Managing A Database

I have a fairly ambitious client who would like to offload the management of intranet content to other individuals in the organization. For the project to be successful, the data management must be as painless as possible. Accordingly, the ideal interface for data input is Microsoft Word, as most users are extremely comfortable working with it.

I would like to be able to create word templates/forms which are dynamically populated with data from an database, then downloaded to the client PC. Once the data is updated, I would like the user to upload their files back to the server, which will in turn update its database and maintain an audit-trail of all changes.

Can this be done? I'm assuming that if I install Office on the server, it would be feasible using the office API, but I would love to be able to do this without office on the server.