Documents managed

LIKE MANY AGENCIES at the end of thelast century, the Health and HumanServices Department was looking to digout of paper-driven business processes thathampered productivity and the ability toexchange information.Five years ago, senior IT managers atHHS deployed a document-managementsystem that transformed a paper-drivenprocedure with multiple recordkeepingand reporting functions into a simpler andmore efficient workflow and paperless system.The department's solution is nowbeing used by other agencies, too.Under the Paperwork Reduction Act of1995, agencies are required to obtain Officeof Management and Budget approval forcollecting information from the public. Beforethe advent of the Information CollectionRequest, Review and Approval System(ICRAS), the process was complex andlabor-intensive.HHS' aim from the outset back in 1999when it conducted a requirements analysisand proof of concept for the system was todevelop a centralized, electronic repositoryto store documents and related attachmentsand links that agency employeescould access via the Internet, letting themprepare, track, report on and administerthe information they collected.Now, ICRAS is used enterprisewide byHHS employees, and the system alsoworks across domains, extending intoOMB's RISC and OIRA Consolidated InformationSystem (ROCIS), which agenciesuse to electronically submit regulationsfor review and comment.'We store all documents needed for submission,'such as applications, attachments,consent forms, Federal Register notices,manuals, supporting statements and statisticalmethodologies in studies, said SeledaPerryman, ICRAS team lead and federalpaperwork reduction officer at HHS.'We haven't had a crash yet, and we havea lot of documents,' Perryman said.In May 2003, the Federal InformationCollection Interagency Taskforce managedby the Environmental Protection Agency' and including HHS and the Agriculture,Labor, Transportation and Treasurydepartments ' compared ICRAS withother agencies' systems in an independentverification and validation process andfound that ICRAS met platform and functionalrequirements as a governmentwidesystem.That validation and the success in electronicsubmissions to ROCIS led OMB toselect ICRAS as the sole partner system forfederal agencies to use to electronicallysubmit completed information collectionrequests to the agency. As a result, HHShas developed a service provider programthrough which agencies can enter into contractarrangements with HHS to useICRAS.For example, EPA is in its second year ofusing ICRAS for internal workflow, frominception of information collection toOMB approval and related collaborations.ICRAS is a front-end system to ROCISfor tracking and submitting informationcollectionrequests.'One of its strongest features is that it offersa far more user-friendly platform forentering data than using ROCIS directly,'Rick Westlund, an EPA clearance officer,said in a written testimonial. 'Anotherstrong feature is that ICRAS has e-mailalerts that inform the users in the workflowof the status of the ICR as it moves fromcreation to approval.'ICRAS is based on Oracle database software,Ruby on Rails, Java, ExtensibleMarkup Language and Web services technologies,which has enabled the integration of internaloperational, business process and workflowrequirements with legislative mandatesin a single information collaboration tool.Now in its fourth iteration, ICRAS providesad hoc and customized report generationfrom the lowest level of an organization up tothe executive level. Its features include anelimination of version control errors, moreefficient records management, automatice-mail alerting and error alerting.Ad hoc reporting is essential in the currentresults-oriented environment, said Terry Nicolosi,director of HHS' Office of ResourcesManagement and the department's chief informationofficer.'A lot of government now is about resultsdrivenor performance metrics,' she said. 'Ithink we had 700 collections that wentthrough ICRAS last year just for HHS,' whichsupported the agency's 13 operating divisions.'So instead of doing paper processes outsideand being able to collaborate online and get[information] over to OMB, they're also ableto report on the workload activity as it relatesto all of the operating divisions,' she added.HHS officials are hoping to work more closelywith OMB to encourage other agencies touse ICRAS.'I think ICRAS will be a good example forthe new administration to look at cost sharingacross agencies,' Nicolosi said.XXXSPLITXXX-The Health and Human ServicesDepartment's Information CollectionRequest, Review and Approval Systemuses Oracle database software, Rubyon Rails, Java, Extensible MarkupLanguage and Web services to integrateinternal operational, businessprocess and workflow requirementsinto a single collaboration system.By using those technologies, ICRAS4,the latest version, was developed as asecure system under a compressedschedule ' faster than it would havetaken to customize a commercial product' to meet both agency businessprocess needs and Office ofManagement and Budget submissionrequirements, HHS officials said.The charter system, ICRAS2,launched around 2000, introducedtime-dependent ownership withextensive levels of permissions androles built into a Web-based Oracledatabase.ICRAS3, launched in 2003, wasdeveloped to capture the new businessprocess changes proposed byOMB with the evolution of its owninformation system. By 2006, OMB'ssystem began accepting XML transmissionsfrom ICRAS4, a paperless,one-system entry.Ruby on Rails was selected becauseits flexible Web development frameworkand ease of use allow for a commonsystem that could be easily customizedto fit another unit's specificbusiness process requirements quicklyand seamlessly.