“We currently store our electronic documents on network file shares and once the Intranet is redeveloped, we hope to encourage staff to use this as the place to store electronic documents,” said Amanda Lea, Manager, Corporate Information at the The Department for Communities WA.

The Department is using SharePoint 2007 for Content Management System and hosting its intranet/Internet for over 250 users based in Perth and regional WA.

However this is a shared solution with another Agency and it is about to implement its own Communities SharePoint 2010 platform for web content management as well as an Intranet, Extranet and document management capability.

First will come the task of migrating metadata from an existing physical records management system, which will require some form of data cleansing exercise as well as potentially cleaning up the data prior to the migration.

The department currently use Objective for physical records management, as a “shared” solution with another agency.

“In the future we are going to implement Records Management within SharePoint by plugging in a VERS compliant records management application such as RecordPoint,” said Lea.

“We have a number of disparate applications which capture customer information and process applications. We are progressing with the replacement of one of our bespoke applications and we are currently investigating whether Microsoft CRM 2011 could provide a platform on which we could develop this solution as well as roll in the other bespoke applications.

“We have already undertaken a significant level of development within SharePoint for our Intranet and Internet and based on our research we believe that SharePoint will provide us with the most cost effective platform from which we can extend features such as collaboration, document and records management to our users.  We are a small agency and SharePoint internally is available to us under CUA at no cost, it makes sense to leverage this fact.

“We believe the advantages of proceeding with SharePoint include: reduced cost as it is a platform with a huge rich set of features which can be extended over time for little cost.  It is fully integrated with other office applications, with the exception of Outlook but there are cheap tools out there which can deliver this integration. 

“Even the out of the box workflow will provide enough functionality to meet our needs for document review etc., and we can move towards reducing paper consumption.  We also want to implement knowledge management features such as skills searches, wiki’s etc., and again, these can be easily implemented either out of the box or using preconfigured templates which are available for small or no costs via the web. 

“Like Apple with iPads and iPhones, in future there will be all sorts of “apps” which can be picked up and plugged in – it makes sense to make this investment now and it fits well with our Department as we are a small agency without a big IT budget.

Lea plans build from the top down in 2010 rather than migrate the department's current 2007 environment, because, “we think we have a better chance of establishing good governance.”
“We currently experience significant challenges in our current environment where there is a lack of clear governance.

“When we redesign the website we will be doing so with governance in mind and apply security such that we don’t get a proliferation of pages appearing on our sites.

“We are already experiencing some level of push back from the traditional managers of our website/Intranet as they have previously not been accountable to anyone within the organisation and have made decisions to make changes etc., without any form of approval.
“Change is always difficult and we will need to work carefully to have this change accepted.”