The ACE initiative involved the planning, design, and implementation of a suite of technology services and required IT to assess existing system architecture/governance, user support services, system services, and application services. Significant progress was made in all these areas during 2003.

     IT made strides in both the conversion of workstations and the transition to Microsoft Outlook e-mail application, a key part of the ACE initiative. As of September 2003, IT was ahead of schedule and had transitioned more than 50,000 users (of 130,000 total users) to ACE workstations. IT had also successfully completed the conversion to Microsoft Outlook, which involved the transfer of more than 121,000 users from the former internal e-mail system, cc:Mail, to Microsoft Outlook.

     IT addressed several other aspects of the ACE initiative during 2003:

• Consolidated 114 field help desks (from districts, areas, and bulk mail centers) into one help desk. Centralizing user support services has not only helped the IT organization streamline its operations, but has also provided the Postal Service user community with enhanced levels of customer service, through standardized responses and greater quality control.
• The goal of reducing server locations from 11,000 to 600 in the field resulted in more than 3,000 servers being taken out of the field during 2003. Eliminating unneeded servers has generated cost savings for the organization and has provided IT managers with more oversight of these units. During 2002 and 2003, IT had removed a total of 7,000 servers from the field.
• Converted more than 125 of the 147 national applications to ACE. Having all Postal Service national applications conform to the same set of standards allows the organization to streamline application management procedures and future system integrations.

     During 2004, IT will focus on converting remaining users to ACE workstations. The project will also involve the consolidation or elimination of 2,700 unregistered duplicate Web sites and the retirement conversion of 1,360 local applications that are unable to run in ACE. Not only will all these changes add up to faster systems and higher quality service, but they also are expected to generate considerable cost savings. Through its successful ACE efforts, the Postal Service is on a path to save more than $200 million by 2006.

     Postal Service operations rely on the organization's secure information technology platform. IT maintained and measurably enhanced the security of its computing environment in 2003.

     Internally, IT concentrated on educating staff and evaluating existing systems' security. Building on the success of earlier training initiatives, security awareness training was extended to more than 151,000 employees, including 900 managers, during 2003. IT certified the security of almost half of all systems that were assessed as critical/sensitive. With regard to contingency planning, 57 percent of critical applications had compliant recovery plans in place at the end of 2003.

     The Information Technology organization has protected the Postal Service infrastructure from outside threats as well. During 2003, advanced applications and sensors were put in place to handle the automated monitoring of systems and the prevention of system intrusions. In 2003, these applications were scanning more than 5.5 million Internet e-mail messages monthly, preventing an average of 66,000 viruses and harmful e-mail messages from entering the system each month. More than 3,200 sensors were deployed to monitor and guard against intrusion attempts.

     IT will continue to address security issues from both internal and external perspectives. The ever-growing number and changing nature of security threats require that the IT