ECM helps promote public health

Every day, the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) handles hundreds of contracts, including federal grants and contracts with suppliers. The SFDPH realized it needed to replace the enormous paper trails it was generating with a clear, paperless, enforceable workflow process for contract approval.

"The previous contract system created mountains of paperwork," says Donna Childers, IS manager. The system was deemed environmentally unfriendly, costly and slow because documents needed to be physically transported from office to office. The paper-based system also made conducting audits difficult. With documents stored in various places, finding every piece of paper associated with a given contract was nearly impossible. Contract approvals took anywhere from six weeks to a year.

The first step to speed the process was to standardize numerous forms from agencies citywide. Next, SFDPH employees needed immediate access to view, edit and approve contracts electronically. To meet both objectives, the department created a central repository to store standardized contract information and historical records and to make that information accessible electronically to all city and county departments.

The lack of a clear process for approving contracts also hampered the department's efficiency. "SFDPH needed to implement a set of standardized, defined steps that every contract will go through," Childers says. "In addition to defining a structured process, the SFDPH needed a solution to ensure that contract officers followed the correct process and that everyone involved was empowered to execute the tasks associated with their roles."

To automate the contract approval process, the department selected Documentum’s ECM platform, based on its scalability, workflow integration and content management capabilities. The department now has a complete system for managing contract content and approvals among its numerous offices, and the entire process is paperless.

Tracking, version control and virtual document features of the solution provide auditors with quick access to a contract's history. "We not only track the changes that were made and by whom, but we can provide auditors with the date and time those changes were made," says Childers.

The new system also provides role-based security for all personnel handling contracts, ensuring that only the right personnel have access to the right content, and all approvals can be performed online with electronic signatures, according to a recent press release from Documentum.

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