Sensible Sourcing for Government Agencies

To many government agencies, documents and records act as currency. Government agencies are always under financial scrutiny and the management of that currency has become laden with expensive and time-consuming challenges. Preparation for on-the-spot audit projects can be incredibly time- consuming. Agencies handling citizens’ financial and healthcare information are subject to FACTA (Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act) and HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) regulations protecting privacy and accessibility, as well as Sunshine laws in some states, demanding the retention and public access of many forms of documents and
information pertaining to agency business and governance—including email, memos, instant messages and various tax records.

But, in the age of the Web and email communication, citizens’ expectations for the availability of information on a variety of government matters have been reset from waiting several weeks to being able to find information online instantaneously. The same holds true for the expectations of regulatory bodies when auditing financial records or personnel files. A month-long file room mining exercise is not considered fast enough for most courts and auditors these days. And, most courts and regulatory bodies assume that the bulk of the records needed are available in electronic form and should be “easy” to retrieve.

In the absence of clear guidance, or fear, many agencies choose to save everything. This can become very expensive and potentially legally problematic if those documents are mandated to be destroyed over time. Although the cost of storage media has been going down, the volume of documents and records that need to be retained, archived or preserved has escalated at logarithmic rates. This translates to housing larger storage farms, increased real estate costs and the need for more personnel. Without proper indexing and retrieval methods, keeping everything encourages the growth of duplicate records, makes searching for the correct records as time-consuming as walking through a file room and is just plain frustrating.

So what should be done first? The first thing to do is establish a solid record and document policy and procedure so this information can be effectively managed. Identify what departments or groups are responsible for managing the retention of agency information. Make sure that the way the information is categorized and eventually indexed makes sense for the lifecycle of the document and for the way people may logically want to access the information. Establish retention levels and destruction procedures stating who within a department has the explicit authority to authorize the destruction of documents or to move them from one storage media to another.

No matter what approach is taken, agencies need to get out of the mindset of just looking at what hardware and software they need to install in order to support their document retention needs. Looking outside one’s own staff for the skill set and resources that can handle large volumes of information in an organized way and deliver that information to both internal and external users doesn’t have to be a strictly “make or buy” software situation. In many cases, agencies don’t have the internal resources to spare to develop their own document repository and retention systems.

Buying software involves time, customization, the need for increased hardware storage and ongoing maintenance. Looking to experienced outside resources that can capture, maintain and retrieve documents and records on a cost-effective basis is not about just straight outsourcing. “Outsourcing” implies having resources in-house and sending the work outside. “Sensible sourcing” refers to a software-as-a-service model; no additional hardware, predictable pricing and allowing the resources that are in place to continue doing their work more efficiently and productively.

Sensible sourcing of document and business process management is what leading outsource companies provide. For example, docHarbor has developed efficient procedures, and can adapt to customers’ existing processes and long-term agency strategies. A reliable solution provider can deploy a system in weeks, host an agency solution on its premises or at your agency, or offer it under its brand or re-branded under your agency identity.

docHarbor Solutions

docHarbor’s hosted enterprise document and business process management solutions let government agencies use our resources for document preparation, scanning, indexing, management, storage and process management along with our professional services team and then access electronic documents linked to agency document applications in a high availability, online environment either via the Internet or private intranet for an affordable leasing fee. That means minimal up-front expense, no drain on in-house IT resources for maintenance and upgrades, and implementation in weeks, not months.

docHarbor Capture solves many agency document conversion problems—preparation, scanning, import and indexing. Converting data on paper, film or in various digital file formats into PDF images with embedded text, text files or into a database format, this expedites data migration from legacy applications and enables back-file conversions so that agency systems and data investments can be leveraged effectively.

docHarbor Online lets authorized users with Web browser and image viewing software access, route and output documents via email, print or fax from docHarbor’s central digital repository over the Internet or intranets. docHarbor Online provides full document management capabilities like document manipulation and version control, so employees can create and change documents in real time, accelerating government processes throughout the extended enterprise. It also features report mining, critical for analyzing vast data troves and extracting business intelligence that informs agency strategy.

docHarbor aims to tailor service to the clients’ business processes and proactively address problems along the way. All docHarbor Project Managers are Project Management Professional (PMP®) certified, and docHarbor conversion and document management professionals are CompTIA CDIA+ certified document management architects.