DHHS manages correspondence with work management

The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is implementing a new work management system to maximize executives' time and expertise on fulfilling programs and policy missions.

To track correspondence and work processes, the Immediate Office of the Secretary currently uses a proprietary database which can't handle documents or images. Departmental correspondence, federal regulations, reports to Congress, memorandums, briefing materials and other documents must be hand-routed through other divisions and tracked manually, resulting in late responses, lost documents and wasted time.

With new government adoption of electronic records management standards, the DHHS and the Immediate Office of the Secretary needed a new approach to manage and store correspondence among its offices.

The new SWIFT (Strategic Work Information and Folder Transfer) system will convert many DHHS paper-based processes to electronic format, improving information flow between the Immediate Office of the Secretary and other government departments and the public. Prescience Systems Corporation built SWIFT on top of Microsoft Exchange and Windows NT using Eastman Software's document management and workflow technology.

The DHHS plans to introduce the system across the Immediate Office of the Secretary over the next several months. Other divisions will access SWIFT using Microsoft Outlook forms.

SWIFT will help standardize support of several business processes on Microsoft NT and Exchange, minimizing the costs of extensive user training and systems maintenance. Other benefits expected from the SWIFT system are reduced time and resource costs, as well as an overall seamless flow of the DHHS' business process