As for the shower curtain, the cost projection was a worst-case scenario that agency officials say does not reflect what they actually intend to spend on any individual curtain. Though the project will go forward, the shower-curtain flap demonstrated the dangers of capital planning in the public eye. While the Commerce IG found PTO did a good job justifying its building plans, he has been less enthusiastic about PTO's management of information technology. The concept of electronic processing has been on the drawing board for more than 15 years, has been repeatedly postponed, and is now not scheduled to be fully deployed until the year 2003. Frazier complained that PTO's automation efforts have failed to reduce patent and trademark processing times.
Employees also are critical of the agency's IT management.
Melanie Tung, an examiner and union member, says PTO has provided many automated tools to help examiners, but no training on how to use those tools. Without training, Tung says many of the icons on her computer screen are meaningless. Trademark manager Sims says PTO is on an IT management learning curve as it moves toward electronic processing of applications in the next five years. When you're putting in a new system, you need to slow down in order to get it right. Unlike other government agencies, we have not had any major investment that's been thrown in the wastebasket.