
it to an Outline Listing, And, Again, You Can Use Your Panner Here to Go
Up and Down, and Then There\'s Also a Tree Listing. Let Me Open Some of
These Folders up to Better Illustrate This. Again, Can You Use Your
Panner To Pan Around the Different Processes. This Is a Great
Navigational Tool to Help You Kind of Follow Through the Process Itself,
Kind Of Gives You a Really Good Idea Of Where You\'re Going and Where
You Actually Need to Go and Where You Need to Be. If You Notice, on
These Buttons, It Also Indicates the State of This Particular Process,
and in This Case It\'s Incomplete. It Also Indicates Whether or Not This
Application ‑‑ or this Process Is Mandatory or Optional. I\'m Going to
Go Ahead and Open Up the Case ‑‑ Establish Case Window and Again Here
You Have Another Data Entry Window Where Data Needs to Be Actually
Entered. Again, You Can Put ‑‑ You Can Either Enter this Data via the
Keyboard or on Date Selections You Can Actually Select Them From a Date
Picker. Now, Here You Can Go Ahead and Change the Date If You Needed To,
You Know, Change the Month, March, and Change the Date. Now, the
Application Automatically Defaults to the Current Date. As You Can See,
it Places That Information There. I\'m Going to Go Ahead and Exit Out of
Case Processing and Say Ok. This Concludes Our Demo of ALMRS. Although
this Was a Quick Overview, You Can See That ALMRS Is a Powerful Tool. It
May Appear Complex, but with Proper Training, it Will Prove To Be an
Invaluable Asset for BLM Employees.

as You\'ve Just Seen, ALMRS Is An Amazing System That Will Simplify How
BLM Will Process Case Files and Land Record Information. I Would like to
Thank Manny Rojas from NTC for Preparing the Demonstration for Us. At
this Time We\'re Going to Go Back to the Last Interactive Call‑in
Segment. If There Is Anything You Would Like to Ask Our Panel of ALMRS
Specialists, this Is the Time to Do It. Please Give Us a Call or Send Us
In a Fax. Okay. We Have Another Fax Here from Idaho. I Think this Is to
You, Judy. I Thought One of the Goals of The ALMRS Project Was to
Automate the Ntp, That\'s Master Title Plat. Is this Still a Goal? If it
Is, Where Are We at in Respect to this Goal?

it Was Not an Original Goal. We Were to Duplicate the Functionality of
the Legacy Systems, and with the Platform And Software That We Use, Have
Some Value Added. What We Do Have Is the Capability of Building the Mtps
Using the Data We\'ve Collected For the Last Few Years. What We Don\'t
Have Is a Pretty Easy‑to‑use Frontend on the Arc Info So That the
Average User in The Field Can Do It. In Other Words, You Have to Be a
Specialist. You Have to Really Know in Depth How to Use Arc Info to Do
It. But You Have to Remember That it Will Look More like it Is on the
Ground Except for the Right‑of‑way Information, Which Will Still Be
Lines at the Top Of the Section, Just like We Have it Now, until We Get
That Information down Hard and Fast With Gps Coordinates. Anybody?

Sounds Good to Me.

Thanks, Judy. There\'s a Second Part to this Fax. How Far Are We in
Respect to Integrating ALMRS Data, the Gbdc Data.

We Are Right on Top of It. It\'s and Parcel of the Same Database. When
We Convert Your Alphanumeric Data, at the Same Time We Will Be
Converting Your Geographic Data. When We Receive and Install the
Application in Your State and Your Data, it Will Include the Geographic
Coordinates.

Thank You. I Have a Fax Here from Colorado. I\'m Going to Paraphrase It.
They\'re Having a Time Lag in Getting Some Equipment Fixed, And They
Perceive it ‑‑ the Problem Is Going Through Middlemen from the Field to
the State Office to Csc. They Don\'t View this as a Very Efficient or
Acceptable Method Or Process.

Contractually ‑‑ I Can Address It. Contractually We Are Obligated To Go
to Csc for the Maintenance Of All of Our Hardware and the Support of the
Software. We Are Trying to Streamline the Process with Csc, That the
Field Office, If You Have a down Piece Of Gear, Again, Call Your State
Office, They Immediately Will Help You Diagnose the Problem, See If it
Is a Downed Piece of Gear. If It\'s Failed They Have the Authority to
Call Directly to Csc Help, 1‑800‑csc‑help. At That Point in Time, They
Have The Contractual Obligation to a State Office and to the District
Office Located in That Area to a Two‑hour Response Time. That Means a
Field Engineer, Customer Engineer, Has to Show Up Within Two Hours
During the Principal Period of Maintenance Or What We Refer to as Ppm,
Which Is 6:00 A. m. To 6:00 P. m. So If Those Things Aren\'t Happening,
Please Register it in The Log. We Get Monies Rebated Back to The
Government Because of Not Meeting the Contract Specifications.

Thanks, Terry. Might Add to That, Too, Not Only Is There Some
Coordination That Needs to Be Done with the Denver/washington Office or
NIRMc, but There Is Also Coordination That Has to Take Place Within the
State Ill Self Working with the State Office And the Field. So There
Needs to Be Some Work And We Can Streamline it and Fine Tune the
Process. I Have a Fax from Montana. The Problem with Informix ‑‑ This Is
a Comment and Question. The Problem with Informix Is Not A Lack of
Training, the Basic Informix, Viewpoint Are Not Designed for the
Occasional User. Are We Looking at Packages Such As Applix Data to
Address this Problem.

Well, as I Said Before, We Are Looking at Applix and We Just Got Price
Quote on Applix For the Remainder of the Contract for Upgrading it to
the Current Revision Level. There, Again, the Problem Lies In That If
the Budget ‑‑ of What The Budget Can Stand, and We Will Take this up
with the IRMac This Week.

Okay. Thanks, Terry. Next Fax, this Is from Tony in New Mexico. I Think
‑‑ I Think this Is for You, Roger. What Is the Target Date for the
Cut‑off of the Honeywells and When Are We Going to Be Using Iax ‑‑ the
ALMRS ‑‑ and to Begin Using the Iax ALMRS/ioc Platform? In Other Words,
When Will We Move Honeywells out the Door?

Well, Tony, I Wish I Could Come One a Definitive Date for You, but We
Really Don\'t Have a Date per Se as Far as a Schedule Is Concerned. The
One Thing We Have to Do Is To Complete the Rehosting of the Systems, the
Legacy Systems, of Which We Still Have Two, and ‑‑ That Have Not Been
Rehosted, and We Also Have to Complete the Deployment of ALMRS. It Would
Be Kind of Foolish to Let the Honeywells Walk out the Door until We Were
Sure ALMRS Was a Viable and Operating System. So Just as Soon as We Can
Find That Out, as Soon as We Get the System Fully Deployed and
Operational, Then it Would Be Time to Turn the Switch off and Get the
Honeywells out. Okay.

Thanks, Roger. If Any of Us Don\'t Answer Your Faxes Thoroughly Enough
or If You Have a Follow‑up Question, Feel Free to Call in and We Will
Try to Take You Live on this. Here\'s a Fax from Colorado: I\'ve Heard a
Lot about Rethinking of Machine Distribution and the Ratio of Pc To Unix
for End Users. Are There Any Comments?

Well, I Can Probably Tackle That One as Well. It\'s the Old 65‑35 Mix.
As You Recall, the Mix of 65‑35 Came about as a Result of Budgeting
Constraints. We Didn\'t Have Enough Money to Deploy All ALMRS Terminals,
and As a Result Some of Them Were Pcs, Which Are a Lot less Expensive.
But Your Question Is: Would We Be Looking at That? Yes, We Will Be
Relooking at That. In Fact, it Doesn\'t Make Sense That Everybody Should
Have an ALMRS Terminal When, in Fact, Not All of Them Need Their
Terminals to Do ALMRS Work. A Lot of Them Is Strictly Office Automation
Work and Would it Make Sense to Me We Would Want To Replace Those with
Pcs and Move the ALMRS Terminals to Those Individuals Who Really Have a
Need to Access the ALMRS.

Thank You, Roger. The next Fax Here Is from California: Sips Back‑up
Software and Hardware Is Such a Critical Component of Our Technology
Environment, and We\'ve Had Serious Problems with Our Current Back‑up
Software and Hardware, Will There Be National Funding to Deploy New
Software And Hardware at Every BLM Site? Terry, I Think this One Is
Yours.

I Think it Is Mine and I Think If it Came from California, Hi, Bob, How
You Doing out There? We Are Currently Looking to Put A New Solution on
the Contract. That Solution Is What We Call Digital Linear Tape Solution
With Software, Which We Refer to As Dlts. But I Have to Add This, That
the Dlt Solution Is a Very Expensive Solution. To Give You an Idea and
These Are All Ball Park Figures, for The State Office Only with
Supporting Software to Receive These New Tape Systems, as These Are
Going to Be Robotics We\'re Going to Be Looking at for the State
Offices, Are Approximate Lay 1. 5 to 1. 6 Million. If We Go All the Way
to the District Offices as Well as Resource Areas to Replace Hardware
and Software, We Are Looking at in Close to ‑‑ Approximately \$4
Million. So We Do Have a Budgetary Issue Here. We Will Be Presenting
this at The IRMac this Week and All the Specifics. We Will Be Taking it
up with the National IRM and the Assistant Director as Well as the
Director Of Roger down on the End Here And We Will Be Making a Decision
With the Field Input on Which Way We Really Want to Deploy. We Are
Looking at Deploying, You Know, a Solution of a Dlt Solution for Ioc.

Good. Thanks, Terry. Roger, Do You Have Something to Add? Okay.

Ditto.

Ditto.

Thank You, Roger.

Another Fax Here from Colorado. This Is in Regards to Staffing
Classification: Will There Be a Standardization of IRM Positions Within
States Within the Bureau? This Is Directed at Dave Little. Let Me Take a
Stab at this Myself Real Quick. This Week in the IRMac We\'re Going ‑‑
We Will Be Addressing Some of These Issues Regarding The Staffing and
Classification Problems. There\'s Been Some Work over the Last Year or
Two That National IRM Center Has Been Trying to Pull Together Some
Standardized Position Descriptions. The IRMac Themselves Has Been Trying
to Share Some of These Pds and this Information Across State Lines but
There Is More Work That Needs to Be Done and I Hope Dave Does Have a
Chance to Work with Us Closer on this as We Go down this Road and Try to
Meet All of Our IRM Requirements And Our Position Capabilities, And We
Do ‑‑ We Do Approach Some Standardization. Any Comment to That, Roger?

No, I Agree with You, Robin. Standardization Is Very Important and the
Sooner We All Recognize It, That Standardization Is Important, I Think
the Sooner That We\'ll Get On the Road.

Thanks. Lots of Faxes, Folks. This Is from Anthony. Doesn\'t Say Where.
Question Is: Will We Be Relying On the Csc Contract for Future
Hardware/software Upgrades in Support and Technology? I Think this Is
Yours, Terry.

I Can Only Answer That at the Current Time by Saying, under The Current
Contract, We Are Looking to Put New Devices and New Hardware and
Software on the Contract and Working Through the Csc Contract. We in the
Contracts Office and My Contracts Officers, Who Are Listening out There,
and Most of Them under Denver and One Is Here in Phoenix, They Would
Want Me to Answer That We Are Constantly Looking at Maybe Other
Alternatives, but Currently We Are Looking at the Csc Contract to Buy
the Hardware And Software and the Cost Packages, et Cetera.

Okay. Thank You, Terry. There Is a Second Part to That Question from
Anthony. Is it BLM\'s Responsibility for The Application Development in
ALMRS? And What Roles and Technical Ability Will Be Required of the
Districts to Meet These ALMRS Goals?

Repeat it Once, Please.

Is it BLM\'s Responsibility For the Application Development In ALMRS?

It\'s Our Responsibility to Make Sure That the Development Proceeds as
in Accordance with The Bureau\'s Wishes. And under Current Contracting,
Csc Will Continue to Do the Development While We Direct the Development.

Okay. Another Part to this Question: What Roles and Technical Ability
Will Be Required of the Districts to Meet ALMRS Goals?

I\'m Not Real Sure ‑‑

Probably in Response to That, When the Readiness Team, the Review Team,
Went out to the States, They Identified Those Areas and Skills That
Would Be Necessary for the States, and That\'s What Should Be Reviewed
Because That Was All Identified, And Those Skills Would Need to Be
Maintained out in the Field In Order to Be Ready for ALMRS. Robin, I
Think That Summarizes It.

this Fax Is from Jill. I Don\'t Know Where She\'s At, but She\'s out
There. Will We Be Able to Query ALMRS With Geodata with Geooverlays From
Gis. For Example, Can We Draw a Line On a Map and Query ALMRS for Active
Rows, Plans of Operations? Did I Get That Right?

I\'m Not Real Sure I Understand the Plans of Operations, but You Will Be
Able To Query the Database and Get The Information You Want, Including
the Geographic Coordinate Information. I Will Reiterate That it Does Not
Have the Pretty Front End on It That Makes it Easy for the Average User
to Accomplish this And That You Will Have to Have In‑depth Expertise in
Using the Cots Package Arc Info, But, Yes, You Will Be Able to Do That.

Thanks, Judy. I Have Another Fax Here from Matthew in Eastern States and
This Is Directed Towards Terry: Are States Still Required to Justify Gis
Licenses That Are Covered under a Bureauwide License?

the Word Justification, I Guess, Matthew, Is ‑‑ I Guess I Don\'t
Understand the Specific Question, but I\'ll Try to Address It. Under a
Bureauwide License, the Bureau Is Authorized to Install The Software,
for Instance, the Gis Software or Arc Info Software and I Will
Specifically Address That, to Any Device That Has Been Bought off the
Contract. We Are Not Allowed at this Point In Time to Take That Software
And Deploy it on Personal Computer Software. There Has Been Some
Question Ins The past to Me That, Hey, since We Have a Bureauwide
License, Can I Take the Software, Load it On My Pcs So Therefore My Pc
Suite as Well as My Unix Suite Will Be Compatible. At this Point in Time
I Have to Say No, it Is Against the Software Licenses Agreement We Have
with the Computer Sciences Corporation and They Have with Their Vendors.
So I Encourage You That Those Are Not to Be Shared Across Platforms at
this Point in Time. We Are Working to Resolve That, However, but Not in
the near Future. We Are Still in Negotiations With That.

Thank You, Terry. This Fax Is from Becky: Does Applix Tie into the ALMRS
Release 1? If So, How? And Are There Future Plans to Upgrade Applix?

No, it ‑‑ There Is Not a Direct Tie, but as We All Know, We Do Have the
Windows Capability. So Can You Pull Another Window Up with Applix, and
You Can Have The First Window up with ALMRS, And You Can Work That Way.
But There Is No Direct Tie.

and ‑‑ and the Other Half Is, Are Future Plans to Upgrade Applix.

Becky, I Can Only Say If Somebody out There, You Know, Has a Little Pot
of Money, We Would Really Encourage You to Send it In, Because That\'s
What I\'m Going to Be Presenting to The IRMac, Is the Budgetary Issue on
the Applix Upgrades. But We Encourage ‑‑ Hang in There. We\'re
Negotiating, and So We\'ll See What Happens.

Thank You. This next Fax Is from Bakersfield: Maintaining New And
Rehosted Informix Data Basis Will Be a Complex Full‑time Task. In
Addition the Field Offices Will Need to Have the Capability To Use Ad
Hoc Queries to Answer Questions for Which Canned Reports Don\'t Exist.
Have Provisions Been Made to Hire or Train Database Administrators for
Each Field Office?

That\'s Probably More an Answer From, Again, Dave Little Might Be Able
to Address this a Lot Easier, but Let Me Make a Few Points and That Is
That, Again, When We Did this Second Review, Did the First Review Last
Year, the Second Review That Was Just Completed Where We Asked the
States to Reverify the Number and the Skills That Would Be Needed in
Order to Be Certain That ALMRS Would Be Successfully Deployed, the
States Provided Us With Responses That Included a Number of Additional
Skills That Would Be Needed and the Number Of Additional People That
Would Be Needed. So If I Hear the Question Correctly, the Question Is,
Will There Be the Potential for ‑‑.

Have Provisions Been Made to Hire or Train Database Administrators ‑‑

I Think I Just Answered That. There Will Be That as the ‑‑ as The Skills
and the Number of People Are Increased in the States, Then, Yes, the
Training Will Take Place, Just as it Has Taken Place up to this Time.
The Training Center Would Continue to Be Heavily Involved In Performing
That Training for The Field.

Thanks, Roger. I Do Have a Note Here That Says, It\'s from Ron Tucker,
That a Lot Of Training Will Be Aimed at the Dbsas and Systems
Administrators In the Future and User Training Will Be Available as
Needed or As its Developed. This Fax from Washington, D. c. : Please
List the Expectations and Key Points of ALMRS 1 and 2 That Will Affect
the BLM Presently And in the near Future. Expectations and Key Points of
ALMRS.

Release 1: to Replace the Functionality of the Current Legacy Systems,
Case Recordation And Mining Claim Recordation With a Value‑added of the
Integrated Database to Include The Geographic Coordinates. You Will Have
the Spatial Capability Foundation. You Will Have Ad Hoc Query, Which We
Don\'t Have Now. You Will Have All the Reporting Capability That We
Currently Have on the Legacy Systems. That Pretty Much Covers It. I
Think as Far as Release 1. Release 2, Would You like to ‑‑ We Will Have
Additional Spatial Available, Hopefully with a Front End Which Will Make
it User Friendly for the Average User, and There Were a Lot of Other
Things That Were Not Built Into the System this Time That Were Specified
by the User Acceptance Team, and Some of Those Will Be Included in
Release 2. I Had it All Listed out but I Don\'t Have it in Front of Me.
I\'ll Send You a Copy of Exactly What Is Expected to Be Included In
Release 2. I Hope We Have the Name and Address, Robin, So I Can Get That
to ‑‑

We Have Those.

Okay.

Thanks, Judy. The next Fax, Again from California, Obviously They\'re
Tuned in out There: Howl Will Ioc Rehosted Applications and Office
Automation Interface with Each Other after Deployment of Ioc? At Present
with Existing Equipment and Networks, We See Functional Problems
Applying the Office Automation and Rehosted Phases of Deployment.

They Are Not Tied Together Currently, but We Do Have Windows Capability
So You Can Pull up ALMRS in a Window. You Can Pull up Your Office
Automation in Another Window and Work That Way. But There Is No Direct
Tie. I Will Tell You That We Understand That it Is a Problem And That We
Will Be Working on It. Hopefully We Can Resolve Some of It with Release
2. Anything to Add, Roger?

No. Actually, the Greater Capability For the Interoperability of All
These Platforms as Judy Point Out Is Something We\'re Going to Work Very
Hard at Providing in Release 2. So That\'s an Appropriate Comment.

Thank You. Another One from California. This One\'s from Bakersfield and
For You, Judy, Again: How Will The New Case Be Serialized? Will it Be
Automatically Serialized?

the System Will Automatically Serialize the Case. You Can Put in Your
Preserialized Cases as We Do in Oil & Gas Right Now, and it Will Track
it with a Case I. d. and at The Point You Are Ready it Will
Automatically Serialize Your Case.

Thanks. That Was an Easy One. Brace Yourself. Here Comes One from
Wyoming for Judy: If We Understood Judy Correctly, Ioc Should Take in
One Capabilities Existed under The Former Legacy System, Case
Recordation, for Example, and Give Some Added Value. How Is the
Upload/download to Pcs of Case Recordation Data Being Accommodated in
Ioc and What Is the Value Added?

If I Understand Your Question Correctly, I Think You\'re Talking about
the Sale Data, and That Is Not Part of the Legacy System on the
Honeywell Right Now, and I Hope I\'m Right. It Was Part of What We Did
Individually as States. We Have Part of the Sale in Release 1. We Are
Looking at Sale ‑‑ the Rest of it in Release 2. And Wyoming Has Been
Instrumental in Developing the Requirements for That Piece of The System
Which We Hope to Include Either in Release 2 or Release 3. And If I
Haven\'t Answered Your Question Correctly, Please Call Back and Let Me
Know Exactly What it Is I Didn\'t Answer.

Thank You, Judy. I\'ll Give You a Breather on this Next One. This Is
from Colorado. The Question Is: Arc Info Training, When? Target Group?
Management, Production and Staff? Gis Staff? The Answer That I\'ve
Gotten from The Training Folks Here Is That BLM Trainers Are Being
Established Right Now. They\'re Using ‑‑ Training the Trainers. Training
for the Super Users Will Be Identified and Prepared And Training in Arc
View Ii Is Also in the Works. You Can Look Forward to a Lot More
Participation by the National Training Center in That. Here\'s One from
Montana, and It\'s Directed to Judy Again. You\'re on the Hot Seat
Today. Has There Been Any Thought about Downloading Closed Cases in Case
Rec. Onto a Cd‑rom System Rather Than Converting Them to the New ALMRS?

We Really Haven\'t Considered That Because Some of That Information Is
Used When We Work New and Current Cases. So All of the Closed Cases Will
Come Across and Will Be Converted into the New Database. We Will Not Go
to a Lot of Trouble in Cleaning up the Closed Cases, but If You Do Bring
Them up in the New System, Then it Will Be ‑‑ You Will Be Required to
Clean Them up and Make Sure That the Data Is Quality Data Before You Can
Enter Them Back into the Database.

this next Fax Is from New Mexico. How Does a Typical BLM User Access
Data from Other States, I. e. , New Mexico Needs to Access Arizona Data
to Process Oil and Gas Agreements. How Will We Create Case Data Using
Other States\' Land Data When We Have Jurisdiction for Cases Outside of
Our Own Administrative Area? Ooh, I Would Just Love to Be Able to Answer
That, but I Don\'t Have the Whole Process in My Head. I Will Definitely
Answer the Question and Get Back to You Within the next Two Days.

Okay. Our next Fax Here Is from Lander, Wyoming: How Soon Will We Have
the Capability to Automate the Application of Resource Data into a
Stipulation Format for the Oil and Gas Lease Sale and Then Uploading
Newt Lease Data into Case Recordation? Will Any of this Be in ALMRS
Release 1?

Part of the Sale Process Is In Release 1. We Have the Rest of the Sale
Process Has Been Spec\'ed out With the ‑‑ Wyoming Had the Lead, and We
Are Considering it For Part of Release 2 or Possibly the next Release,
but It\'s So Important to the Bureau That We\'re Thinking Seriously
About Release 2.

Thank You. I Have Another One Here. Let\'s See. It\'s from Ridgecrest,
California, Kathy. I Think Part of this We\'ve Already Answered, but
There\'s Two Parts of this Question: Master Title Plats, Mtps Be
Incorporated into ALMRS and If So, When? Also Will Historical Indexes Be
Included?

Let Me Answer the Historical Index Question. Part of the Data Collection
Process That We\'ve Been Going Through for the Last over 10 Years Is
Collecting the Status Data, Which Is the Historical Data, Both from the
Mtp and from The Hi. So All of That Information Will Be in the Database.
The Second Question Was the Mtp. We Do Have the Coordinate Data. We Do
Have All the Case Studies. We Have All the Information You Currently
Have on Your Mtps. You Also Have a Graphic Capability. What You Don\'t
Have Is That Easy To Use Front End on Informix So The Average User Can
Use it and So until We Get That, You Will Have to Have More Expertise in
Informix, in the Use of Informix. But the Capability Is There.

Thank You, Judy. Here\'s Another Question. I Think this Is Coming
Towards Terry. We Might Have Covered Part of This Topic Before, but
I\'ll Give You the Whole Question. This Is from Ann in Boise: Power Pcs,
We Have 60 at Our Site, out of Production, in Limited Capacity for
Upgrades. Our Fear Is Sinking Money into Further Upgrades for Release 1
And Then Having to Scrap Them For Release 2. Is Any Anyone Looking at
this And What Is the Cost of Replacement?

the Cost of Replacement, Quite Frankly, Is the Cost of Us Replacing Them
with the Gis Workstations. However, I Was down in New Mexico, and I Saw
the Performance of a Power Pc Running ALMRS, and That Was on Luis
Bacca\'s December Income New Mexico and His Is Slightly Upgraded Power
Pc. At this Point in Time I Don\'t See Any Problems That I Know of Once
We Do Upgrade Those Power Pcs in the Memory Aspect as Well As Maybe the
Hard Disk Aspect That They Can\'t Run the ALMRS/ioc as Deployed. We Will
Have to Look at That in The Future and That Will ‑‑ as Well as All the
Hardware in the Future, and That\'s, You Know, Basically the Second
Phase to a Whole Hardware Deployment Process.

Thanks, Terry. I\'ve Got a Couple Faxes Here That Are Basically
Addressing The Same Question. I\'ll Try to Paraphrase a Little Bit Here.
One Is from Dan in the Washington Office. Another One Is from the
Milwaukee District Office. They\'re Addressing it to Gayle, So I\'m
Going to Pass it to Roger And See How You Field this One. As a Follow‑on
to What You Said Earlier, I Would like to Argue That Everyone Everywhere
Will Use the World Wide Web. The Question Is When and How and With What
Application? Or Appliance. What Will Be BLM\'s Approach to Addressing
this Future Requirement? These Needs and How They Will Be Satisfied? No
Employee Should Be Left out.

I Agree. No Employee Should Be Left out. If We Are to Be Mindful of
Traveling down the Information Highway That We\'ve Heard Our
Vice‑president Speak about and That We Also Heard Our President Speak
about in the State of the Union, That\'s Very Critical That We Do
Address Those Concerns. I Believe Mike Nedd in His Presentation
Indicated That He Is Part of a Team Effort Now to Look at How Best to
Use the Internet and the Intranet and Before Too Long You Should Be
Getting Information or an Update As to Where We Are in the Process. The
Team Meets Consistently and Are Putting out ‑‑ or at Least Preparing to
Document a Policy On How the BLM Will Use the Internet.

Thank You, Roger. This Fax Is from the Medford District Office. Fairly
Long Comment. I Will Read the Whole Thing, Though. Something That May
Fall into the Category of Long‑term IRM Strategy Concerns Something That
I as a User Perceive as a Major Stumbling Block in My Work. That Is the
Perpetuation of the Pc Versus Moving Towards an Exclusive or Nearly
Exclusive Unix Platform. I Don\'t Feel at the Present I Have All the
Tools to Perform My Job Without a Pc, in Fact There Are People in this
Office That Pcs and Unix Machines Sitting Side by Side and Choose to
Work On the Pc. Data Basis ‑‑ Database Types of Applications Have Not
Been Addressed and Personally I Feel There May Be a Shift Away from That
Format. When it Is Finally Decide to Do Convert Back to the Pc, I and
Others Will Be Force to Do Convert Their Files Back, Which Will Consume
Additional Time and Resources. I Would like to See this Issue Addressed
in Some Manner and Find out What the Commitment Level to Unix Is.

the Commitment to Unix Is Very, Very High. That\'s Exactly What We\'re
Using In Relation to the ALMRS, and as Far as Your Comment of Platforms
That Are Being Used for the Pc And the Interoperability, Those Issues
Were Addressed in Some of The Earlier Comments, but If I Can Kind of
Paraphrase What Some Of the Earlier Participants Stated about That
Issue, Is We\'re Working Very Hard to Make Sure That the ‑‑ Both the Pc
and The ALMRS ‑‑ or the Unix Platform Are Interoperable and While We Are
Having a Difficult Time Right Now Doing That, We Also Are Studying What
a Common Platform Would Look like and What ‑‑ How That Platform Could Be
Used to Use Both the Unix and The Pc Stations Using a Common Platform.
It Could Be That Maybe We Won\'t Find One That\'s Common, and as a
Result We May Have to End up Supporting Two, One for the Pc And One for
the Unix. I Would Hope That Some of the Software That You\'re Using
Would Be Capable of Being Ported from One Platform to the Other Without
Much Difficulty and it Would Be Our Responsibility to Help You Get That
Done.

Thanks, Roger. Another Fax Here from Mike in Ridgecrest. This Is for
Judy. Will Alms and ALMRS Be Linked And If So How? No.

Succinct.

That\'s All I Can Say, as Far As I Know Right Now. Unless You Can Pull
it up in a Separate Window. But Direct Link, No, There Will Be No Direct
Link, Currently.

Thank You, Judy. We Have a Call I\'ll Take Right Now. Ken in Fairbanks
Do You Have a Question for Us?

Caller: Yes, this Is a Procurement Question Directed at Terry. We Have
Gis Staff, Data and Projects Sitting Here and They\'re Blocked from
Proceeding Because of Disk Space. In September We Turned in a
Requisition for More Disks for Our Gis Workstations. We\'re Told They
Will Be Installed Sometime in March. If We ‑‑ We\'re on a Pc this
Process Would Take Us Between Two Hours and One Day. You Talked about
this a Little Bit Earlier. I Would like a Little More Information on How
You\'re Going To Help Us Get Timely Response To These Needs for Real
Minor Peripheral Upgrades That We Can Pay for.

One of the Issues, Ken, and I Believe It\'s Ken Coker up in Fairbanks,
Hi, Ken, We Have a Situation That the Vendor, the Supplier, the Major
Supplier to The Vendor, Computer Sciences Corporation, Had a Tremendous
Backlog at the Beginning of the Fiscal Year. As We All Know, as the
Resources Come Available in the National Budget, the Department of
Defense Gets First Crack as Usually Most the Hardware and The Software,
Specifically the Hardware. I Do Not Appreciate at All the Lag Time That
You All Are Facing With the Delivery of Hardware. We Are Looking to
Relieve That Issue. As I Said Earlier, If You Have a Critical Need, You
Please Call The National Center and We Will Work with You and See What
We Can Do To, A, Streamline the Process, See ‑‑ Csc to Encourage The
Process to Get What You Need In a Time Fashion That Will Suit Your Needs
and Requirements. If Not, We Will Take this on a Case‑by‑case Basis,
Which We Have with Other States. So That\'s All I Can Do, Ken, and I\'m
Surprised ‑‑ I Wish You Would Have Called Me Earlier and We Could Have
Probably Solved This Issue Directly. But Thank You Very Much for Your
Call. I Appreciate It. I\'ll Follow up with You.

Ken, Does That Answer Your Question?

Caller: Yes, it Does, and I Wish We Had Called Earlier, Too.

Thanks for Calling in Now. I Have Another Fax Here. This Is from Alaska.
Mike. In Alaska I Was Part of a Team That Cleaned up Surveys and Case
Information, Lis, Lld Team. Has There Been Any Effort to or Will There
Be Any Efforts to Do A Similar Cleanup in Other States.

There Has Been and There Will Continue to Be Efforts to Clean Up the
Data. As We Do the Trial Runs for Each State Currently, We Are Compiling
a List of the Errors That We Find as We Do Those Runs, and Those Are
Being Coordinated with Each State. We Just Finished Running Alaska\'s
Data. I Haven\'t Gotten the Results of It Yet, but I Told Garth as Soon
As I Get Back to the Office and Get Them That I\'ll Fax Them up To You
and along with That Comes A List of Your Errors. The Bureau\'s Done a
Beautiful Job of Cleaning up its Data and No One Knows More than I Do
How Hard You Have All Worked on It. So, Yeah, Everybody Has Been Working
on Their Data.

Thank You, Judy. Do We Have Any Closing Comments From Any of the
Panelists? Last Chance to Put in Your Two Cents Worth.

I\'m Really Pleased, as I Said At the Beginning of this Forum, That I
Was Very Pleased to Be Here and Have this Opportunity, Because this Is
the First Time Many of You Have Seen Me and Heard Me Speak. I Hope to
Have the Opportunity To Visit Many of You in the Future. I\'m Really
Pleased to Be Here to Interact with the IRMac this Week and to Hear
Their Concerns And to Work with Them at Finding Solutions to These
Concerns. Thank You Very Much.

Thank You, Roger. Judy?

You Know, We Get to Brief Management Both at the Washington Level and at
the Local Level All the Time but Seldom to Do We Get to Tell the Users
Who Have Been in and out Of Our Office for Years Now Helping Us Define
this System And Working on the Data. So It\'s Really, Really Important
To Me That We\'ve Been Able to Give You Some of That Information Back
That You\'ve Given to Us in the First Place. Thank You.

Thank You, Judy. Terry?

Last Summer I Had the Opportunity of Going Around to The Entire United
States to All State Offices Addressing All the IRM and Management Teams
on the Contract Requirements, Basically The Rules, Regulations, et
Cetera, on the ALMRS Contract, And I Really Appreciate That Opportunity
and as I Said Before, I\'ve Been ‑‑ the the Contracting Officer,
Representative for Two‑and‑a‑half Years. As I Said to Robin Repeatedly,
When I Took this Job I Had a Full Head of Hair and it Was Dark and Now
Look at Me. So, It\'s Been a Very Challenging, Rewarding Job. I Guess I
Can Say on the Air Right Now I Will Be Moving on Very Shortly to Another
Position. I Just Want to Thank Everybody For the Support They\'ve Given
Me In the past Two‑and‑a‑half Years. I Know My Fellow Panelists,
They\'ve Already Said That They Are Glad to a Degree Because They Don\'t
Want to See Me Go, And I Really Appreciate and That I Want to Thank You,
Robin, for All Your Support and Look Forward to Working with You in The
Future.

Thank You, Terry. If We Didn\'t Answer Your Questions Fully Enough or We
Missed Your Fax or We Missed the Point or Something We Will Be Trying to
Do Some Follow‑up Getting Information Back out to The Field Going
Through the Questions That We Have on Record Here. Again We\'ll Be
Looking Forward To Trying to Do this in the Future. We Do Appreciate All
the Calls You\'ve Sent into Us, the Faxes. I Think It\'s Been a
Successful Time for All of Us. That about Wraps it up for Our First
IRM/ALMRS Satellite Forum. I Would like to Remind You That Our Downlink
Sites to Have All The Viewers Sign the Attendance Roster and Fax it into
the National Training Center Immediately after Today\'s Show. All
Viewers Will Be Receiving an Evaluation Form on Today\'s Telecast via
Groupwise. Please Complete the Evaluation As Soon as Possible Following
The Instructions Provided. 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. NTC\'s Internal Internet Address Is: www.
ntc. blm. gov. Transcripts of this Telecast and Other NTC Broadcasts Are
Available on this Home Page. I\'d Also like to Mention Some Upcoming NTC
Distance Learning Events. On March 12th NTC Will Broadcast A Training
Session for BLM Satellite Downlink Coordinators. On March 20th the EEO
Program Will Conduct a Satellite Workshop on Alternative Dispute
Resolution. A Telecast on April 9th Will Discuss Cost Reimbursement
Systems. And on May 1st NTC Will Transmit A National Interagency
Workshop On Implementing Western Riparian Restoration. And We Are
Planning on Bringing You Another IRM and ALMRS Forum In September to
Coincide with The Initial Deployment of ALMRS Release 1. For Information
on These Telecasts as Well as Other Satellite Courses, Call the Training
Center at (602) 906‑5500. Or Visit the NTC Home Page. Don\'t Forget to
Turn into NTC\'s Rebroadcast of Secretary Babbitt\'s Fire Management
Briefing Today at 1:00 Mountain Standard Time on this Satellite, Galaxy
9, but Be Sure to Change Over to Transponder 22. I Would like to Thank
Everyone Who Participated in Today\'s Show. It Is Only Through Programs
like This That We\'re Able to Bring You the Most Current Information
About Our IRM Efforts as We Move Towards the Year 2000 and Beyond.