Leveraging skill sets for national defense
Canada's Department of National Defence (DND) will be able to locate and assign key personnel anywhere in the world, thanks to a new document management system.
In sending troops around the world, DND needs to identify and relocate people with particular skill sets and experience. That means accessing personnel files quickly and easily, a difficult task when dealing with labor-intensive paper files and microfiche. The DND's Human Resources Directorate was given six months to find a better way.
The result is the Personnel Electronic Records Management Information System (PERMIS), a document management and imaging system that will let 250 users access personnel files for all 61,000 Canadian Forces Regular and Supplementary Reserve personnel at National Capital Region Headquarters and on military bases.
Siemens Business Services LLC orchestrated the system's design and construction, with help from AMS Imaging and Data Repro Com (backfile conversion), EDS Canada (implementation) and Arimtec International (server hardware and onsite support).
After initial conversion and storage of over eight million paper and online microfiche records, PERMIS will electronically capture half a million document images per year -- an average of 2,500 pages per working day. PERMIS users will be able to query a database of personnel records for rank, skills and current location, retrieving any document in under four seconds. Future plans include accessing the images through a PeopleSoft system, as well as adding an additional 250 users.
Besides locating appropriate personnel for assignments, the system will help modernize and streamline administration for Canadian Forces personnel, according to Art Eggleton, Canada's Minister of National Defence. As an added bonus, the PERMIS project will also create 150 jobs in Ottawa's high-tech sector.
It will also save a lot of storage space for the DND's Human Resources Directorate, scheduled to move into new offices. By converting paper files and microfiches to electronic format, physical storage space will be reduced from 350 file cabinets' worth of information to a computer the size of a foot locker. Files can also be downloaded onto a CD for easy transport anywhere in the world.
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