Get a Grip on Your Documents

o get their daily work done and fulfill the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and records retention rules, federal employees generate mounds of paper and disks full of electronic documents. The information in those documents and the processes they represent need to be managed.

Amy Wohl, a computer industry analyst based in Narbeth, Pa., defines document management as "the art of both storing documents in such a way that you can find them when you need them and making them available so that you can share with people who did not create them. It's all about having control over documents."

Document management systems aren't new, but agencies are still finding ways to put them to use. For example, the Office of the Executive Secretariat at the Agriculture Department got its Accelerator system from Universal Systems Inc. in Chantilly, Va., up and running in January to handle the 1,200 letters a month Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman receives.

These letters cannot be answered by rote, explains Lynne Finnerty, director of the office. "They demand well-thought-out, in-depth responses." Writers can be anyone from a member of Congress to a farmer in Kansas. The answers and how long they take reflect directly on the Secretary, Finnerty says, so turnaround time is set at 20 working days.

To get things moving faster and prevent the perennial problem of losing pieces of paper, the secretariat decided to send documents around the department electronically. This meant incoming letters would need to be scanned into the system. In addition, full-text retrieval capability was specified in order to be able to find documents based on any word they contained. Another priority was to move from the DOS-based system being used to a Windows-based one, which would be more compatible with the other software employees were using.

"We purposely took a long time in the process," Finnerty says. A feasibility study begun in 1994 pointed toward customizing a commercial, off-the-shelf system. A procurement resulted in the selection of Universal Systems in mid-1996. USI then worked with the secretariat on implementation.

USI developed some custom features for Agriculture. For example, says Finnerty, "we were used to being able to write a synopsis of each letter and needed a screen to do that." The synopses are combined into a daily priority report for department executives. Another customization task was to create a Freedom of Information Act search module that helped users narrow down information before printing it. USI didn't bill the department for developing features that the vendor later incorporated into its software.

"The most difficult part is getting people used to the idea of not having paper," Finnerty says. "They cannot see why it's beneficial to give up paper. To them, it's a disadvantage, not a benefit." So she and some of her staff worked to sell the document management system to its targeted users. About 20 demonstrations were given, showing how the new system would speed up work and provide employees with more information than they could get with their paper-based system.

Every affected bureau got help in reviewing and altering its business processes. They were given three options:

• Print documents out and maintain a paper process internally.
• Handle documents electronically up to a certain point, then create paper.
• Use a fully electronic process.

Each agency made its decisions and developed new procedures. The old system came down on the Thursday night before a long holiday weekend, and the new system was brought up on Tuesday morning. Much to Finnerty's surprise, the feedback soon after was positive. Employees quickly appreciated the added functionality and the compatibility with their other software.

While it's difficult to put an exact price tag on the project, Finnerty says, the licenses for 400 users, training and on-site support came to a little more than $300,000. Other agencies in the department are buying licenses and hooking up to the executive secretariat's server, a tactic that avoids the software patchwork effect many departments end up with. Finnerty says the new system was chosen with the hope that it would be flexible enough to serve different purposes, not just correspondence tracking and production. The department is considering whether it will be worthwhile to buy an enterprisewide license.

Increased Access

An appreciation for document management software's ability to provide a central repository for information and to automate access to engineering drawings was one reason the Postal Service's engineering department chose the technology. Before installing their new system, the engineers in the configuration management group relied on a manual system for sifting through 200,000-plus drawings of postal machines, vehicles, mailboxes, satchels and other equipment.

Under that system, the drawings were kept on file by the reproduction group, located a quarter of a mile away from the configuration management group, in the form of aperture cards--old-fashioned keypunch cards with film attached that pictured the drawings. If an engineer needed to modify a drawing, it took two to three days between requesting the card and receiving it via interoffice mail. For one piece of machinery, there might be thousands of aperture cards describing its components.

So in 1992, when new Postmaster General Marvin Runyon decided that the Postal Service would standardize its computer systems, the engineers had an opportunity not only to replace the group's minicomputer system but also to update the inefficient filing system for drawings.

Document management software was chosen to help control versions of documents used by the office and to replace the filing system. The drawings were scanned and loaded into the new system, where they are stored as electronic images in an online library. An engineer now can use a search engine to locate a drawing in less than five seconds. Then he or she can print it on a local printer in less than three minutes. Clearly, access has been improved drastically, says Lon Wilson, computer systems analyst in the configuration management group, while storage space and workload for the reproduction group were reduced.

Like the Agriculture office, the USPS group wanted an off-the-shelf product that would be compatible with the Microsoft Corp. office applications it was using. Security also was a concern. The FileNet system from FileNet Corp. of Costa Mesa, Calif., fit the group's needs. The system is now available to 500 users in seven of the postal service's 11 area offices, Wilson says, and the others are coming on board.

The drawings library turned out to be useful to two other USPS organizations as well: the Maintenance Technical Support Center in Norman, Okla., which drafts documentation for maintenance work orders, and the Material Distribution Center in Topeka, Kan., which buys spare parts. Another library is being developed for the environmental management policies group, which deals with matters such as asbestos, lead pipes and underground storage tanks. Wilson is considering buying the World Wide Web version of the software, which might make upgrading easier.

More Transparent

The importance of getting information electronically and organizing it is something that John Murray, deputy chief information officer at the Treasury Department's Financial Management Service, understands well. Today FMS creates images of checks received, archives the hard copies and works with the images.

As much as document management software can do, Murray would like to see it become even more helpful. "I want to see it integrated so that it becomes event-driven," he says. He offers an analogy: Behind every phone call, invisible to the caller, are the billing process for that call, random quality checks and rerouting when circuits are down. The caller knows only that the call goes through. Event-driven software would automatically archive the right documents at the right time, sending a copy one place and keeping a hard copy in another place. It would act as a management utility, responding to parameters it was given. Fewer decisions would need to be made for each individual document.

Such systems are not yet on the market. But today's document management products still can speed up processes for their users. The financial management office at the National Institutes of Health, which pays 560,000 invoices a year, "was a paper-laden enterprise," says Director Francine Little. Hit by a staff reduction of about 25 percent and working with a manual system, the office did not come near the goal of paying 95 percent of invoices within 30 days. Instead, no more than 75 percent were paid on time.

To solve its problem, two years ago the office bought ViewStar document management software from Doxsys Inc. of Bethesda, Md. A database is used to compare purchasing information and scanned-in bills. That makes for fewer lost checks and invoices, Little says. Now 92 percent of invoices are paid on time. Purchasing and upgrading the software, which is used by 27 people, has cost about $500,000.

The Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, which reviews manufacturers' requests for approval to market new prescription drugs, also faced the problem of being overwhelmed by paper. The reviews generate memos, letters, notes of meetings and phone conversations, and reports on final reviews by chemists, medical officers, pharmacologists and statisticians, explains Greg Brolund, associate IT director for technology and policy.

The center wanted to cut down on physical storage and improve accessibility to the information being filed. "We wanted to let people locate their own reviews and information pertinent to ongoing reviews, and to be able to store and distribute documents as needed," Brolund says. Therefore, the center kept its focus narrow.

However people choose to generate documents, once they are written--whether as an electronic file on the computer or as a paper document--they are checked into the Documentum document management system from Documentum Inc. of Pleasanton, Calif. Paper documents, of course, must be scanned in. Once in the system, the documents are routed for signatures and storage. It's easy later to locate all the documents relating to a particular case, Brolund says. The software cost FDA about $300,000.

Murray says better file management is not a one-time event. "It takes constantly trying to improve both the management and the format of it," he advises. Although the technology is evolving into useful products, Murray says, "the best technology never replaces good leadership and decision-making." In fact, he has taught classes on how to get rid of clutter, and he says the way to do it is to decide what you want to get rid of, then find the tool that will help you do that.

Diane Kittower, a Maryland journalist, often writes about government.