From Legacy To Web the EZ Way

"What we do is provide front-end access to existing applications," says Keith Cooley, executive vice president for product development at EzGov. "We expose the functionality of the enterprise system in a consistent fashion, such as using a Web browser, so you can do new and interesting things for business-process automation."

The company developed several applications that make it easier for citizens to do business with their government. For example, Georgia and Illinois have launched pilot programs that allow new business owners to go online to the Small Business Administration (SBA) Web site and file forms electronically, without having to file separate forms between state and federal agencies and without having to re-key information in the forms. Every U.S.-based business is required to obtain a federal employer ID number, and EzGov's application is the Web front-end for this process.

"SBA drove the adoption of this application and it owns the larger process that is at the core of the app," says Doug Wait, CTO of EzGov. "They asked us to build the application so that the business owner can save time and not have to type in redundant information about their business. Where Web services make things less painful, it works." Residents of Georgia can renew their drivers' licenses over the Web or use an interactive voice-response telephone system, applications that the company also developed.

To make this all work, EzGov developed an applications framework, called FlexFoundation, that interacts with a wide variety of Web servers, applications servers, operating systems and databases. At its core is J2EE. The design makes it easier for government agencies to deploy apps more quickly and with less testing time.

"We are trying to have as broad a base as we can. We can run under Windows, interface with SQL Server and other databases, and work with any part of the Microsoft .Net solution that is presenting a Web-services application," Wait says. "And Microsoft's .Net can invoke parts of our services, too, to make things really interoperable." EzGov can handle a wide variety of applications and platforms, hiding them behind a modern Web interface in what's called a services-oriented architecture. "This is just a more effective way to build applications," Cooley says.

"We have found that governments would like to present a more citizen-oriented interface to their constituency. The problem is that what users think about as a single task--such as starting up a business--isn't a single task for the government, and requires visiting several different agencies to complete their paperwork. But when I go to these separate agencies, I end up giving them the same sort of information but placing it on different forms, because each agency has its own processes and systems. Using our services-oriented architecture means that the agencies don't have to change their systems," Cooley says.

The Customer Challenge
But don't think that EzGov has a, well, "easy" time with its clients. The company has found that cooperation comes with hard work among the agencies that have to share data. It's tough to convince the agencies that the Web-based applications will be secure, so the company deploys a wide variety of tools to demonstrate that its applications aren't exposing data to hackers. "We work...to make sure that we are building the functionality as secure as we can possibly make it," Wait says. "Security is a journey, not a destination, and we have to be vigilant and keep up to speed."