John Cabral, deputy chief knowledge officer, developed the Interagency Collaboration Zone, a customizable portal for U.S. Department of State workers. Users connect to the Web site using smart cards and Entrust's PKI certificate authorities, after which they are routed to their home page with their specific applications and collaborative work spaces. And from there they can share and manage documents, participate in threaded discussions, conference in real time, and perform context-based searches.

 This collaboration zone took $17 million and nine months to build, using a variety of technologies including Vignette's enterprise application portal and content management server, Ezenia's InfoWorkSpace, Accenture's eGovernment Accelerator, and iPlanet's Directory Services. 

 The Interagency Collaboration Zone is considered one level below classified: sensitive.