ACCC puts a new virtual face on TRIM

July 30, 2009:The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has issued a request for tender for a a ‘front end’ or user interface for its TRIM EDRMS, due to be implemented in parallel to a move to a virtualised desktop environment over the next four months.

The ACCC currently has approximately 790 users with 888,000 documents in the TRIM repository, and over 4,600,000 MS Office documents on Novell file and print servers located in ACCC branches around the country. The national centres of operations are located in Canberra and Melbourne offices and there are smaller ACCC offices in each capital city and Townsville.

Once the migration to a centralised EDRMS is completed, it is envisaged that Novell will be completely decommissioned.

According to the RFT documents, following the implementation of the user interface within the centralised virtual environment, users will no longer have access to personal and network drives as the data will be lodged in TRIM.

"It is a requirement that every digital object created by ACCC staff including every email sent and received by ACCC staff on the corporate network will be lodged into the EDRMS. Searching, instead of being conducted via Windows Explorer and directory structures, will be conducted using the user interface’s browse and search capabilities."

"To be compliant, a proposed solution must provide an interface to TRIM. However tenderers may provide additional innovative solutions that do not require, or provide a path away from, TRIM. Tenderers should recognise that the ACCC has a substantial investment in TRIM; any innovative solution that reduces or removes the reliance on TRIM must provide a positive cost benefit outcome to theACCC.

The ACCC intends to allow all Australian Government departments and agencies to 'piggy-back' off this RFT process and to source services from the successful tenderer. TRIM 6.2.4 is the version that is nominated in the RFT.

The ACCC is seeking a solution that is integrated with the ACCC’s applications (e.g. MS Office 2003 and Exchange/Outlook 2003 email) and provides for seamless capturewith the "integrity of all digital objects captured ... retained such that they will display in their ‘native’ application without any distortion or alteration as a result of having been captured by and managed in the proposed solution."