How to manage mammoth amounts of paper, increase efficiency and save manpower and costs
Artikel von Crispin Colson, Berater bei PCI PROJECT CONSULT International, London.
At a recent government show Douglas Alexander, the newly appointed e-Government Minister, Cabinet Office, underlined the key role that e-Government has to play in the Government’s reform programme. He reported that over half of the 520 central government services are now e-enabled and nearly three-quarters are forecast to be available by the end of the year. Alexander cited examples whereby the public can already submit self-assessment tax returns online, or book and pay for a driving theory test. Consumers and small businesses that had gained judgement for money owing can even summon bailiffs online. Anyone claiming up to £100,000 will be able to issue a claim through the Court Service, using the Money Claim Online website.
Business intelligence specialist Cognos recently reported that 79% of councils are confident they will hit the UK Online deadline the remainder do not anticipate being ready or are still unsure. Those councils and government agencies, which have made the change, are already reaping tangible benefits internally and externally as these examples show.
EDM benefits Arun District Council
Arun District Council covering 85 square miles is the largest district authority within West Sussex. Arun’s main service for Revenues and Benefits department issues 65,500 Council Tax bills, 4,000 Business Rate bills and has a benefits caseload of 10,000. To manage this mammoth amount of paperwork, Arun introduced an EDM system. Now all Revenues & Benefits staff use the EDM system for managing both electronic and paper-based documents and for Workflow.
Arun’s scanning team scans and indexes all Revenues and Benefits documents into the EDM system. All indexing criteria are verified using information downloaded from Arun’s LoGoS Revenues & Benefits system. This prevents indexing errors and invalid data being entered to categorise and file the electronic documents. The extensive use of Barcodes printed on system-generated forms has dramatically speeded up the indexing process. Two-way integration with system has been developed to enable users to view document images via the sytems screens This saves the users time, as there is no need to manually input the document attributes in order to look up the records held on the EDM system.
When a Council Tax or Benefit Review Form is indexed into the system, the data is validated and required index keys are exported to a text file, which is then used to automatically update the system to confirm the Review Form has been returned. Lotus WordPro templates have been created and used within the workflow. The system sends related property and tenant information into the WordPro template, saving users considerable time, as there is no need to manually type in the contact details. Additional features currently being developed at Arun, include a 'Grab' feature which links all documents for a case in workflow and allows them all to be worked on at once.
Arun District Council’s Revenues & Benefits Manager, Paul Askew sees the rolling out of the document management system to other departments as an important part of its IEG document. “The merits of the system within Revenues and Benefits have been noted elsewhere in the council and work will be carried out this year to look at using EDM within other departments.” Tina McKeown Revenues & Benefits Assistant Manager adds, The EDM system has encouraged effective working arrangements and vastly improved accuracy on performance management, as well as the reduction of filing and storing years of paperwork.”
Accounts go back to school at Staffordshire County Council
Staffordshire County Council’s (SCC) Education Department needed a cost-effective and efficient means to communicate with its 413 schools and 3 referral units. With over 20,000 staff including teachers, administrative workers, road engineers, scientists, crossing patrol wardens, social workers and librarians SCC is the county’s biggest employer, administering to the needs of its 800,000 population. The education authority employs approximately 6,000 teachers in over 400 schools around the county for some 130,000 primary, middle and secondary school pupils, and 2,000 pupils in special schools and units.
SCC’s Education Department provides each school with regular financial information to enable them to accurately monitor their budgets ranging from £5 Million down to £100,000. Although each school has its own financial information system, schools need to reconcile their systems with the formal books of account held by the local authority. A decision was made early on by SCC that it was incumbent on the authority to provide detailed information that the schools could rely on and be reassured by. Originally, distribution of this financial information was in the form of paper printouts of tabulations from the SCC’s Educational Department Finance Unit, which would be posted out on a monthly basis. This often bulky and unwieldy hard copy that was difficult to work with and the Education Department was generating 500,000 sheets of paper a year.
To address this problem, the council opted for the 32-bit Browser based version solution. It was immediately taken up by SCC and offered to schools so that they can securely log on to the SCC Intranet and access their own financial information within seconds of it being uploaded from the Education Department. No additional hardware is required as all the schools need is a browser and Internet access. Dave Cheeseman SCC’s Principal Education Officer comments, “We believe that once a school becomes familiar with Intranet technology then there will be no need to print out a large number of documents, they will merely be routed using the schools’ own internal networks.” (CC)
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