Managing Mission-Critical Programs with ECM

Government agencies face a variety of challenges in managing content throughout its complete lifecycle. These challenges routinely include dealing with inefficient manual processes and paper-based activities, managing tremendous volumes of official documents and accelerating response times for both normal business activities and unpredicted crises. The concurrence of increased pressure to comply with paperwork reduction regulations and the need to justify information management projects require agencies to integrate and rationalize technology. In the government sector, enterprise content management (ECM) is evolving to include:

• Productive management and storage of records and information digitally;

• Authoring and publishing of documents for the Web in a variety of media formats; and

• Secure collaboration for sharing information and documents.

ECM for government agencies initially emerged as regulated records management to address compliance with a wide range of regulations around the world, such as the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) and Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2 regulations in the U.S., the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in Canada, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) in the U.K., the Document Management and Electronic Archiving (DOMEA®) concept in Germany and many more. A comprehensive ECM software platform provides universal content management and publishing capabilities that are shared by all solutions built upon it. Such comprehensive ECM platforms are increasingly being deployed by government agencies to manage all mission-critical programs and infrastructure within their organizations. Today, with high bandwidth wireless Internet access and new devices that facilitate global information sharing, the government sector has helped shape the growth and future of ECM. ECM is particularly well-suited for agencies interested in streamlining the collaboration required for materials acquisition and research and development within engineering programs, managing the facilities of geographically dispersed organizations, and effectively managing personnel and performance reviews.

Acquisition and Procurement for Research Programs

Numerous government initiatives—such as building an aircraft carrier or satellite system—rely heavily on the ability to identify, test and obtain vast collections of distinct technical components. Agencies need to streamline the collaborative efforts between engineering departments and suppliers to manufacture and acquire materials quickly and cost-effectively.

Such complex technical procurements can involve hundreds of national and international vendors, partners and suppliers. Traditional approaches to these procurements often mandated heavily paper-driven processes. Consider the paper trail involved in the acquisition cycle of complex programs: initiating procurement; performing a quality assurance test on the materials; initiating quote requests from suppliers; viewing bids; awarding the contract to a vendor; revising contracts; monitoring technical performance; and, ultimately, receiving deliverables. Supplementing the entire process is an increasing demand to store and audit the information associated with the process. Not surprisingly, the situation quickly becomes unmanageable.

As is often the case, business need and technology intersect to enact change within the accepted order of business. ECM solutions provide process management and workflow automation capabilities that enable agencies to streamline, accelerate and digitize processes like materials acquisition. A procurement order can be initiated directly from an engineer's workstation. This order starts an automated series of tasks beginning with a request for approval from the appropriate manager and assigning tasks for QA review and RFQ generation. All approvals occur electronically, with management receiving e-mail notifications informing them that approvals are pending.

Portal-based Collaborative Engineering

In addition to providing a portal-based approach to procurement that enables agencies to collaborate with suppliers during research, quoting and bidding, an ECM system provides engineers with an interface for effective and timely collaboration while meeting stringent deadlines. Procurement is, of course, but a single step in a program initiative. Collaborative engineering requirements span the entire engineering cycle, from requirements development, to creation of specifications and test plans, through design, manufacture and fulfillment. Government engineering organizations benefit by being able to:

• Streamline engineering procurement activities;

• Facilitate collaborative engineering activities;

• Integrate business and engineering information;

• Provide object-level security (roles-based);

• Support open systems standards for interoperability; and

• Scale to match organizational growth.

Rapid engineering procurement drastically reduces cycle time and costs. ECM solutions provide targeted functionality to address each of these individual stages.

At every stage in government programs, organizations need to ensure both the security and accessibility of information. Well-designed ECM solutions provide a role-based security model that ensures that the right people have the right level of access to the right information at the right time. Every document created and managed within the agency—including requirements documents, standard operating procedures, specifications, test plans, engineering documents, accounting documents, product information and more—must be secure.

Connecting People, Process and Information

Everything that happens within agencies can typically be described as a business process in which people must interact with information and with each other. Some processes, such as materials acquisition, are relatively easy to structure and automate, because each instance is much like the previous one. Other processes, such as correspondence management, are more difficult to structure, because a wide array of contributing factors make each interaction different. ECM supports both highly repeatable and ad-hoc processes. Multiple government solutions can be built on top of a single, comprehensive ECM platform. This unified approach enables key processes that span multiple departments to be managed from start to finish. In addition to workflow and process automation capabilities, an ECM platform provides a universal security model, a search and metadata service, records management and archiving capabilities, and document management functionality such as version control and auditing. Based on industry standards for interoperability, each of the different and sometimes divergent applications deployed within the agency can plug into the shared services of the ECM platform. ECM supports the automation of processes that integrate content and collaboration or, to put it another way, that connect people with information and each other. ECM brings together people, processes and information across every part of the organization. A comprehensive ECM platform supports the creation of multiple ECM solutions, each of which targets a specific business need, such as project collaboration, design, configuration management, procurement, administration or inventory control. The two-tiered structure of ECM enables agencies to deploy a wide range of solutions cost-effectively.

Military Base Administration Improvements

In an environment where the goal is to build and mentor people for success and promotions, timely performance reports for military officers and enlisted personnel are crucial. A number of military organizations have recognized the need for more effective performance documentation. Commanders endeavor to support and encourage servicemen and women through awards, decorations and promotions. Each such review generates a complete range of document and reports. Recent demands caused by force reductions and increased accountability issues have made the management of such documentation critical to personnel retention. However, paper-based performance reviews typically demand lengthy processing periods—sometimes up to a year. By implementing a unified content repository and automating approval processes using electronic forms, military organizations can reduce the performance review process significantly, in some cases by 90%.

An ECM solution enables administrative departments to automate the approval process associated with periodic performance reviews and ratings, and provides a consolidated place to store relevant documentation. Electronic forms functionality with integrated exception handling and data validation reduces the waste inherent in paper-based processes and ensures that all relevant information is electronically stored in the central content repository.

In addition to the documentation generated during performance reviews, military organizations must manage critical correspondence within program offices. An ECM solution provides suspense tracking capabilities that enable tracking, automated processing and management of task assignments, and ensures that orders are carried out. Associated correspondence is cataloged, assigned and monitored for follow-up by the appropriate individuals. All information is fully auditable long after tasks are completed. Organizations can quickly identify who did what, and when, and by whom it was authorized.

A Business Case for Success

By measuring improvements in processes, government agencies can easily identify the direct benefits that the deployment of an ECM solution can provide. Paperless processes translate into reduced cycle times. Consolidating applications into a centralized system means reduced costs. Better performance review management processes ensure more satisfied employees and improved productivity.

For government program professionals, ECM is a powerful strategy that can help agencies meet the goals of their mission and successfully execute programs that call for a more effective, secure method to create, maintain, search, distribute and share all types of content, including records, documents, digital media and even e-mail. At Open Text, we believe that the next great idea, the next breakthrough, the next innovation will come from the collected knowledge stored in—and the people connected by—an ECM system. For information about our ECM solutions for government, please visit Open Text ECM solutions.

To receive your copy of our book, "Enterprise Content Management: What You Need To Know," and to learn how you can begin solving critical government information management and business process issues with ECM today, please visit Open Text

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Open Text is the market leader in providing enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that bring together people, processes and information in global organizations. Throughout its history, Open Text has matched its tradition of innovation with a track record of financial strength and growth. Today, Open Text supports 20 million seats across 13,000 deployments in 114 countries and 12 languages worldwide. Open Text is one of KMWorld's "100 Companies that Matter in KM, 2005."