Access |
|
||||||||||
Government
Services OPERATE
Privacy
& Security |
New GSA Web Site Has 400 Commonly-Used Federal Forms
October 2, 1998 - The General Services Administration has put almost 400 federal forms on a
one-stop web site. These GSA forms, Standard Forms, and Optional Forms can be
viewed, filled in, printed, e-mailed or faxed directly from the Internet. This
unique site eliminates the need for users to purchase costly formfill packages
and makes many commonly used government forms easily accessible to federal
agencies as well as the public.
Johnny Young, Director of Reproduction Services in the Office of Communications at GSA, hopes this is the first step toward a web-based repository of all
federal forms used by the public or federal employees
GSA Turned a Major Problem into a Visionary Solution
"When a previously-used proprietary forms package became obsolete with
the introduction of Windows 95 and NT technologies," Young said, "GSA
was faced with the enormous task of redesigning hundreds of widely
used federal forms. We were determined to avoid any proprietary
limitations in the future, so we sought a software solution which
would digitally capture existing forms images from virtually any
design package and make them quickly available to agencies and the
public on the Internet.
"Many agencies have made significant investments in design software
with links to internal databases," Young continued. "Our goal is to
provide the current, legally correct images electronically for all
government agencies without interfering with their preferred design or
workflow procedures. "
Web Forms Has Features to Help the User
Through a development partnership with Intercon Associates in
Rochester, New York, this vision became reality in the Spring of
1998. The GSA Web Forms site includes free DocNet TM web-fill software
developed by Intercon which can be downloaded once and launched as a
helper application each time a form is chosen to view or fill. John
C. Paroda, President, Intercon stated, "We took on a challenge by
government and delivered. We feel very proud that our small business
can make an impact on decreasing government costs and help to
streamline work processes."
Those unfamiliar with official form titles or numbers can use the
Query Screen to search by Agency, by keyword in the title, or by form
type (i.e. personnel, legal, budget and appropriations) to obtain a
listing of all forms matching the criteria selected. Additional forms
being added daily to the repository.
Jan Wendler, in GSA's Office of Communications, said "It is not
unusual to receive a call from a customer requesting an urgently
needed form to meet a contracting deadline. I can now map the fields
and make the forms available on the web within minutes rather than
weeks. Where electronic images are not available, I can scan the
existing paper forms and quickly map them as well."
People Love It
Response from federal agencies and the public has been overwhelmingly
positive. GSA has received numerous e-mail letters from federal
employees and the general public. "They report time savings on key
projects and express appreciation for the convenience of accessing
these documents," Wendler said. "For example, a recent message from
Juanita Garretson, a SEE (Senior Environmental Employment) Program
Enrollee in support of the EPA, indicated "During our end-of-year
crunch we downloaded these forms to desktops throughout the agency and
made use of the quick forms fill-in capabilities. It was a tremendous
help to us during a time of extremely tight deadlines."
Continued enhancements by GSA will include XML data field tagging,
which will make it possible to compile and/or transmit information and
data from the forms absent the form image itself. For example, a
customer survey could be conducted over the Internet and data easily
extracted to a database for marketing and customer service
requirements. XML is quickly gaining recognition as the industry
standard for data handling on the Internet.
Attention Federal Agencies:
Young believes that a governmentwide site for all federal forms with
related regulations and instructions (in simple language) is one way
to help meet the Vice President's goal of interagency colaboration to
achieve It solutions to serve the public better. "Customers constantly
express frustration that there is no one location to search for
documents. They spend hours jumping from site to site hitting
roadblock after roadblock," Young said that cost savings in the
millions of dollars could clearly be realized based on the following
factors:
For More Information
You can obtain more information on this project from:
Intercon Associates: |
Access
America E-Gov E-Zine Partners
Chief Information Officers Council
National Partnership for Reinventing Government
Federal Communicators Network