U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program eGovernment Working Group Meeting February 11, 2004

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 2  Welcome  Smart Choice Enabler Updates  Q&A and Next Steps Agenda

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 3 eAuthentication Update  Successfully operating and maintaining the eAuthentication system.  Trained over 7,100 Local Registration Authorities (LRAs).  Help-desk support available to assist users with technical issues.  Designed strategy for integrating employee users and employee applications with the USDA eAuthentication service. We will be focused on implementing this over the next few months.  Continued integrating applications into the eAuthentication service – 68 applications completed and more in the process.  Met with application owners and agency contacts to review the integration process, process to establish an SLA, and agency variable costs for integrating an application.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 4 eAuthentication Next Steps  Enhance the user experience at USDA eAuthentication with updates to the registration pages, eAuthentication portal pages, and LRA pages. These enhancements are currently scheduled for a March 2004 release.  Continue to integrate agency applications with the USDA eAuthentication service.  Implement registration processes for employee users and employee applications with eAuthentication.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 5 eLearning Update/ Next Steps  USDA’s Learning Management System (LMS) is now called AgLearn.  Phase One launch will be soon. Excellent progress underway.  Agency “early adopters” are identified (Approximately 10,000 participants. This represents 12 agencies).  Agency representatives will test the system. This will include testers for 508 compliancy.  Agency’s System Administrators receiving training now.  Free courseware from GoLearn.gov and agency purchased courseware being moved to USDA’s AgLearn.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 6 eDeployment Update eDeployment Components:  usda.gov, Web Presence, and Taxonomy  Infrastructure Hosting (NITC) Portal Web Content Management Document and Records Management  Services Common employee database Collaboration Correspondence Management Operations Support

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 7 eDeployment Update: usda.gov/Web Presence/Taxonomy  Launched the new Web site on January 11 th with updated look, feel, and navigation.  Initiated detailed design for the next release of usda.gov, which will leverage USDA’s portal application.  Presented USDA Style Guide to agency and staff office Webmasters: Webmasters had the opportunity to review, provide feedback, and ask questions about the guide. Agency comments were incorporated into the most recent version of the guide, available at  Developed high-level migration approach that agencies and staff offices can follow to adopt the Web Presence standards: Individual meetings with agencies and staff offices are in progress and will be conducted by the Web Presence team throughout the month of February.  Completed draft of taxonomy of subjects.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 8 eDeployment Next Steps: usda.gov/Web Presence/Taxonomy  Complete individual meetings with agencies and staff offices to review Web Presence standards and discuss Web Presence migration strategy.  Assist agencies and staff offices with specific Web Presence migration planning tasks.  Begin development of usda.gov using the portal environment; targeted release of May.  Complete draft of common meta-data model for classifying information.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 9 eDeployment Update: Infrastructure  Planning for the implementation of an enterprise-wide portal, enterprise content management, collaboration tools and a common employee data repository.  Developed the technical architecture for eDeployment. This architecture will further be refined as work with hosting center accounts for current network infrastructure. Defining roles and responsibilities and levels of service with NITC.  Initiated procurement process to acquire the necessary software tools for the creation of the enterprise eDeployment services. Portal procurement currently underway followed by Enterprise Content Management (content and document/records management).

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 10 eDeployment Next Steps: Infrastructure  Provide access to new tools for agencies to train their developers and users on the eDeployment tools.  Make technical tools available for the development of the new usda.gov Web site.  Provide support and operations services to facilitate the maintenance and agency use of the eDeployment services.  Design initial releases of a common employee data repository and enterprise-wide collaboration tools.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 11 eDeployment Update: Services  Defining approach for common employee directory. eAuthentication team working on interim approach to support immediate needs.  Establishing approach to deploy collaboration capabilities to the enterprise. Leverages existing capabilities at NITC and Forest Service. Includes team rooms, instant messaging, and virtual meetings.  Finalize project plan to complete first phase of correspondence tracking system. Began detailed technical design of correspondence tracking system based on business requirements.  Establishing governance model, operational framework, and customer service approach for supporting the use of eDeployment services.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 12 eDeployment Next Steps: Services  Identify data sources and complete technical design of common employee directory.  Define business processes to support the directory.  Finalize procurement of collaboration software and rollout pilot.  Build, test, and conduct pilot of correspondence tracking system.  Implement governance approach, conduct help desk study, and define business processes and roles and responsibilities for operations management.

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 13  Welcome  Smart Choice Enabler Updates  Q&A and Next Steps Agenda

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 14 Questions and Answers

U.S. Department of Agriculture eGovernment Program 15 Next Steps Tentative EGWG Schedule: 2 nd and 4 th Wednesday of every month Next EGWG Session: February 25th, (Topic and Location: TBD)