Tearing down the mountain

When disasters such as last month'sCalifornia wildfires hit, the governmentagencies affected need to get back in serviceas soon as possible.To expedite that, officials often use governmentcredit cards to buy things suchas plywood and coaxial cable. Althoughthose cards speed the procurementprocess, the purchases still must bereviewed. That means forms must be completedto answer questions such as: The forms help with oversight, butthey also help agencies coordinatewith one another, said Giora Hadar, aknowledge architect at the FederalAviation Administration."It's not only the FAA that needs theinformation, it's the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency, Army Corps ofEngineers, and state and local governmentagencies," Hadar said. "You need cooperationand information sharing among allthese agencies to decide what needs to bepurchased and implemented by whom sothere's no duplication of effort."To achieve that collaboration, FAA ismoving to smarter forms such as the new IBM Lotus Forms. The open-standardsbasedelectronic forms are intended towork in a Web 2.0 environment for easierintegration with third-party software,back-end systems and compliance tools.The ability to quickly perform that integrationis important to government agencies,said Greg O'Connell, who is responsiblefor the forms practice in government atIBM."From a forms perspective, in government,what we are seeing are requirementsaround compliance and regulatory-drivenneeds," O'Connell said.For example, a new mandate fromCongress requires that lawmakers quicklyanswer Freedom of Information Actrequests for information about campaigncontributions."So that's where technology like Web 2.0can come into play," O'Connell said. "It canhelp make that information available [in]real time through the Web in a securefashion." That system is tightly integratedwith forms.In the past, electronic forms involved aclient-side application that performed thefunctions and business logic to drive thebehavior of a form. With that model, softwarehad to be installed on the desktopcomputer.With Lotus Forms Version 3.0, the conceptis to put that intelligence and applicationlogic on the server side.That enables users to access intelligentforms wherever they have a Web-connectedcomputer."They can access those applicationsthrough the browser as opposed to needingto bring code down to the desktop to runthe application," O'Connell said.In addition to making applications morewidely available, the system also reducesthe need to manage an application onthousands of desktop computers.Variations of electronic forms have beenavailable for years, but they have had limitations.The ability to digitally sign a formwas only available through rich-clienttechnology.For example, a military officer's reviewrequires sectional signing by a numberof people up the chain of command.Providing that sectional signing througha Web-based interface has been challengingbecause of the inherent limitationsof HTML.With new forms technology, digital signingvia the Web can be as strong as clientbasedtechnology.Los Angeles County is using electronicforms and digital signing to enable residentsto file their state tax forms online.At FAA, intelligent electronic forms willmake it easier for users to fill out forms andimprove how the agencies process them."We need to move to sharing and collaboration,"Hadar said. "And also we need toprocess the information that is behind theform in an intelligent way, which meanswe really have to move to the XML world."XML, or Extensible Markup Language,is designed to make sharing data acrossvarious systems easier. The new LotusForms will be tied to back-end systemsthat use XML.That will make sharing data easier andreduce the need to repeatedly enter thesame information into various forms.In the military, service members mustdeal with hundreds of forms during theircareers and enter a great deal of redundantinformation on those forms.By using a unique identifier, such as amilitary identification number or SocialSecurity number, that information can bedynamically extracted from a database.When service members enter their uniqueidentifiers, the data can set up a form withas much information as possible. As informationchanges, the database can beupdated."For systems integrators, it is an opportunityfor them to see where they can usethe Lotus Forms technology to furtherstreamline and automate the processesthat they are under contract to performfor their government customers,"O'Connell said..