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The Internal Revenue Service is adopting a mission-oriented approach to designing its new agencywide information infrastructure. Instead of focusing on information technology, the modernized system will be business-centered to ensure that it directly addresses the agency's requirement to manage mountains of data while collecting over $1 trillion in annual tax revenues.

The information technology industry is increasingly directing its efforts to commercial security requirements and less so to those of government. The result is that the private sector is overtaking its government counterpart in maintaining computer network security.

Data visualization, where information is displayed in recognizable graphic elements, increasingly is moving into mainstream applications as a remedy for information overload. As computer users find growing amounts of gigabytes at their fingertips, system engineers are returning display perspectives to everyday three-dimensional visages that are comprehended faster and more readily.

A series of desktop central processing units combines the attributes of workstations and personal computers into a single platform. The new hardware can bring detailed imagery and graphics manipulation into the hands of more users throughout government and the military at prices comparable to those of mid-level personal computers.

Protecting electronic commerce on the Internet is a very secretive and unforgiving business. Robust security, however, is pivotal to its phenomenal expansion as networks surge toward a $200 billion market within the next two years. This demand for vigorous network refuge is creating a $6 billion worldwide security industry market, growing at a rate of more than 50 percent a year.

Federal agencies with specialized image archival requirements are meeting their storage and retrieval needs by maximizing the capabilities of software first used by Hollywood's entertainment industry. Government organizations with large image databases can use this software, which employs innovative search techniques, to help analysts sift through incalculable amounts of digital information. The software eliminates typical problems involved in tracking important reference material and can assist agencies by also housing information gathered from analysis of image files.

One year after surviving the year 2000 problem, computer users may be blessed with huge leaps in processing speeds and capabilities. Researchers at semiconductor manufacturers are developing new generations of chips that, in just three years, will offer 15 times as many transistors and compute several times as fast as today's models.