New ways of working in EDRMS

Transcription

1 New ways of working in EDRMS Objective Corporation Limited (OCL) have been meeting with a wide cross-section of state and territory government senior managers, ie Deputy Directors General, Executive Directors, Directors, and General Managers; in order to better understand the priorities and challenges across the various departments in relation to ICT reform and new ways of working. As a result of the information and perspectives obtained during the meetings and the challenges identified in various industry briefings, OCL have formed a view that the most pressing aspects for government in gaining maximum benefit from their ICT spend are: 1. Information sharing across and between agencies and departments, 2. Being able to access information from a trusted single source of the truth, 3. How to address the proliferation of legacy systems across government agencies, and 4. Having confidence in the security surrounding information management and information sharing. Clearly there are many constituent components to each of these challenges; however these four items represent the vast majority of discussion points and solution requirements for effective implementation of an ICT strategy. If government s in all jurisdictions were able to identify elegant and cost-effective solutions to these four challenges then that would truly be a new way of working because at present, there does not appear to be any such solution. OCL would like to propose such a solution which is the result of ten years of research and development, is currently implemented in other jurisdictions in beta mode, and which goes to the heart of these challenges. Full public release of this solution named Objective Connect will occur during October 2012 at which time it will be immediately available for use by government agencies and personnel. The solution Objective Connect Joining people, information and processes from multiple government agencies via a secure, cloud-based platform. It is openly acknowledgedthat public servants have an increasing need to share information with peers and colleagues within and between departments or agencies,. Today, this mostly occurs via insecure methods such as , thumb drives, DVDs and generic web-based file-sharing tools (dare we mention Dropbox!). Objective Connect is the innovative alternative, built specifically for Australian

2 government, and leveraging the existing investments made by government in the most widely-used legacy applications. Using this secure, cloud-based platform, people can share information within and between departments or participate in business processes that span multiple agencies. All sharing and process management is conducted in a highly secure environment (Defence Signals Directorate standard) utilizing existing information repositories such as Objective, TRIM, SharePoint, and Windows file systems. The custodial organisation retains control over data sovereignty and has complete visibility of information history, delivering the auditability, transparency and accountability that government requires. Objective Connect offers solutions to everyday challenges faced by public servants working with their peers in other departments, agencies or non-government organisations. People sharing information by face size limitations or firewall restrictions; Objective Connect offers an easy way to share documents and files. People using cloud-based file sharing tools expose government information to security risks; Objective Connect gives control of document integrity and data sovereignty to the department that owns it, not an unmanaged third party. Business processes that span multiple agencies with different systems can be managed, monitored and measured as a single process with Objective Connect. The general public can have self-serve access to information deemed publicly available, reducing the cost of the freedom of information process and fulfilling the requirements of proactive disclosure. Acting as a central broker between agencies, Objective Connect is a suite of business applications that connects the content and processes of government agencies. Please see for further information and a free 60 day trial. Secure sharing of nominated documents and information between agencies or between agencies and external parties.

3 The benefits Objective Connect has been developed under best practice information management principles predicated on both compliance and process efficiency. Further, the architectural delivery method leverages the latest cloud technology options under software as a service (SaaS) model. Accordingly, we could identify herein both the general benefits accruing from best practice information management and SaaS delivery models; however we believe those are now widely known and accepted by the most government departments. In fact, the terms of the NSW ICT Strategy 2012 indicate quite clearly the expected benefits which should arise from both these approaches. Therefore we will focus on just the direct benefits available from the use of Objective Connect, which are on a number of levels including: Information sharing provides a much higher level of confidence in providing correct and complete information. Information sharing provides perspectives on matters that may not be available in the absence of the shared information. In general terms, the more authoritative information that is available, the better will be the decision-making. The provision of high level security to and audit trail capture of information and process activity, especially in relation to citizen centric services, leads to greater public confidence and decision support evidence. Leveraging the investments made in existing legacy systems o There is a direct cost saving as a result of not having to purchase replacement software and systems. o There is minimal or no change management impact for users of existing systems. o There are no data migration costs to new systems. Objective Connect s commercial model is based on user activity under SaaS so no large upfront government capital expenditure is required. Rather, the costs are attributable to use thereby aligning directly to the expected benefits realisation. Being a hosted solution, Objective Connect does not require investments in hardware and technical administration leaving the agencies to focus on their prime directive of providing citizen services. For clarity purposes, we repeat below the most pressing aspects of an effective ICT strategy program as detailed earlier in this document: 1. Information sharing across and between agencies and departments, 2. Being able to access information from a trusted single source of the truth, 3. How to address the proliferation of legacy systems across government agencies, and 4. Having confidence in the security surrounding information management and information sharing. Noting the information provided under herein it is very obvious that Objective Connect provides the answer to these key four challenges and is therefore a logical solution fit within anygovernment ICT strategy and execution program.

4 Wider impacts and considerations of EDRMS deployment Whilst the focus of this discussion brief is on Objective Connect and it s applicability to governmentagencie s ICT challenges, OCL takes this opportunity to address an associated issue. That associated issue is the manner in which traditional electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS) have been developed and deployed. Contemporary EDRMS software from the predominant vendors has been developed over a number of years beginning with the need to address administrative records and document processing. The development of that early EDRMS software base had been done on the basis that the users of the solution were skilled specialist employees ie Records Managers, Document Controllers. However, as the base of potential users in an organisation grew as a result of the decentralisation of document creation and control, the assumption of a specialist skilled user of EDRMS was flawed. The result of this flawed assumption has been that despite intentions to roll out EDRMS solutions agency-wide, many users in agencies and departments maintain file systems as their prime document repositories and do not use the formal EDRMS! This is not just due to the software being too complex for everyday knowledge workers; it is also due to the deployment model for EDRMS implementation. Traditional EDRMS implementation projects are based on the assumption that all users are effectively full-time users requiring most if not all of the capability of the solution. Extensive business analysis is therefore a key part of the project together with specific business unit configuration, data migrations, desktop client deployment, training, change management, and a high level of project management and governance. This is quite understandable when looked at in the context of complex software which was developed for specialist users. However, there has been no genuine attempt by EDRMS solution providers to meet this challenge with less complex software and alternative deployment models. OCL has now changed that with a new way of working utilising simpler software and user interfaces under a different implementation process. Further, the growth in SaaS and Cloud has accelerated the need for such alternative approaches. The deployment of SaaS solutions is such that a more standard configuration is applied and user access is primarily via a browser interface requiring no desktop client deployment or formal training. Accordingly, issues of change management, project management, and deployment costs are minimised. These were challenges under the traditional model which severely limited the rollout of EDRMS agency-wide on the basis of cost justification. Many users, who are primarily content consumers more than content creators, require a lighter touch document management solution which could not be cost-justified given the power user deployment model. The requirements for data migration, specific business unit configuration, desktop client deployment, and training for power users may therefore still be required for a percentage of power users. Such requirements under the SaaS model are regarded as exceptions rather than being the rule. The consequence of this is that total project costs for the SaaS model are anticipated to be considerably and proportionately less than those for the traditional EDRMS deployment model for any given set of desktop users. Data migration may still be required for use outside power users and therefore the project costs for SaaS may be slightly greater than merely the proportion of power users to be addressed, when compared to traditional rollout models. Even in the absence of a SaaS model, implementation of EDRMS and ECM solutions in today s world requires a capability for this light-touch user experience for a large proportion of users, with associated substantially lower costs of deployment. OCL welcomes discussion with the NT government on our alternative software and deployment model for ECM.

5 Finally, the ability to address simpler browser-based interfaces using enterprise/intelligent search is a substantial facilitator for the provision of a lighter touch, zero training, easy deployment, EDRMS user experience.