E-gov projects looking for vendor input

The Business Gateway initiative wants vendors to provide information on how they would develop and implement an online form processing system.

The Business Gateway Quicksilver initiative is seeking vendors to provide information on how they would develop and implement an online form processing system.

The General Services Administration, along with the Small Business Administration, manages the e-government project, last week released the request for information. Responses are due to GSA by Aug. 5.

Project officials also are looking for vendors to provide an analysis of alternative forms systems for larger organizations.

The online forms processing system would use Extensible Markup Language, eliminate redundant data collection and let users fill, submit and sign forms electronically.

SBA and GSA already run two forms sites, at www. business.gov and www.forms.gov.

Business Gateway became the second e-government project last week to ask for vendor input to improve their initiative.

The Interior Department also issued a request for comments for Version 2 of the Geospatial One-Stop portal.

Comments are due by Aug. 15.

Interior, which launched Version 1 in June 2003, wants vendors to provide information in a number of areas, including portal interface, hosting, operating and management as well as functions such as:

  • Searching for information based on the dataset-level metadata and geographic location


  • Harvesting copies of Federal Geographic Data Committee compliant metadata from National Spatial Data Infrastructure nodes, XML files, open archive and metadata servers


  • Discovering and displaying metadata and geospatial maps


  • Serving as a tool where agencies can discover potential cost-sharing partnerships for planned data acquisitions.

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