Connected Government
Fulfilling the Promise of E-Government

In an effort to improve service delivery to constituents, most e-government initiatives of the 1990s focused on making services accessible online. But online access only addresses the front end of service delivery. The backend requires the simplification, integration, streamlining and automation of complex information workflows—where the heavy lifting of service delivery occurs—which is increasingly difficult with multiple legacy systems and complex infrastructure.

Today, many successful e-government initiatives rely on collaborative case management (CCM), supported by a robust, consolidated information infrastructure, to help meet their service delivery goals. For government agencies at all levels, collaborative case management answers an urgent need to proactively manage the glut of unstructured information that IDC describes as the "exploding digital universe." CCM combines records, business process and content management with collaboration technologies to help organizations efficiently manage workflows and share structured and unstructured information.

Yesterday’s e-government is today’s "connected government," a comprehensive approach to building an information infrastructure that facilitates the agency-to-agency (A2A), agency-to-business (A2B) and agency-to-citizen (A2C) workflows upon which effective, citizen-centric service delivery depends.

How Does Connected Government Work?
Connected government enables government entities at all levels to efficiently collaborate internally and externally to accelerate processes, deliver services and assure compliance. It not only reduces paper form filing and in-person office visits (front end), but it eliminates duplicate data entry and bureaucracy-centered workflows (backend). It supports outcome-centered workflows, empowers self-service where feasible, integrates digital records and ensures compliance. Examples include:

• managing inbound correspondence;
• communicating outbound to millions of constituents;
• automating the grants process;
• conducting investigations; and
• accelerating licensing and permitting.

Barriers to Connected Government
Although connected government is a desired "endpoint," getting there can be daunting. Many governments still use methods, tools and processes—those of traditional case management—which pose five challenges to connected government:

Multiple content types. Today’s typical public sector case requires information types that cannot be accommodated in a hardcopy case file—such as audio and video files.

Paper-based, manual processes. Agencies continue to struggle with paper-based processes and their weaknesses: missing documents, procedural bottlenecks and process gaps where information is lost as case files are handed off.

Inefficient legacy systems. A single case often requires access to legacy systems that cannot share information. These systems also usually lack services such as workflow, versioning, tiered access control, retention policies and records management.

Difficult collaboration. When cases cross agency boundaries, information handoffs are usually incomplete. Case workers have no way to share knowledge or arrive at mutually agreeable ways to handle exceptions.

No visibility. Without dashboards that reveal case status, related cases, pending issues and other factors, case workers can’t manage from a position of informed control.

Enabling Connected Government
Collaborative case management enables government employees to set up workflows that assess, plan, perform, monitor and optimize the processes that improve service delivery. The technology building blocks of collaborative case management are collaborative interfaces, business process management, content management and records management.

Collaborative interfaces provide workspaces to foster information exchange, find data across government departments and external sources, ensure continuous visibility into case status and audit compliance with policies and regulations. Portals and email tools enhance accessibility, transparency and accountability.

Business process management (BPM) streamlines workflow by automatically scheduling and orchestrating tasks that contribute to the delivery of a service. It enables real-time modification of document workflow, content type, access authorization and business rules, such as those that enforce compliance with regulatory guidelines.

Enterprise content management (ECM) permits data from multiple sources in any file format to be retrieved and added to workflows, while maintaining control of versions, authors and access.

Records management replaces paper-based records with electronic logging, indexing, classifying, meta-tagging, transferring, retrieval and storage. Automated retention policies ensure that retention periods and storage resources are compliant with regulations.

Connected Government in Action
The challenge: Traditionally, the recruiting and enlistment process—called accessioning—has been an extremely manual, paper-intensive and time-consuming process. More than six million documents enter the accessioning process each year.

Documents were organized into hard copy packets and distributed to a recruit’s local processing center and training base, as well as battalion headquarters and the records center, where they were scanned and entered into a records management system.

The solution: To streamline accessioning, a Web-based, paperless process was introduced using EMC Documentum. Documentum met all the document management requirements and the Department of Defense 5015.2 certification for record-keeping.

Now, recruiters create a folder for the applicant in Documentum and workflow guides the creation, review and approval of the applicant’s packet. Workflow is used for quality control and exception-handling by personnel at headquarters, regional battalion, and local processing centers. All paper documents are scanned and stored in a Documentum repository.

The results: Counselors no longer have to wait for documents or worry about the potential for misplaced documents. They can instantly access the information that has been collected and see what is outstanding. The military estimates that the total amount of paperwork managed by the center will decrease by 75%. Online information also reduces or eliminates the cost of shipping information packets and manually processing mail.