Organizations are now more concerned about greater efficiency with low cost of operations, a great composition for win-win scenario. Every organization uses paper documents in some way to run their day to day business and is also putting its best efforts to reduce paper usage without affecting its business while trying to improve the efficiency at same time. The best method to achieve the said goal is digitization and automation of the complete business process. Automation through BPM (Business Process Management) solution and digitization through DMS (Document Management System) solutions will improve the process time drastically and eliminate the use of paper documents respectively, a win-win situation.
Basic input for any automation or digitization process is to scan the documents (to eliminate the dependency on paper documents) and capturing of contents on paper documents (to run the process based on the contents mentioned on the paper documents), but the cost of operations and wrong selection of software/ hardware results in dropping the great idea of progress through automation in about 60%-70% of the cases.
In my earlier articles like “Document Quality Analyzer: Automated Quality Checking without Operators “, “DIGITIZATION OUTPUT: Operator, Not Scanner, Defines Production”, “SaaS (Software as a Service) – Software on Subscription Based Model”, “DIGITIZATION – King Without Crown of Business Universe”, “DIGITIZATION REDEFINED – Digital Camera as Book Scanner”, “Data Capture/Entry without Operators (ICR Technology)”, we have shown the methods to bring down digitization cost, but the cost of content capture is still a cause of concern. The simple reason for this is the lack of awareness about great technologies such as ICR (for automated capturing of hand written contents), OMR (automated capturing of bubbles, check marks etc) and OCR (automated capturing of machine printed contents).
Availability of ICR technology has helped to capture content from documents for many years, but the basic requirement of this technology is, documents in structured format (fixed position of text on the documents), whereas about 90% of the documents are semi structured or unstructured, but the advancement in ICR technology has now shown the way to cater even semi/unstructured documents, now even running handwriting can also to captured by the software and saved as digital content. ICR technology is now so flexible that even floating text (if the position of text varies in every document) can also be captured and saved as structured digital content.
Now the full cycle of digitization i.e. “Scanning” and “Content Capture” is completely automated and completed with minimal expenditure, while resulting in huge improvements in efficiency of business processes. A true example of the “KAIZEN” method.
Name: Hemant
Web Site: http://www.newgensoft.com
Bio: Hemant is Senior Manager - Processing Services with Newgen Software Technologies Limited
In an era in which businesses are competing globally, government organizations seek more agility and efficiency, while being able to drive down costs and strictly follow the established Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). In addition, the omnipresent requirement of better responsiveness to citizens’ needs is spurring governments all over the world to seek IT-based solutions to effectively address such myriad issues. As a consequence there has been observed a growing trend among Government departments at all levels to go for automation of paper based processes for faster decision making and improved efficiency.
The Indian government’s National e-Governance plan comprising of 27 mission mode projects aims at creating a framework for, and promoting long-term growth of, e-Governance within the country. The plan seeks to create a citizen-centric and business-centric environment for governance. The objective of this plan is to use the latest technologies and tools to enhance internal efficiency in the administration and provide better services for citizens, specifically in the areas of eServices, e-Courts, e-District, Land records, e-Office, e-Municipalities, Police, Transport etc.
Enterprise Content Management and Business Process Management are key technologies which provide immense value to the e-governance projects. Office automation solutions like File Movement and Tracking, Correspondence Management, Grievance Management etc allow Governments to enhance citizen services by reducing cycle time of query handling, increase coordination with various departments, reduce errors and improve responsiveness to citizens.
Key benefits of using ECM and BPM based solution for Office Automation are:
Achieving effective citizen services is the single most important objective of all e-Governance initiatives. Several major initiatives such as online registration, e-filing of returns, building approvals, waste management in municipalities, certificate issuance, etc. have been taken by governments to meet this objective.
These processes need to be monitored and controlled, rolled out quickly and changed for delivering new and better services to citizens. Thus it becomes imperative to implement an effective Business Process Management system for delivering citizen centric services.
BPM addresses the challenges faced in delivering effective citizen services
To provide effective citizen services, it is imperative to ensure that service requests are responded to in the defined timelines. For achieving this, a system should be put in place for monitoring and tracking of requests. Strong exception handling and escalation capability is also required. BPM brings increased visibility through dashboards and monitoring, resulting in faster response times to citizen requests, leading to better adoption of the system and project success.
For e.g. If time frame of 10 days is defined for issuance of Identity Proof then adherence to the time line would require real time tracking & monitoring of requests. If any exception is found such as ‘Date of birth not filled’ or “Photograph not clear”, it can be routed for taking appropriate action. Such exceptions can be isolated and tracked to closure to ensure the services are delivered to citizens.
Delivering Citizen-centric services requires multiple approvals, workflow, processing etc. These workflows involve lots of human decision-making and are document & form-intensive. These workflows require flexibility and cross-department functioning. This requires forms to be made available online for citizens to avail the services. These forms need to have the provision of attaching documents and triggering a route for respective departments to process this request.
Implementation of these processes involves a lot of reengineering. The solution for any large e-governance initiative cannot be rigid and should be built for change. To effectively support reengineering of such government processes there is a strong need for having a business process management framework that gives control to the process owner for quick and effective change management. This also facilitates quick roll out of any new sub-processes.
E-Governance services are accessed by citizens through online portals, kiosks etc. Once these services are available and being used by citizens, the need to add more and more services becomes meaningful. A strong BPM framework used at the back office to deliver these services can facilitate quick deployment and rollout of new services.
Over a period of time, government departments have put-in a lot of time and effort on automation of various individual functions. Many of these applications are fulfilling their objectives but running in silos. One of the critical success factors for the Mission Mode Projects would be the ability for the new solution to co-exist with and leverage the existing IT investments and legacy applications. The BPM platform provides a framework to integrate these services together and deliver the advantage to citizens quickly without the time consuming process of re-building all applications from scratch.
Using Business Process Management as platform for building such services will effectively meet the needs of government process reengineering, human centric workflows, monitoring dashboards, quick building and rollout of new services, change management etc.
In an information-intensive society, efficient information management is especially critical for e-governance and implementation of better services for the citizens. Good governance demands reduced duplication of work, reduced communication costs, increased transparency in functioning of various departments, and faster government services. With a large portion of information management in the public sector comprising of document management, implementation of an efficient document management solution has become a strategic imperative for government organizations. Effective e-governance requires implementation of a robust document management solution which can help governments streamline operations to deliver value through improved productivity, and empower Government Staff to respond rapidly and collaboratively to meet the needs of constituents.
Key Drivers for DMS in e-governance
With advanced file approval, management, tracking and intelligent search capabilities, DMS allows government agencies to expand the reach of their services, improve and facilitate user experience and convenience and improve transparency while at the same time reduce costs. Also, the automation of manual and paper-based processes in government administration will generate electronic records which may later serve as evidence in policy-making, casework and service delivery areas.
Putting in place an Enterprise Document Management System will ensure that government retains strategic control over the archival and management of critical documents by addressing the key requirements stated below.
Using an Enterprise Document Management System for archival of Government documents provides the following benefits:
RSS
Back to top
Recent Posted Comments