IT is more than just technology, says one agency CIO

On Flag Day in 1996 General Services Administration officials gave each employee access to the Internet at their desk in the office, one of the first federal agencies to meet the milestone. The Internet was a new thing for many employees. Now people live by the Internet, Casey Coleman, GSA's CIO, writes in her Around the Corner blog.

Since then, GSA has been moving forward continually with IT advances, she writes in a June 20 blog post.

GSA has deployed agency-wide Voice over Internet Protocol telecommunications, including softphones on GSA’s laptops. Networks have been upgraded and remote access lets employees work anywhere. People are working outside the office, teleworking and having meetings through videoconferencing. Their computers soon may become hand-held tablets, a big change from old-time computers where the monitors alone were almost too heavy to move a few inches.

Coleman writes, however, that there’s something more important to GSA than getting the hottest stuff and continuing to put more and more of IT into action.

“We view IT as an investment in the productivity, morale, and success of our employees, rather than an end unto itself,” she writes.

Read the rest of her blog post.