One of the proposals included in President Bush's 10-year budget plan is an effort to expand the government's online purchasing. The proposal comes in the form of a $100 million allocation, over a three-year period, for inter-agency online purchasing programs such as e-procurement. In proposing the allotment in the budget, it has been noted that agencies could realize savings through greater competition between vendors and an overall reduction in transaction costs from switching from manual to automated procurement.

While President Bush encourages government agencies to expand their online procurement processes, e-commerce experts, recognizing how lucrative government contacts are to their private sector partners, are urging suppliers to meet government agencies online. The incentive to engage more e-Commerce with the government is highlighted in a report by the Gartner Group, which predicts that " federal spending for interactive e-government projects will quadruple from 2000 to 2005, to $6.2 billion". A sizeable projection such as this does not seem unrealistic in light of some recent government transactions. Consider a request for private sector bids by the National Security Agency for their "Groundbreaker" project, which includes the extensive restructuring of their computer system, telephone operations, and information security, for a projected $5 billion over the next ten years.

Another instance of government adopted technology is in the use of wireless Portable Digital Assistants (PDAs) by the US Navy for, among other things, recording flight evaluations of their s-38 Viking jet pilots. By utilizing the PDAs' capabilities untold man-hours have been freed that otherwise would have been spent manually recording data and entering them into a computer. The use of the wireless devices has also significantly improved the accuracy of operations as they accommodate the making of quick, clean strokes through use of shortcut keys as opposed to handwritten notes that are prone to deciphering errors. The use of wireless portable devices is expected to spread as the military begins to realize its advantages.

As city and state universities, the U.S. military, and other US government agencies engage in e-procurement, with an emphasis on quality rather than cost, it would seem apparent that suppliers of goods and services required by the government are in for a windfall.

Sources: Presidential e-Procurement
iSource, April 10, 2001
http://www.isourceonline.com/isourceprintpage.asp?article_id=956

Sell to Uncle Sam
Doug Brown
Interactive Week, April 2, 2001
http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/columns/0,4164,2703660,00.html

Handheld Application: The US Navy
Stephanie Clifford
eCompany, May 2001
http://www.ecompany.com/articles/mag/0,1640,11236,00.html