Air Force Forms are standardized e-forms of the US Air Force from PureEdge Solutions, Inc. (Victoria, British Columbia), which integrates with IBM’s (Armonk, NY) Content Manager. This PureEdge application is on an IBM WebSphere application server. These Air Force Forms are available to the authorized users around the world through the existing portals of Access Manager from IBM Tivoli Software. The Access Manager is an authenticated and authorized application to protect the security of Web-based resources.

The Air Force Forms of the US Air Force are interactive and assist the users. After the completion of the online form, XML (extensible markup language) metadata automatically tags the fields and the documents itself. The data is now more accessible for integration with back end applications. There is no need to print, sign, and rescan the documents. The Content Manger keeps track of the forms through out the process. It generates activity reports and maintains the forms as secure records.

Such online Air Force Forms of the US Air Force had their beginning in early 2003. It will take quite some time for the Air Force Departmental Publishing Office (AFDPO) to complete the automation of 17,000 forms. The AFPDO has a particular training procedure for new systems. It will utilize the same for educating the users.

NTIS distributes Air Force Forms of the US Air Force through a special arrangement. Around 3,000 such forms and publications are easily available. The GPEA (Government Paperwork Elimination Act) encourages such usage of electronic documents and e-signatures. More such opportunities are in the pipeline. Such government initiatives are increasing the demand for e-forms and workflow applications. A 700,000-user system is also in the process of implementation.

The US Air Force is finally doing away with forms. Instead, it will shift focus to maintain the Air Force Forms as per the content and transactions. The diverse categories in the forms were difficult to maintain and manage the system.