HCI Challenges in Government Contracting

Sunday, May 7

Governments spend huge resources on custom computer systems, which are developed by contractors to government specifications under government monitoring. In many such projects usability has little explicit requirement, depending on developers' knowledge and perseverance. Development activities receive their funding allocations very early in the life cycle, and HCI work usually gets little attention.

At a CHI '94 SIG, over 30 participants from the United States and Europe outlined HCI challenges in government contracting and explored some approaches for addressing these challenges. The principal challenges stemmed from inadequate HCI understanding among responsible government and contractor parties. The main approaches focused on educating industry, government, and the HCI community.This workshop continues the work begun during the SIG. After the whole group briefly discusses the challenges, small groups will form to address solutions. The groups will be tasked to devise action plans that include detailed and feasible steps that can lead to the recognition ofHCI as a specific and integral part of the develop- ment process for government systems. Each small group will present its findings to the entire work- shop, and the whole group will examine the solutions for practicality and appropriateness. The workshop results will be publicized to government contracting and HCI communities.

This one-day workshop is limited to 15 participants.

Contact:

Ira S. Winkler
Science Applications International Corporation
200 Harry S. Truman Parkway
Annapolis MD 21401 USA
E-mail: winkler@c3i.saic.com
Tel: +1 301 261 8424
Fax: +1 301 261 8427