Brad Smith, manager of the Electronic Grants Pilot Project, has been testing products but said he's concentrating on packaged integration services coming into the World Wide Web marketplace. Active Software Inc. of Santa Clara, Calif., makes the Active Web software that Smith's project is testing in conjunction with 200 state governments, universities, and nonprofit and other organizations that apply for federal grants.
Applicants can add or update information to the test database in real time.
Smith's group also is building digital signature and encryption capabilities into smart cards that grant applicants will use to sign their electronic submissions and encrypt sensitive information. Testing the competition After testing several card schemes this month and finding some could not do what they promised, the group has yet to make a final product selection. But Smith said he still expects to have something to demonstrate in October. The electronic grants project received seed funds from the Government Information Technology Services Board and the Federal Public-Key Infrastructure Steering Committee. Fifty-five organizations at 18 agencies award federal grants and could benefit from electronic data interchange, Smith said.