As we all are aware, Public Sector governments have an enormous amount of documents. Whether these documents are in paper or electronic form, someone is invariably assigned to store, share, track and manage all of these documents wherever they are, no matter what format they are stored. At times, this seems an impossible task.
Secondly, each agency has different rules for retention periods based on the type of document or record, whether its classification type such as personnel, procurement, classified, and more., and many others. Some records are retained for three years, others for up to ten years, and others have to be retained forever. Agencies also need to share these documents with the National Archives and Records Administration.
Here’s a glance at the permanent archival holdings NARA has to manage:
- 13.5 billion pieces of paper
- More than 725,000 artifacts
- More than 450 million feet of film, or about 85,302 miles (enough to circle the earth almost 3.4 times)
- 41 million photographs
- 40 million aerial images
- 10 million maps, charts, and architectural/ engineering drawings
- More than 33 billion electronic records (837 terabytes)
(as of October 11, 2023)
Reference: https://www.archives.gov/about/info/national-archives-by-the-numbers
That is a TON of documents to store, share, track and manage!
On June 28, 2019, the Federal government issued a memorandum with the subject line: “Transition to Electronic Records”. This memorandum provided a proposal for transitioning Federal agencies’ business processes and recordkeeping to a fully electronic environment. Having a well-defined method to capture, track and store the documents allows for a more efficient and secure method of retrieving the information. As with any agency, every day more and more records are received – and an electronic data management system is critical to maintaining and managing these records.
Reference: https://www.archives.gov/records-mgmt/policy/universalermrequirements.
We see and respond to many “request for information” and “request for proposal” to assist Public Sector departments and agencies with document management solutions every day. We have documented and captured the top key requirements that these agencies require from a document management solution including:
- Intelligent Document Recognition: handwriting identification, scanning, importing and integration capabilities to capture incoming documents into a central repository. To convert paper or digital documents into editable and searchable files.
- Automated Metadata Extraction: information that describes and explains data (source, type, owner, etc.).
- Automated Data Conversion: creating, maintaining and managing multiple versions of a document or file.
- Enhanced Security: measures and protocols in place to protect digital documents and files stored with a document management system from unauthorized access and data breaches.
- Automated Indexing: organize documents with proper tags or attributes for better visibility while searching or retrieving documents.
- Work Cue Management/Robust Document Search: getting the right documents to the right people, instantly.
- Federated Search: in-place search of documents.
- AI Assistance: automation, simplification of tasks, increase process efficiency and reduce manual intervention.
There are many document management solutions on the market. Not all solutions have all the necessary functionality needed to capture, track, store and share records for Public Sector customers.
It is extremely important to select a solution that meets all your organizational needs, especially with new mandates being issued every year. iCONECT’s document and data management platform leverages Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to strengthen our user experience and create efficiencies throughout digital transformation initiatives. Our COTS platform is configurable to agency requirements, and can be deployed in the cloud, a private cloud, or on-premise environments. iCONECT has been used by many government agencies both for Federal and State requirements, as well as Top 100 Commercial enterprise companies.
In 1999, iCONECT developed intelligent document management for the legal services sector. Since then, our development team has focused on AI and ML. Our Public Sector customers and Federal System Integrator partners are using our iCONECT platform in areas for document review and intelligent search, data mining, PAA and FOIA review, claims processing, intelligent document processing for unstructured and structured documents, metadata extraction, file conversion, public portals, and rules processing.
Reach out to me or Kevin Mahoney about how iCONECT can assist in your requirements for document management and other strategies needed to capture, track, store and share records for Public Sector customers and request a demonstration today.
