Railroad Retirement Board implements imaging and workflow
The Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) administers retirement-survivor and unemployment-sickness benefits for the nation's railroad workers and their families under the Railroad Retirement and Railroad Unemployment Insurance Acts.
In 1998, the RRB provided approximately $8.2 billion in benefits to over 772,000 beneficiaries. The RRB creates approximately 12,000 new paper-based claim folders each year, and 150,000 claim folders are accessed for adjustment or inquiry.
The benefit program is nearing completion of its migration from this paper claim folder system. This paper-based system created an increasing number of customer service delays while the cost to manage a paper-based system continued to grow.
The RRB file bank consists of over 1.3 million folders maintained in an off-site storage facility managed under contract with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)'s Federal Records Center.
"With the paper-based folder system, we have to pay a fee for each folder retrieved, each folder re-filed, a messenger service fee for the 100 million documents stored at the facility, as well as square footage charges," said, Ken Zoll, chief of systems development at the RRB. "It has become exceedingly expensive and time consuming."
While the RRB did have an imaging system in place, an upgrade was sought that could interface with the Social Security Administration's imaging and workflow system, due to the significant benefit information and processing exchanges between the two agencies. However, the legacy system contained over one million images.
The RRB selected Eastman Software's Federal Group, now part of Vredenburg, to provide the solution. The system uses Kodak 3500 scanners, a Hewlett-Packard 80-EX optical jukebox, high-performance workstations with 21" high-resolution Hitachi monitors, with Microsoft NT and SQL servers.
"Eastman Software/Vredenburg provided a cost-effective solution to meet our document imaging and workflow requirements," said Zoll. "Several of the other final vendors we looked at also offered comprehensive solutions, however these required additional costs for customization to ensure interoperability with the Social Security Administration system that was already in place."
"One of our primary focuses was to use out-of-the-box technology so we could minimize problems with future product enhancements and upgrades," said Zoll.
The conversion of nearly one million images, (approximately six years of documents), from the old system to the new was completed in July 1999.
In September 1999, with the sickness benefits replacement system up and running, the RRB shifted its focus to the retirement folder process and purchased an additional 150-seat user license to begin the imaging of the retirement-survivor documents. In addition, additional scanners, servers and jukeboxes were purchased and installed for this expanded system.
The RRB issues retirement-survivor checks to close to 900,000 individuals every month and maintains records for 250,000 active employees. "The biggest savings we will see by implementing the document imaging and workflow system will be in storage and retrieval fees as well as in reduced labor costs," said Zoll. "Within three years the benefits-costs analysis projected that annual savings will exceed one million dollars."