How can governments become efficient?

Workflow Automation and Document Conversion

With the global economy still not completely out of recession, governments at all levels across the world are working with limited budgets. Yet they are expected to deliver if not same, but better service.

It becomes really challenging to do the same or more amount of work with reduced budget and manpower resources. It is challenging but not achievable.

They say necessity is the mother of invention (and innovation) as-well. Governments don’t have to spend huge amounts of cash or undertake insurmountable projects to prove their intent at innovation or improving services. There are a variety of ways to embark on this efficiency journey. Here is just one of the many: combine workflow automation and document conversion. Now what does this mean?

Most governments need to deal with large volumes and multiple types of documents. A huge quantity of these documents are involved with processing of licensing, permits, requests for disclosure under legislations like Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or Access to Information and Privacy (ATIP) and many other similar projects. Within the realm of these departments or agencies, think of this:

 
• How are these documents produced (source)
 
• How frequently and what quantity of these are produced
 
• Is there a standard template or a complaint version of these documents
 
• What is the flow of these documents once they are created
 
• Where do they reside or ultimately get stored
 
• What format do they get stored in
 
• Who owns them
 
• What is the process to retrieve them
 
• What are the SLA’s in creation, storage and retrieval or even on compliance

and much more.

The efficiencies and savings can be achieved with one small engagement - automating the workflow and conversions of these documents. This will not only introduce the cost savings and process efficiencies but will also help governments improve their service to the citizens. Isn’t this a win-win-win situation?