SAS Institute Aims for the E-Gov Market

By Jennifer Freer, Staff WriterSAS Institute Inc. is trying to catch the latest wave in electronic government by launching a new way to help federal, state and local governments electronically deliver information to citizens.The Cary, N.C., company, which has made a name for itself providing data warehousing software, kicked off its E-government Solutions Program within its Public Sector Group Aug. 18 to help agencies with information and service delivery, Web-site performance, security and work-flow management. "E-government is on everyone's radar," said Jeff Babcock, vice president of SAS Public Sector Sales. "Just by the sheer sense of urgency, and the demand by citizens, the government needs to jump on e-government solutions as soon as they can."In fact, according to an August report by Forrester Research Inc., "Sizing the U.S. eGovernment," e-government will reach $602 billion by 2006.The trend for technology companies to jump into the government market continues to grow, said Jeremy Sharrard, a research associate with Forrester, a market research firm in Cambridge, Mass."Governments recognize they need to go online and offer e-government solutions to citizens and businesses, but they want to do it right," said Sharrard. "They are more willing to move to outsourcing solutions to give responsibility to a private company." Forrester predicts that there will be almost 14,000 e-government applications nationwide by 2006, the majority providing state and local government service.SAS' initial e-government program offers four solutions at all government levels. E-Delivery will help take services from legacy systems to a Web browser. E-Optimization offers network performance measurements and enhances Web delivery. E-Security helps customers identify misuses of services and establish a secure Web environment. And E-Workflow solutions will automate daily business more efficiently. Although there are no government customers using the new e-government solutions yet, SAS company officials said federal and state agencies have expressed interest in the program. The company plans to sell to its current government customers and gain new ones, Babcock said. Some of SAS' current customers include the Colorado Department of Public Health, the Coast Guard, the Federal Aviation Administration, Indian Health Services, Office of Personnel Management, U.S. Postal Service, the Virginia Department of Education and the federal departments of Education, Transportation and Veterans Affairs.SAS was founded in 1976, and its software is used in more than 33,000 businesses, government and university sites in 110 countries, according to company officials. SAS had 1999 revenue of $1.02 billion. The privately held company does not reveal its net income.Two years ago, SAS created its Public Sector Group to serve government customers and take advantage of the opportunities it saw in that arena, Babcock said. The division can take advantage of 30 software products to focus on specific areas to help government agencies develop solutions for performance-based, financial and human resource implementations, IT security and management, health-care fraud and abuse detection.For example, the Office of Personnel Management is combining sources of personnel information using SAS Institute's HR Vision to perform work-force planning and personnel retention. And the Treasury Department is staging internal financial information with SAS' CFO Vision to run business intelligence applications.SAS has worked with systems integrators including Science Applications International Corp., San Diego; Unisys Corp., Blue Bell, Pa.; Logicon Inc., Herndon, Va.; and Booz-Allen & Hamilton Inc., McLean, Va. SAS can use customers' existing equipment to achieve its e-government solutions or sell customers new equipment if it is needed through its reseller, EIS LLC, in Bethesda, Md. SAS also allows customers to test programs before committing to a project and training.XXXSPLITXXX-