A business process is not a single application, but rather a flow of tasks and, often, documents that typically involve many people, departments and enterprises. Even if automated, the process probably taps into many databases and programs. But that kind of ubiquity can make business process prone to the errors and inefficiencies that come from poor coordination, communication and data integration.
Disaster recovery was a low priority for many government agencies until the flood of terrorist attacks, hurricanes and other disasters of recent years. Now disaster recovery, ensuring that IT works uninterruptedly, is a key component of the continuity of operations plans that government expects industry to help it carry out.
Many government agencies, if they have not already done so, soon will face the issue of what technology they should use to connect remote workers, and they'll be looking to integrators to help make a decision.
Recent developments in financial software for government are closely tracking directives that emphasize lines of business, strategic plans and project portfolios.
For several years now, wireless LANs have proved viable for consumer use as a cheap and easy way to set up a home network or to get on the Web at a public hot spot.
Desktop and server operating systems always have been the black holes of the software world. They tend to absorb useful utilities, technologies and practical applications of day-to-day computing.
Customer relationship management is crossing into government as agencies facing e-government mandates have come to appreciate the benefits of streamlined, cheaper, more effective contact with constituents.
Most legacy human resources systems aim only at payroll processing and core functions, such as benefits administration. But new applications have supported the kinds of strategic planning and development that HR managers have been trying to implement in low-tech ways.
Government bookkeeping used to involve people in green eyeshades who painstakingly wrote transactions in heavy, lined ledgers. The eyeshades are gone, but not all the ledgers are, even in shops that long ago built mainframe accounting programs.
A variety of mandates for improving accounting practices and the President's Management Agenda have government at all levels taking a hard look at upgrading their enterprise financial software.
In July, office-accessory vendor Fellows Inc. introduced a mouse with a fingerprint-reading capacitor. Geared to notebooks but usable on most PCs with a Universal Serial Bus port, the $99 SecureTouch Optical Mouse is a reliable biometric control.
In the days before Sept. 11, 2001, the talk about biometrics was as much about data security as physical security. By recognizing a person's fingerprint, voice or iris pattern, often on an inexpensive device, biometrics was becoming a feasible way to prevent unauthorized people from accessing PCs, notebooks, networks and data.
The federal government's push for better information sharing among agencies, made more urgent by e-government initiatives and the war on terrorism, has created strong demand for enterprise software architectures, Web standards and integration tools.
The explosion in government data has created a boom for software that can analyze information and present it in charts, graphs and other images that people can quickly grasp.
