Prefecture of Trikala - Integrated Document Management System
Service Type:
Bespoke Systems
Background Information
Towards reducing administrative costs but most importantly increasing the quality and speed of the public services delivered to the citizens of its region, the prefecture of Trikala authorized the conversion of its existing paper-based manual document management system to an electronic one.
Public authorities generate, receive, process and store thousands of documents yearly. To keep track of these documents, just like the prefecture of Trikala, they employ a strict set of rules which govern the life cycle of their documents; from creation to eventual distraction, most often many years later. Effectively this document handling and tracking process constitutes a document management system, which is referred to as “Protocol”.
*Please note that this work was undertaken as part of a larger project in cooperation with J&P avax. Due to its distinct nature, compared to the overall objectives of the project, it is presented here separately for clarity and as a demonstration of the bespoke systems service provided by EMPRISE. The original project can be found » here.
Case Study
EMPRISE undertook the design and development of the prefecture’s integrated document management system (i-DMS). An existing in-house built document management platform was modified and augmented to meet the specific requirements of this application. Choosing to customize an existing system offered better value for money to our client while keeping the development time short.
Amongst the prerequisites for the adoption of this technology was the faithful representation of the protocol’s rules. To accurately capture and encapsulate them the protocol notion was introduced, early on into the project, during the design phase. Electronic protocol enforcement was built into the system to guarantee that protocol rules are observed for both incoming and outgoing documents and at all times. Coupled with the accurate assignment of a protocol number for each document and the ability to define customizable workflow and distribution rules, the delivered solution accurately replaces the “physical” protocol with its electronic equivalent.
At its most basic level the i-DMS consists of three modules, namely:
- Document scanning module
- Working module (featuring an incoming/outgoing -documents panel)
- Reporting module
Extra attention was paid to the scanning module to reduce the scanning time per document and the number of steps required to initiate a scanning operation (only two clicks are necessary). The scanning operation is highly automated and extremely fast. Apart from the obvious efficiency concerns this module was designed to protect the public servants from repetitive-task related stress/injuries while digitizing the thousands of paper-documents residing in the prefecture’s files repository.
The i-DMS provides fast filing, distribution and retrieval of documents, and is packed with powerful features. For more information, please, visit the » Solutions section.
