Implementing workflow
 
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A large percentage of business documents are forms such as travel vouchers, tax forms, and purchase requisitions. More than 90% of all these forms require one approval signature; probably half of them require at least two. A tremendous amount of corporate spending goes into the printing, processing and routing of paper forms.
Of course, many organizations have deployed workflow solutions, ranging from low end "routing slips" or electronic forms from companies like JetForm, up to sophisticated applications with conditional logic and database integration, such as FileNet, KeyFile, or Lotus Notes.
Security and interoperability have been a concern. In order to get past the "audit police" a workflow champion has to prove that his/her workflow system is secure. To get a secure workflow system, with digital signatures on the forms and audit controls, however, has generally required a proprietary capability. Secure e-mail is still in its infancy, and there's no standard way to put digital signatures on HTML documents. In addition, some of the more advanced workflow systems, like Lotus Notes, use proprietary Certificate structures and forms based digital signatures.
With an increasing need to communicate between enterprises, as well as within, the need for security has been a stumbling block to interoperability. Today, however, the World Wide Web standards organization is looking at web-based forms, Lotus Notes is moving to support standard secure MIME (S/MIME) and X.509 Certificates, and PKI vendor Entrust is partnering with JetForm to bring X.509 based signatures to the workflow world. Interoperability may be just around the corner, and with it, a greatly increased ability to reduce the paper crush.
Secure Internet-based workflow solutions provide the government with the ability to reduce high costs significantly, decrease paper work and speed processing cycle times. With such solutions, approvers can electronically "sign" and process forms easily and securely by attaching their digital signature to an e-form for quick routing and processing through the Internet.
Web revives workflow:
A look at Web-enabled workflow apps. Network World Fusion, 4/20/98.
More on the JetForm/Entrust deal,
from JetForm
SWAP Working Group:
IETF working group developing a Simple Workflow Interoperability Protocol.
