Author Archive

Carol J. Herman

Digital Government

VBA bids adieu to manual filing with free program

When it comes to paper, the Veterans Benefits Administration just says, No. Under the auspices of Highway 1, a nonprofit consortium that helps the government work more efficiently, seven information technology vendors collaborated to create the imaging and processing system that has let the agency boot manual filing of 2.5 million benefits claims a year.

Digital Government

Ada Lovelace's work created a plan for the future

Her goal was to show how the Analytical Engine could calculate without the intervention of "human hand or head." Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers, by Betty A. Poole, Strawberry Press, Sausalito, Calif., 1998. For women in information technology, Ada Lovelace is the magna mater—a bold visionary who in 1843 was the first to write a program for Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, a precursor of the modern computer.