Record Management Reform, First Step to Open Government

Records management has been the focus of increasing attention in recent years. With “innovation” being the buzzword (often accompanied by “e-government” or “open-government”), mobile and web access not only involves a bunch of information on governmental bodies but something interactive, saving citizens time and worry. In addition, it is the point of application for proper records-management practices: If records-management policies and practices are not updated for the digital age, the surge in information could overwhelm state systems, leading to higher costs, lost records, longer cycle times, and double counting.

In November of 2011, the White House issued a memorandum directing agencies to reduce spending and focus on mission-critical functions. It announced:

Decades of technological advances create challenges and opportunities for state records management. […] We must address these challenges while using the opportunity to develop a 21st-century framework for the management of Government records. This framework will provide a foundation for open Government, leverage information to improve agency performance, and reduce unnecessary costs and burdens.

The Federal Government of Canada has also released its promised action plan on open government. The directive—which will identify the nature of information to be published as well as the timing, formats, and standards that departments will have to adopt—will be issued within the next 12 months.

The open government concept is fundamentally changing the way we live and solve age-old problems all over the globe. In an effort to be socially responsible and technologically advanced, the government is moving toward paperless and cloud-based solutions. But this praiseworthy path is accompanied by the almost eternal tasks of automating business processes, digitalizing archives, and providing unbeatable personal data protection and secure storage and disposal.

Auriga has been dealing with state projects for almost 10 years: in 2002, the company was approved by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as a government software solutions provider according to the multi-state ITS07 contract vehicle, and it developed the Public Access Property Viewing Application for the Massachusetts Department of Revenue. Since then, our engineers have worked on different projects involving business-process automation, records-management systems development, EDMS, workflow, and CRM systems development. Auriga’s professionalism and profound expertise have helped us to complete the most complex projects both efficiently and cost-effectively.

For example, Auriga participated in the implementation and deployment of the new EDMS for the administration of one of the regions of the Russian Federation. The EDMS system functionality includes the document workflow between several government agencies and the real-time processing of citizens’ claims and requests submitted online or via government clerks’ workplaces at government branch offices. Each claim/request creates appropriate document cards and cases and initiates a case-processing procedure.

The system contains modules for workflow automation, scanning, paper-document recognition, case-status tracking, e-mail and web-status notification, report generation, and secure document storage. Implemented functionality includes import capabilities from several legacy and archive systems into the unified EDMS. The implemented solution allows the optimizing of the work of over 1500 government employees in multiple locations.

For the last few years, Auriga has been involved in a comprehensive project concerned with the development and maintenance of a workflow-automation system for processing electronic patent claim forms based on the paper applications gathered from individuals and legal entities. The system allows entering and analyzing the claims, granting patents, and providing status-change notifications through the public web site. The data is kept encrypted in the system based on the CryptoPro electronic key exchange. The system generates electronic documents and is able to send e-mails and paper mail.

As part of the project, Auriga designed and implemented business workflows for processing documents at different levels of state administration (90+ business processes were identified, analyzed, and implemented in the system). A typical business workflow includes 15 internal departments and 2-3 months of calendar time. Auriga also integrated the system with multiple in-house legacy systems and performed data migration from all of the legacy systems into the new DMS.

An important part of our corporate and social responsibility is being part of the global changes and approaching the future with a transparent and effective government while providing citizens with the ability to communicate more openly with it. We are proud that we can offer our experience and ability to change the world. Please contact us for further details.