Housing Authority of the County of Alameda Case Study:

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1 Housing Authority of the County of Alameda Case Study: Bringing order to reams of office files through ECM Technologies CHALLENGE The Housing Authority of the County of Alameda (HACA), created in 1968, provides rental assistance to more than 7,000 low income households through its Section 8 and Affordable Housing programs. In 2007, Electronic Image Designers, Inc. (EID) was selected to assist HACA with a review of its manual processes and to make recommendations regarding improving its ability to manage information throughout the organization. HACA recognized they needed to implement some form of electronic document/content technologies, and needed to ensure that whatever technology was selected, that it be implemented successfully while ensuring the end-result would address their current storage problems and streamline the business process. The issue associated with the business process was directly related to the user s ability to find current client documents. With the massive overload of paper, the users designed a clever manual process to ensure work was completed as required. This approach required files to be kept at the case worker s desk, but invariably, documents would be misplaced. Over time, this process resulted in document duplication and/or staff unable to quickly locate files to complete a time-sensitive request. The first step for HACA was to have the Information Systems Manager, Jim McRoberts, and the Deputy Director of Operations, Tom Makin, begin researching how other housing authorities implemented electronic document/content management technologies. As this management team began their research, several things became evident: Other organizations had attempted to implement these technologies, but they had mixed results. There were many product suppliers whose products provided a wide range of functionality and capabilities, but it was unclear exactly what technology was needed. It was important for HACA to evaluate the current cost of conducting business with the potential cost of the technology and return on the overall investment. HACA began evaluating various consulting organizations, and determined this was a critical path to HACA s success. The consulting team needed extensive experience executing the operational assessment, but also in-depth experience working with organizations in a vendor-neutral scenario through all project phases, from rollout to production. Another critical task for the consulting team was direct experience with developing industry standards and guidelines, ensuring HACA would take full advantage of high level industry acceptance and reducing overall project risk.

2 Upon evaluation completion, the consulting team from EID was selected. EID is a vendor-neutral consulting company with decades of experience in the content management field where they help clients identify and assess the issues, work with them to develop strategic approaches to solve the issues and provide oversight of the vendor selected to implement the ECM solutions. When the EID team began the process and operational review, a few things became very evident: HACA had literally run out of physical space to house and manage their current paper files. Shelving units were densely packed with multiple client volumes of documents making it almost impossible to slide files in or out. When EID met with department management, Housing Assistance and Housing Management Manager Mary Rizzo- Shuman and Housing Assistance and Family Services Manager Sharon DeCray, it became clear that HACA faced two critical issues: Getting the hardcopies under control in an electronic library Automating manual processes to reduce the time required to complete the review of annual and interim examinations. As is often the case when organizations pre-date the current document management and workflow technologies, many processes were being completed manually, causing a significant amount of time spent locating files and documents and/or manually routing them to obtain the appropriate approvals. While there was a centralized document filing system, that system became unruly and difficult to use. Often when files were not on the shelves, s were deployed to locate them in the hopes of rapid retrieval. Many times those hopes were dashed after a few days, so document re-creation was the answer. This adversely impacted daily workflow and productivity, which prevented HACA from quickly and accurately answering questions from clients about the status of their housing assistance. Specific issues Limited ability to gather, integrate and analyze decision critical information in a timely manner Ever-increasing creation of paper records stored was outpacing the physical space and consuming resources to manage the paper system Electronic forms were printed then filled out manually and copied, with multiple copies created and routed as a means of entering notes and comments Incoming information and existing files were not well-tracked. Determining the location of a file was difficult and time consuming, and when found, there was no way to determine if it was complete Documents were manually routed for processing Status of "in-process" work documents was determined by contacting other staff who might have the document or information about the status There was no disaster recovery system for the paper files There were no formal guidelines as to how documents were to be stored, with program staff left to decide on their own which documents were to be kept and which were to be shredded. Ensuring security of confidential and personally identifiable information. Staff spent hours gathering information for auditors

3 SOLUTION In 2007, HACA reached a point where they could no longer continue storing hardcopy files in their office. With EID s help, HACA employed a multi-phase approach to implement Enterprise Content Management (ECM) following various industry standards including AIIM ARP 1 and other standards and best practices. The first step for the team was to prepare a detailed process baseline which documented the entire process of conducting business. As this process baseline was developed, the team identified relevant technologies that would benefit HACA along with the anticipated technology cost versus the cost of performing the work manually. This return on investment review resulted and identified several aspects of current ECM technologies including: Document Imaging Optical Character Recognition (OCR) Workflow Document/library services Forms processing Security The EID team developed an RFP for HACA detailing all the technical requirements necessary to address the issues encountered by HACA. After a formal selection process, NEKO Industries, a Hyland OnBase integrator, was selected to provide the technology design and configuration expertise. The NEKO team began their information collection activities and reviewed both the current process baseline documentation and desired goals. Working closely with the user management team led by Mary Rizzo-Shuman and Sharon DeCray, they prepared a detailed design for the anticipated ECM solution. As a first step, HACA developed its document imaging, forms management, and document storage capabilities. This allowed staff members to appreciate and use the electronic version of the files. Once that phase was completed and adopted by staff members, HACA added production workflow and document/library services. This approach has led to a successful implementation meeting and exceeding the goals of the project. Neko also developed a Re-examination Packet that would gather information on a Section 8 client such as live-in aide, fulltime student, special needs, etc. from the existing housing software database and create a custom package made up of standard and custom forms according to each client s requirements for their annual re-exam. As the barcoded packets are printed for mailing to clients, a Neko custom program creates an electronic package document listing of all forms mailed to the client as well as the date of mailing. The electronic packages post to the assigned staff member s workflow immediately, notifying them of each re-exam required for the current period. As the barcoded documents are returned from clients, they are scanned and indexed to the client s electronic folder as well as immediately updating staff s workflow with the date the document was returned. Completed documents can be opened electronically and reviewed from the staff member s workflow. Reexam packets and workflow have made significant gains in productivity (see Figure 1). The re-exam solution from OnBase has made us more productive. It used to take two or three people working for a week every month to just prepare the packets. Now, we have it finished in a few hours. - Mary Rizzo Shuman, Housing Assistance and Housing Management Manager Some of our workflow improvements are pure productivity improvements. - Jim McRoberts (Information Technology Manager) The greatest ECM gain for me is that I can more readily audit files and can respond to callers while they are still on the line, thereby eliminating return phone calls. - Sharon DeCray (Housing Assistance and Family Services

4 Figure 1 The solution enabled HACA to: Ensure that all records (documents and files) are complete, accurate, secure and readily accessible to staff when and where required. Discontinue the practice of staff keeping multiple copies at their desks. Establish tracking, accountability and automated document routing for improved processing. Provide multi-user and simultaneous access to documents along with parallel review & processing. Ensure that information contained in mission-critical files is recoverable following a disaster. Store information in a non-alterable format in conformity with the ANSI/ISO/AIIM standards for maintaining a trusted repository. Reduce staff time to find and make copies of lost or misplaced documents. Reduce increasing space requirements for paper document storage. Provide an operational infrastructure with flexibility to permit improvement of business processes. Rapidly provide auditors with up-to-date and accurate housing documents for review.

5 FIVE YEARS LATER Because HACA committed to developing Workflow as well as ECM, it now sees more and more opportunities to manage documents and data more efficiently than ever before. For example, one important feature of HUD s Housing Choice Voucher program is the ability of voucher holders to move to another location and still preserve their subsidy. HUD calls this Portability. Currently, HACA has over 1,600 vouchers holders that have ported to Alameda County from another housing authority that also has an ECM system. As a result, HACA must pay the subsidy to the landlord and then bill the sending housing authority for reimbursement. And to be compliant with HUD regulations, reams of supporting documents would be printed and express mailed to the sending housing authority weekly to expedite payments. The amount of time and money spent on processing, printing and mailing these documents was substantial. The ECM/Workflow capabilities changed all that! Now, all documents required for Portability are generated by the ECM system and routed via workflow to the appropriate program and finance staff members to complete the review. Then with some programing help from Neko, all documents are converted to TIFF format and saved to an FTP site with a file name that is the index for the sending housing authority s ECM system. Once a day, the sending housing authority sweeps the documents from the FTP site to their ECM system and routes them via the filename/index to their staff person handling Portability payments. HACA has also used ECM/Workflow for other projects, such as outsourcing partial re-exam processing that allowed third party vendors to seamlessly use its ECM/Workflow system to help HACA during heavy workload periods. And HACA is currently completing an ECM/Workflow enhancement to streamline the re-exam process that will decrease staff re-exam processing time by 50% for most annual re-exams.

6 About AIIM AIIM ( has been an advocate and supporter of information professionals for nearly 70 years. The association mission is to ensure that information professionals understand the current and future challenges of managing information assets in an era of social, mobile, cloud and big data. Founded in 1943, AIIM builds on a strong heritage of research and member service. Today, AIIM is a global, non-profit organization that provides independent research, education and certification programs to information professionals. AIIM represents the entire information management community, with programs and content for practitioners, technology suppliers, integrators and consultants. About AIIM Standards AIIM has been an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited standards development organization for nearly30 years. The mission of the AIIM Standards Program ( is to drive the development and adoption of standards and best practices for managing information and to promote the longterm growth and sustainability of the information management industry while providing value to AIIM and its constituents.