Preserving Records and the nation
Preserving Records and the nation
The Australian Defence Organisation is in the process of carrying out one of the largest electronic document and records management implementations in Australian history. Rodney Appleyard reports.
The ADO consists of the Navy, Army, Air Force, research, administration and logistics groups, which totals about 70,000 employees all working towards a common goal of defending Australia.
An organisation of this size has to face the huge problem of controlling the information for all of these users with 100 percent accuracy. This has caused a massive strain on staff in the past, who had to spend too much of their time sorting through vast amounts of data.
Such a marathon task often had a negative impact on effective decision-making, because of the difficulty in finding the necessary information quickly. Rushed work exposed the organisation to the risk of being unaccountable and made it difficult for it to manage information within the legislative and compliance guidelines.
The increase in electronically stored documents and emails also slowed down the ADO in its ambition to identify key knowledge amongst the masses of information. This ever expanding source of data, together with huge amounts of manual paperwork, also created an uphill battle for the organisation in its aim of maintaining and supporting systems cost effectively. Vital information could not be shared easily between the different platforms.
Information could not be collated together comprehensively and levered for specific purposes. The knock on affect hampered the ability of people to compile the evidence needed to support these big important decisions.
Inevitably, this inefficient system caused the organisation to be open to legal risks and damaged their ability to satisfy the Federal Government's record keeping requirements.David Blanch, the Director of Records Management Policy for the ADO's Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group (CSIG) recounts how they faced up to their challenges:"To address these problems, we needed a standard solution across the enterprise. The sheer size of the ADO means that the efficiency and productivity benefits gained are substantial.
"By reducing technology stove-pipes, such as information trapped in email systems with no other means of access, we gain far greater transparency over our corporate information to underpin decision making at all levels. This results in significantly improved effectiveness throughout the organisation.
"The diversity of the ADO's operations means we have people performing the same roles but working in different divisions, organisations and locations around the country.""We needed to reduce the cost of duplicated effort by enabling collaborative document authoring across regional boundaries and simultaneously capitalising on the vast bank of knowledge our people possess by providing the ability for these people to share information."
As well as facing a mountain of electronic information, the ADO had vast stores of paper records in over 32 km of shelf space in Canberra. So it was critical that the integration of this electronic and paper information was managed adequately. The main task of the mission focused on finding one solo system for managing both sets of records.
One of the biggest challenges involved guaranteeing legislative compliance. Accountability of information is crucial for the Defence Organisation because people are frequently changing jobs and it is essential that they keep track of all these details. The organisation could face serious legal consequences if it makes a mistake due to inaccurate information.
It aimed to find a solution, which could streamline all of its existing systems and implement one across the whole of the ADO that would provide easy access to all of this information at any time.
The CSIG (Corporate Services and Infrastructure Group) wing of the ADO was set the task of finding a consistent 'one-stop-shop' management system for unstructured electronic and physical records that could easily be archived, retrieved and expanded.
This had to be a flexible system that is compliant with the National Archive regulations whilst providing secure access to information. It also needed to be a scalable solution capable of presenting a single logical repository for corporate records over a highly dispersed and substantial user community. It hoped the system would create better management of the lifecycle of electronic documents and have the ability to automate processes such as document approval cycles. In the future, the ADO wants it to provide a platform to automate other core business processes within the organisation.
It spent 16 months evaluating possible systems to meet its broad technical, business and compliance needs and chose Objective Corporation in the end to solve all of its problems. The system has benefited many different departments in the following ways:
Defence Headquarters and supporting elements
The records have now been stored in a centralised repository and authorised staff are provided with capture and management privileges for corporate files: electronic, physical and email. The benefits of this will be in the form of increased record capture; more compliance in record keeping practices; an increase in the efficiency of document handling; and reduced costs of storage.
Aircraft Research Development Unit (ARDU)
Objective has created increased Knowledge Management in this area. 200 pilots, engineers and technicians use a portal-based solution to manage and track all project information generated from aircraft testing. For example, these are project plans, test plans and results from flight tests on aircraft, such as fuel consumption and load patterns. This should significantly improve access to research material in any format. Knowledge can also be re-used for current and future projects and elimination can be made of duplicated information.
Anzac Ship System Maintenance Office
Objective improved electronic document and records management in this office. The software is now used to manage all files and correspondence associated with the maintenance of Anzac Class Frigates. This includes capturing physical correspondence-such as scanned images-and managing electronic documents and records relating to ship maintenance. The benefits of this include version control to ensure that only the most current documents are used. The formal management of the documents results in improved accountability and creates transparent capture of information into the corporate record.
Defence Science and Technology Organisation
Scientists, Engineers and IT specialists use Objective within the DSTO to adhere to Quality Assurance methods in their development of project documentation for Defence research and development projects. This will increase efficiency gains in storage; ensure that project documents are controlled and retrieved easily and it will free up staff to focus on professional competencies rather than administrative tasks.
Objective's software has enabled the ADO to manage both paper and electronic records such as emails, word processing files, spreadsheets, PDF files, project plans and more, within a single logical repository.
It has also standardised the business processes and information can now be supported throughout the life cycle for all kinds of information applications, from analysis to administration and from policy to procedures.
Tony Walls, CEO Asia Pacific for the Objective Corporation believes that the ADO has benefited in many areas from the new system:
"The ADO's use of Objective provides the industry with an excellent illustration of how large organisations can derive a broad range of benefits by using EDRM as a solution to address specific business problems.
"While it is important that EDRM solutions have the ability to scale to tens of thousands of users and can efficiently accommodate complex infrastructure across multiple departments or enterprises, it is crucial that the solution has the breadth of functionality necessary for the implementation of specific business applications."
"Using this approach, individual business units reap benefits at an operational level, for example: improved processes for document authoring, revision and approval; greatly improved access to an authoritative source of existing information leading to improved decision making; a reduction in duplicated effort; and improved knowledge sharing. Simultaneously, at the corporate level, the organisation maintains a single, central information repository where it can apply record keeping disciplines and appropriate security, ensure accountability of information and legislative compliance."
Blanch is also very pleased with the ways things have turned out so far, even though the whole system will not be fully completed across all of their offices in Australia until April 2005.
"The Objective solution provides us with usable information searches, Defence-strength security and audit trails, solid workflow capability, scalability and richness in overall functionality."
The costs have also been reduced in managing, storing, archiving, moving records and through IT support for multiple, disparate systems. Staff now spend less time searching for records, and are free instead to focus fully on their tasks, whilst taking on new projects.
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