Winds of Change

Business rules management software helps agencies tame the onslaught of updates.

Finding the right property to house various federal agencies might not appear to be complicated, but realty specialists know differently. Not only does every agency have unique requirements, but every property leased by the federal government is subject to myriad rules governing its use.

Until recently, realty specialists at the General Services Administration used a complicated and often inaccurate system to find office space for agencies. When an agency's needs or federal regulations changed, notices were sent to the specialists via e-mail-so much varied information, in fact, that they often couldn't keep track of it. They usually ended up using outdated information.

For decades, agencies have managed complex decisions in much the same way-manually updating rapidly changing rules posted in aging legacy systems. That method increased the risk of error, led to confusion, wasted time and created obstacles for new employees in training.

A few forward-thinking agencies are turning to a new kind of system designed to standardize the process. Business rules management software enables quick and accurate changes to rules and regulations. The changes are automatically pretested to ensure they don't conflict with existing rules and then launched immediately throughout the system.

GSA is pilot-testing a system from business rules software vendor ILOG Inc. of Mountain View, Calif., to help realty specialists sort through frequently changing rules.

"A realty specialist looking for a lease in San Francisco, for example, will automatically bring up rules related to that area, such as seismic information," says project manager Arlene Graham. "If it's for the FBI, it might bring up requirements for bulletproof glass and other security rules, while if it's for the Social Security Administration, it might require a first-floor property accessible to the public." The system also will take into account governmentwide rules, such as the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act.

But business rules management software can do more than that, says David Straus, a senior vice president at Corticon Technologies Inc. of San Mateo, Calif. The firm provides the Corticon Decision Management System to the Federal Aviation Administration and other government agencies, as well as to commercial organizations.

"Our best estimate is that no more than 5 [percent] to 15 percent of the decisions in a given organization are automated-complex decisions like which vendor to pick for a contract to simple decisions like whether you should approve an employee's vacations. BRMS works well for all types of organizational business decisions," Straus says.

By automating these decisions, he says, agencies not only can reduce costs by removing manual labor from the business process but can become more agile and minimize risks.

"Say you have a government agency doing workers' compensation. When you approve a workers' compensation claim you shouldn't have approved, you spent money you didn't need to spend," says Straus. "And on the flip side, when you fail to approve claims you should have approved, you open up the organization to litigation. The goal is to consistently make decisions-and make them correctly."

Many agencies are jumping on the bandwagon, turning to business rules systems such as those from ILOG and Corticon, and Blaze Advisor from Fair Isaac Corp. of Minneapolis.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency uses business rules software to provide faster validation to insurance companies for flood insurance, while the District of Columbia is using it to determine eligibility for Medicaid coverage or services from the D.C. HealthCare Alliance. And Washington state's Department of Social and Health Services is using the software to automate its growing number of policies and procedures for payments to third-party service providers.

The Veterans Affairs Health Administration Center in Denver turned to business rules management software to help process more than 6 million claims annually for four government programs.

"The health care benefits we provide to veterans and their dependents are guaranteed based on legislation. As these programs evolve, the rules used to process these claims also must change," says Peter Muller, chief of project coordination at the VA's Denver center.

Business rules software will enable VA to streamline claims processing, Muller says. Rules will be maintained and re-viewed from a central database, he says, so policy experts can focus on interpreting claims processing rules rather than keeping the system up to date.

Pierre-Henri Clouin, market development director for the public sector at ILOG, sees a significant increase in awareness, with recent feelers from agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department.

"We started selling in the federal sector in 2002, and our initial approach was to go after any situation where we saw a functional need," he says. "But we're seeing people actually putting out requirements for BRMS instead of specifying their functional needs, which require us to try to fit BRMS into their situation."

Federal agencies' reliance on business rules and shared processes is burgeoning, leading to a natural growth in the software. "It's about greater agility, reducing operational costs and providing greater service to constituents with tightening budgets," Straus says.