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| Taking an Objective View at the Scottish Government The Scottish Government has successfully upgraded its mission critical electronic Records and Document Management (eRDM) system for all 6,300 users in under a week. The eRDM system, supplied by Objective Corporation, provides the secure environment in which all unstructured information held by the Scottish Government is deposited and managed. This includes a variety of different types of records and documents, such as internal memos, reports, policies and communications. Consequently, the system is an integral part of everyday working practices within the Scottish Government and maximum availability is paramount. The information management capabilities of the system enable the Scottish Government to be confident in knowing what its information assets are, where they are, who has access to them and has accessed them. The system also serves as a foundation for improvements in operational effectiveness and collaboration by allowing staff to have authorised access to appropriate information when they need it, no matter where they are located. Because of the business critical nature of the system, the Scottish Government and Objective Corporation worked together to deliver a successful upgrade that did not threaten business continuity and with the absolute minimum disruption of service to the end users. In practice, this meant that there was zero tolerance for any downtime during business hours. In addition, the Scottish Government had to ensure that the upgrade happened simultaneously across the entire organisation, including all 6,300 staff, distributed across multiple sites throughout Scotland. The initial implementation of Objective took place in 2005, following a detailed business analysis review by the Scottish Government. The business requirements were carefully scoped out and an in-depth, extensive benchmarking exercise was carried out on the complex legacy paper-driven records system. The project has delivered many benefits to Scottish Government, including: • improved ability to ensure that the organisation retains ownership of information, rather than individuals; • improved corporate governance – in terms of both compliance with legislation and better risk assessment (based on more complete information); • improved sharing of information within the organisation to ensure that staff are more aware of other initiatives and activities; • reduction in costs associated with storage of paper records; • improved opportunities for flexible working practices; • more robust and reliable disaster recovery for information and records; • provision of version control (including safeguards against alteration of records), and process automation. The upgrade provides the Scottish Government with a platform for future growth, enabling further development and exploitation of eRDM including the ability to support workflow and case handling solutions. write your comments about the article :: © 2009 Computing News :: home page |