This year’s 10th Winter Paralympic Games (www.paralympic.org) are a milestone of achievement, reflecting the belief in success against all odds.  The Paralympics hold valuable lessons for people in general, and for agencies as they fight uphill battles to enact changes in how they do business in response to President Obama’s goals for government transformation.  Successful transformation requires business leaders who:

• won’t take ‘no’ for an answer; knows no boundaries
• are enticed by possibility, not defeated by challenge
• choose to swim upstream; believe success is worth the struggle 

The call for reform
On communicating his technology goals, Obama stated that our government is predicted to be a major growth sector for enterprise content management (ECM) in 2010; powerful software & corresponding hardware to provide tools to collect, connect, and manage information and leverage its usefulness.  Coordinating information electronically will support current goals to:

• drive economic growth
• make business more transparent
• demonstrate accountability

ECM ensures that the right people have access to the information they need to work efficiently.  By eliminating the tedious search for information and enabling appropriate desktop access,  staff can invest more time in meaningful work, increasing productivity. 

The agency challenges
When discussing healthcare, gov’t contracts, purchasing, veteran services, homeland security, schools, libraries or public transportation,  access to accurate, relevant and complete information is vital.  Poor connectivity leads to medical debacles, uninformed purchasing (such as post-Katrina), security threats & more.  Web-based, integrated ECM enables centralized access to digital information, online forms, scans, emails, images, faxes, and more,  and authorized persons from other agencies gain access for informed and unified decision making. 

Data housed in accounting,  ERP & other systems result in silos, obstructing informed decision making by restricting its use elsewhere.  ECM breaks down the walls ,  enabling authorized persons to access what’s needed, and make faster, smarter decisions.

Help agencies to succeed
ECM enables permission-based, centralized access to all of an agency’s digital documents, helping them to: 

1 Drive efficient growth
2 Reduce expenses

A. Trim paper-related expenses with scanners and barcode readers. Reduce waste from paper, toner, shipping, postage, storage, heating, data entry clerks, and more.  Many agencies cut paper-related costs by 50 – 90% with front-end document scanning.  As agencies migrate toward green business, transform paper-related sales into hardware, software, and services revenue. 

B. Eliminate documents lost in transit (and the high costs of re-creating them). By adding ECM software to MFPs, copiers, and scanner capabilities, agency documents can be thoroughly indexed and appropriately stored so everyone can find the information they need later.  A strong ECM system should offer detailed indexing to ensure 100% successful retrieval, every time.

C. Manage growth cost effectively by streamlining processing, mechanizing tedious tasks, & increasing productivity. ECM helps agencies to do more work, faster, and achieve more without adding staff, stretching your tax dollars.

Make business sustainable

A. Promote sustainable business while eliminating paper costs by promoting web-based forms.  In addition to reducing paper, copying, postage and storage costs, digital content becomes instantly useful as it’s created. 

B. Enable self-service public access to information, ending trips, calls, and shipping for documents requested by the public.  Integrating ECM with agency websites and portals lets citizens submit requests and access authorized files 24/7.  Accessibility improves; staff migrates to more meaningful work; admin costs plummet.

Use information intelligently
A. Integrate ECM with client agencies’ diverse information systems.  Are documents keyed and re-keyed, scanned  or copied many times for multiple departments? Increase productivity by making electronic data centrally accessible.

Facilitate Transparency
Federal and state laws are demanding increased government transparency.  With few exceptions, the public can request access to public records, and has the right to expect a timely and complete response.  Manual search is time consuming and costly.  Penalties for failure to comply with requests on a timely basis are forcing many agencies to adopt ECM to mitigate risk. 

ECM enables cost-effective compliance with the:

A. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) – citizens can request (in writing) access to any records held by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  ECM helps authorized agencies to track, manage, and respond to incoming requests promptly.  Desktop access to documentation eliminates callbacks and other delays, facilitating compliance as well as transparency. Web-acessible eForms expedite requests for information. Online integration with agency portals facilitates self-service access to public information. 

B. Open Records & Right-to-Know laws - based on FOIA; Varies state to state.

ECM is an ‘insurance policy’ against misfiled, damaged, waylaid, or lost information.  Files are located quickly, responses are prompt, and penalties are avoided.

Demonstrate Accountability
A. Requesting documents – Proactive disclosure helps agencies avoid costly penalties.  Many studies show staffs unable to locate requested documents 20-40% of the time.  As electronic documents become the standard, patience for irretrievability will vanish.  ECM ends missing files.

B. Managing compliance and facilitating audits – Whether agencies are subject to HIPAA, FERPA, or other regulations, ECM ensures files are accessed only by authorized persons, following agency rules.  Regulatory changes are addressed promptly by changing the business rules in ECM.  Detailed electronic records prove compliance with an agency’s internal controls.

Create new opportunities
Don’t feel threatened or discouraged as your world goes digital.  Both you and your clients benefit tremendously in the long term:

• Paper is streamlined to where necessary, keeping costs manageable

• Agencies emerge cost-efficient, able to do more with tax dollars

• Services revenue opportunities increase as agencies experience ROI from ECM projects and expand their vision for digital efficiency

Like the Paralympic athletes, the transformation means extending your boundaries, embracing opportunity,  knowing the rewards will be worth the effort.  Now is the time to help government clients to transform their business with ECM.  Become the knowledgeable resource they need, and success will be yours.  Visit www.whitehouse.gov

Laurel Sanders is the director of public relations and communications for Optical Image Technology.  For information about the company’s award-winning suite of DocFinity software, visit www.docfinity.com or contact info@docfinity.com.