The federal government acquisition process has traditionally been paper-based, labor intensive and heavily dependent upon manual and repetitive data inputs from multiple functional communities. This environment restricts access to source data provided by various contractual, financial and logistic documents.

The DoD Paperless Contracting initiative was created in response to the DoD Comptroller's Management Reform Memorandum #2 of 21 May 1997 - Moving to a Paper-Free Contracting Process by January 1, 2000. The WAWF initiative is built on a foundation of full utilization of source data input - shared electronic documents, data and information.

WAWF is a paperless contracting application to eliminate paper from the receipt/acceptance and invoice/payments process of the contracting lifecycle.

WAWF provides the baseline technology for government vendors and authorized agency personnel to generate, capture and process receipt and payment related documentation via interactive web-based applications. Authorized agency users are notified of pending actions and are presented with a collection of documents required to process the contracting or financial action.

e-Invoicing

DoD has several tools available to help improve the receipt, management, processing, storage, retrieval and organization of documents required in the bill paying process. These tools include the

• Electronic Document Management (EDM) system
• Electronic Document Workflow (EDW) system
• Shared Data Warehouse (SDW) system
• Electronic Document Access (EDA) system
• Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) standards

Vendors are given three options to submit invoicing or receiving acceptance data

1. Internet
2. FTP (Secure FTP)
3. EDI

FTP and EDI are designed for batch processing of documents. Many vendors prefer to use the Internet due to ease of use and least amount of impact on the current business systems.

Security at Every Step

Document access and appropriate functions are controlled through the user registration process. Only authorized users will be able to access documents and records. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and strong passwords are used to verify user identification and PKI is utilized to digitally sign documents when required. Users may also use their Common Access Cards to process documents.

Data is encrypted while being sent from one processor to the next. Data is also protected at the database site. A hardware security module (HSM) tool protects the system from internal and external hackers.

Read about specific WAWF benefits

Wide Area Workflow Training

For more information contact Nick Wasilewski, 703-679-3295, nwasilewski@caci.com