One group, for example, created a multimedia CD-ROM to answer prospective foreign students' questions about attending U.S. colleges. On a smaller scale, other ad hoc teams formulated bureau-wide policies on telecommuting, devised a career ladder system for translators and built web sites on such topics as the Denver Economic Summit. When I was managing editor for an issue of our team's electronic journal, I spent a lot of time consulting with area offices about the authors, approaches, manuscripts. In the I Bureau, empowerment is also a logical consequence of downsizing and delayering. So team leaders see themselves more as coaches, facilitators and direction setters than as traditional managers who need to know all the answers.
Decision making on most matters is shared, and top-down decisions are rare.
A second basic principle is bureau leaders' commitment to the latest information technology. With shrinking resources, the best way to maintain operations in the field is to exploit technology to deliver information rapidly and efficiently. Technology is not an end in itself, but a way to make up for deficiencies in resources. This high-tech approach has a variety of consequences. Everybody in the bureau has had full desktop accessibility to the World Wide Web for more than a year, and for most staff, information gathering on the Internet is now a routine part of their jobs.