Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are everyday elements, which are required and claimed in all areas of our life. In the public sector, the ICT also allows the public administrations (P.A.) to manage with a higher quality, efficiency and service efficiency and public resources.
There is an increasing number of P.A. that add up to the implementation flow of a document management system to optimize the document processes of its employees and citizens, by allowing them to operate electronically with the administration.
The public sector is an important information producer because it produces laws, population records, geographical, weather, historical, political, and scientific information, etc. This documentation is very useful for the administration, but also for the private sector and citizens.
Closer to those managed thanks to the document management system
But what should a document management system offer to the P.A? Organization, control and pursuit of the documents. This main objective may be explained in detail in:
- Streamlining of administrative procedures.
- Standardization of the administrative documents.
- Organization in a homogenous and efficient way of the administrative documentation.
- Establishing policies for paper or electronic document storage.
When implementing a document management system in a Public Administration, the main benefits are as the following:
- It allows the creation of multiple document repositories.
- It enables versioning of each file, as it maintains a detailed audit record, which allows configuring traceability of the documents.
- It uses filters based on metadata and/or content, for query and document retrieval.
- It supports a wide range of formats and enables the transformation of any type of documents.
- It facilitates the interconnection with the other components of the infrastructure of the Electronic Administration.
- It is totally multiuser with permission and roles management.
- It is transparent to the user.
In the European Union (EU), citizens and companies maintain a fluid relationship with the P.A. as the bulletin “Spain and the ICT in the European” reveals, performed by the National Institute of Statistics (NIS) in 2012, in which it stands out that Spain is above the average of the EU in terms of the user percentage which interacted online with the P.A in 2011. Specifically, the 54% of Spaniards declared having information of the Administration web pages compared to 48% of the EU; and 36% of the Spaniards confirm to have downloaded the official forms in comparison to 34% of European.
As it may be expected, this type of relationship with the Administration continues growing progressively as the P.A. incorporates innovative document management which enable new administration methods and access to the information. In fact, as highlighted in the “The estate of the electronic invoice in the year 2013” post, the goal of the Commission is to achieve a predominance over electronic invoicing by 2020.
Challenges in implementing a document management system.
One of the challenges faced by the P.A when incorporating the ICT into their structure does not only depend on the actual technological tools, but in the public sector implementation must be considered from an integral perspective: political, administrative and cultural.
The bureaucracy is overloaded and cannot be managed just with traditional tools. An aspect to consider is that the implementation of a document management system involves a simultaneous development of new means of work organization and management. In other words, it is convenient to avoid the mechanization of the administrative tasks without performing and exhaustive analysis previous to the flow of the information in each process. If this conscientious study wasn´t performed before the implementation of a document management system, it is more than likely that it will enhance the negative features of the Administration in the new structure, so that there will be a process of superficial modernization which only replaces manual processes by automatic.
This way, some of the aspects to consider before implementing a document management system in Administration are as the following:
- Changes in the organizational structure.
- Design of the processes that affect the new tools.
- Streamlining and simplification of the administrative tasks.
- Review information circuits and decision-making.
- Training and staff involvement.
To summarize, the incorporation of the ICT requires integrated planning, otherwise it does not produce more than specific improvements and even disrupt efficient “manual” processes. In this scenario, advantage should be taken on the windows for digital information flow to reduce costs, as to improve processes and the quality of the services. This way, it enables the electronic interaction with the citizens, providers and officials to make processes more transparent. In fact, there is transparency in the P.A. if access for the citizens to the documents is guaranteed.
Data source: National Institute of Statistics
André Klein
Freelance Consultant for DocPath