Herndon, VA - March 5, 2002. The National Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age on February 26 unveiled the first work deliverable in a five-year initiative to use information technology to enhance public safety and help state and local governments and the nation’s construction industry to more effectively compete in the global economy.

The deliverable is a repository providing current contact and product information on software now available to state and local building regulatory officials to adopt, administer and enforce their building regulatory programs. The web-enabled listing was launched with an initial listing of over 30 software firms and their products. The software covers seven areas including: licensing, permitting, inspections, plan reviews, document imaging, code enforcement, and emergency response. The repository also lists jurisdictions that make current use of the software. In coming weeks the listing will be expanded to include other software products including those developed by state and local governments.

Located under the banner "Building Regulatory Software Listing" at the National Alliance portion of the NCSBCS website, www.ncsbcs.org, the software product repository will be followed later this spring with additional information concerning jurisdictions that make use of such software. The jurisdiction listing will afford state and local building regulatory officials candid insight into the effectiveness of various software products and a resource for jurisdictions to learn how to go about funding I.T. applications.

These deliverables are the first of several work products of the National Alliance’s Technology Task Force. Other deliverables include: models of best practices of effective uses of information technology to streamline the building regulatory process; the development of a minimum set of criteria (including interoperability) for hardware and software for use when obtaining or implementing new information systems, and an outline of the structure of a secure nationwide state-maintained database of building designs and evacuation plans for critical structures that emergency personnel can access at the sites of manmade or natural disasters.

Established by the National Alliance this past fall, the Technology Task Force is comprised of building regulatory officials and representatives from the information technology and construction community. The Task Force is charged with assembling, developing, and demonstrating a set of tools that jurisdictions and the construction industry can use to increase the effective use of information technology in the building regulatory process.

The Technology Task Force will continue its work on the above products at their next meeting to be held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on Tuesday and Wednesday, March 26 and 27. The Technology Task Force session will be followed on March 28 by the organizational meeting of the Alliance’s Planning and Coordinating Task Force. That session will be held at the offices of The Council for Excellence in Government in Washington, D.C.

The Planning and Coordinating Task Force was established by National Alliance last summer to provide private and public sector support for the adoption and use of Technology Task Force products by state and local governments and stimulating reform of their building regulatory processes.

The Technology Task Force’s late March meeting at NIST replaces the originally planned session, March 18-19 in San Jose, CA. The San Jose session has been postponed until later this spring. The March meeting was shifted from the West Coast to the Washington, D.C. area to accommodate greater participation by Task Force members and provide additional time for members to work on several of the Task Force’s deliverables. The primary focus of task force efforts is the completion of an outline of the proposed secure nationwide database infrastructure of building designs and evacuation plans.

The National Alliance for Building Regulatory Reform in the Digital Age is a public and private sector coalition of 30 organizations and governmental agencies formed in the summer of 2001. The objective of the Alliance is to use information technology to strengthen the nation’s economy, and enhance public safety by transforming the nation’s building regulatory process to enable our nation’s construction industry to build "faster, better, safer, and at less cost." Since its initiation last summer, the Alliance has been funded through in-kind services from member organizations and governmental agencies and grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. The National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, NCSBCS, provides secretariat services to the Alliance.

The February 26 unveiling of the software information repository developed by the Technology Task Force coincided with the winter meeting of the National Governors Association and a meeting of representatives of the Alliance with officials of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.