In the late nineties, the UK Government established a policy that aimed to have all local and central government services web-enabled by 2005. For the Inland Revenue (IR), this meant offering submission mechanisms for organisations wishing to provide tax returns over the Internet. For the 400 or so software developers that provide payroll and financial applications to UK businesses, this meant developing XML interfaces to allow their products to link to the IR's systems.

In developing and subsequently maintaining the IR's Filing by Internet (FBI) service, DecisionSoft has delivered three critical elements of functionality: metadata management; publication of controlled documentation; and provision of validation services. Each of these was critical to the delivery of the FBI service. Without them, a development process which involved a wide variety of parties both within and outside of the Inland Revenue would have been impossible to manage to a timely conclusion.