FISAC's ITCM Team has drafted and circulated for public comment a research agenda for developing capabilities to collect, evaluate, and synthesize large quantities and multiple types of information from many sources to generate real-time assessments of evolving situations, response scenarios, and distributed feedback systems. Such research would explore:

• Advanced networking, communication, deployment, and management in disasters, including pervasive sensing; rapid deployment of wireless networks at a disaster scene; nomadic technologies; adaptive and scalable networks for wireless, satellite, and wireline high-speed telecommunications under changing conditions; and use of high end data visualization corridor (DVC) and tele-immersion technologies at disaster centers.
• Distributed high end computing for disaster simulation. Researchers will develop models, similar to global climate and weather simulation systems, of data collection and simulation technologies for other natural disasters, such as earthquakes, fires, floods, tornadoes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions, and will explore computational grid or metacomputing strategies to access appropriate computing resources.
• Metacomputing techniques to assess disaster risks and guide mitigation strategies, such as building codes.
• Data-mining tools including data fusion of multimedia to discover the best sources of information on a particular hazard or during a crisis.
• Information triage systems to analyze, prioritize, and communicate information from varied sources to individuals involved in a crisis situation. For example, relief workers must be able to pinpoint the location of hazards at the disaster site and know whom to look for, while managers situated in a mobile control center must be able to direct the rescue efforts of many individual workers and target resources where they are most needed.
• Privacy and security protocols, especially in mobile technologies, and the ability to change them rapidly as crises progress. In order to treat an unconscious person, for example, emergency workers with appropriate clearance could access smartcards containing medical data normally available only to health care providers.
• Domain-specific judgment support and decision-making resources to assist individuals performing unfamiliar functions during or after a crisis.
• The viability and worthiness of tools and software for crises management, preparedness planning, training, and mitigation-strategy development. Researchers will prototype, test, and demonstrate these capabilities using testbeds and field tests with participating end users.
• Barriers to adopting IT tools within the crises management community. Such factors might include legal and regulatory barriers, lack of end-user training, absence of compelling cost-benefit analysis, or lack of technology transfer mechanisms.

More than 70 Federal agencies collect, analyze, and archive statistics of interest to the public in the course of carrying out their missions. The FedStats Team, jointly sponsored by FISAC and the 14 member agencies of the Interagency Council on Statistical Policy (ICSP), works cooperatively with agencies to identify IT R&D needed to make their data available online; construct an integrated national system of public statistical information; and promote partnerships with the IT research community through NSF's Digital Government program and related Federal initiatives. FedStats members participated in a February 1999 conference sponsored by Digital Government on IT issues in Federal statistics.

The ICSP, chaired by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), maintains the FedStats Web site (www.fedstats.gov) to provide easy access to the full range of information produced by the statistical agencies for public use. The site has links to tools to access and view data from single agencies, and the multiagency Federal Electronic Research Review, Extraction and Tabulation Tool (FERRETT) that enables users to work with Census, BLS, and NCHS databases.

The Universal Access Team focuses on research, development, and deployment of advanced technologies to eliminate technical barriers to broad public participation in the digital environment. The Team helps agencies across the Government meet requirements that Federal services and employment opportunities be accessible to people with disabilities, and fosters partnerships among IT research institutions and agencies to design human-computer interface systems that improve accessibility. For example, the Team works on standards for validating IT performance in universally accessible systems in conjunction with the Underwriters Laboratory, in a project endorsed by the Enterprise Interoperability and Emerging IT Committee of the Government's Chief Information Officers Council, and on a new paradigm for interface protocols with the IT Accommodation Study Group of the National Committee for Information Technology Standards. FY 2000 activities include:

• The Rapid Service Valuation and Preparation (RSVP) Access program, which brings agency experts and agency managers together to share resources, transfer best practices, and establish common standards for broadening the accessibility of IT services
• The Information Technology Testing for Accessibility Government-wide (IT-TAG) program, which is establishing an access performance validation capability with independent testing laboratories so that agencies can use the new Federal Acquisition Regulation procurement criteria
• Public Information Networks Need Accessible Collaborative Learning Environments (PINNACLE), a Web-based knowledge repository for learning and resource sharing that will enhance RSVP and IT-TAG, support virtual forums for Federal employees with disabilities, and allow IT service providers to discuss ways to improve the development pipeline for technologies that enable universal access