City of Philadelphia Case Study
Background
While established in 1993 by Executive Order, the Mayor's Office of Information Services (MOIS), dedicated to creating a superior information services for the City of Philadelphia, was reinforced in 2001 under the recruitment of Dianah Neff, Chief Information Officer, with her leadership and mandate to act as the focal point to guide improvements in City information technology (IT). MOIS’ principal responsibilities include: managing, supporting, and updating the City’s IT infrastructure; running an online and telephone help desk to address the immediate IT support needs of city departments; and coordinating/facilitating the design and implementation of new IT and Internet projects citywide.
Situation
Implementing an enterprise-wide document management and document imaging capability has been defined as an important component in updating the IT infrastructure. “While it is not realistic today to get rid of paper entirely,” said Dr. Karl Bortnick, Program Manager for Finance, Enterprise Services, and Economic Development, at MOIS, “much will be done to manage paper documents either coming at us from the outside or being created by us to send outside to businesses and citizens. Our goal is to take the residual paper inputs and outputs and convert them to digital or electronic formats.” MOIS decided to address three areas “model applications where imaging could have an immediate impact and serve as pilots for deployments of imaging technology in similar applications,” he said. The three departments to serve as pilot projects are Fleet Management, Revenue and Pensions.
Fleet Management
Although fifty-three (53) City departments have vehicles, the Fleet Department manages all vehicle records and serves as the central payment agent for the purchase of parts and repairs. Historically, these records were maintained manually on paper. However, some data from these records were hand-keyed into separate computer systems and three copies were made for filing at Fleet Administration, Finance Accounting and the Office of the Controller. By converting Fleet’s invoicing and receiving records from this antiquated manual to a modern electronic workflow with retrievable images, MOIS would streamline the processing of vehicle records and payments.
Revenue
The Revenue Department already had an imaging system but this system was aging and did not provide the additional capabilities the department now required. Worse, this older system was no longer under maintenance and the imaging vendor had given advanced notice of non-support. MOIS’ goal was to replace this system and to make its documents more available within a state-of-the-art secure, web-enabled environment.
Pensions
The Pensions Department was issuing reams of traditional “green bar” pension payroll reports from data maintained on MOIS’ host computer system. Multiple copies of these voluminous documents were printed and distributed six times a month after each payroll. MOIS would convert preliminary reports in this process to online digital files and final reports to image files to improve dissemination and retrieval.
Solutions
Early on two document automation companies responded to a request for proposal. In the end, MetaSource, headquartered in Philadelphia, was selected to provide solutions for all three departments by establishing the City’s Enterprise Imaging Platform.
Fleet
In Fleet, MetaSource implemented a document management and imaging solution, which consists of the Kodak 3520 scanner, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) for AnyDoc software for data capture and Documentum ApplicationXtender (AX5) for storage and retrieval of document images. Today, receiving and invoice documents are scanned. Their images are captured and automatically indexed and their data are automatically extracted for uploading into the City Financial Accounting Management Information Systems (FAMIS).
Since the accounting data file can be reviewed by Finance and the City Controller online, manual triplicate re-entering and copying of invoices is eliminated. Via the web, Finance accountants and the Controller’s auditors verify data by comparing Excel spreadsheets automatically created with document images retrieved through links embedded with the financial data. Invoice scanning coupled with OCR and imaging technology permits the matching of receiving documents to invoices and purchase orders –a three-way match, all from the desktop with a few mouse clicks. Electronic access to documents saves time, effort and expense.
“Fleet is an example of a classic ‘purchase and pay’ application, which any government agency or business has and will relate to,” said Bortnick. “As a Proof of Concept, the Fleet Department demonstrated that we could roll this new technology platform out. Today, we know that this concept is applicable to a wide range of City departments as they all have the same business requirements for document management, storage and retrieval.” According to Dr. Bortnick, it is estimated that the Fleet document automation program will result in a savings of close to $100,000 in the first year, mainly through headcount reductions. He added: “That’s a return-on-investment of more than twice our initial investment in five years and is permanent, remaining as long as imaging remains.”
Revenue
“Earlier, in 1998, we implemented our initial Revenue Department imaging system for tax returns and payments,” said Dr. Bortnick. “This year, we needed either to upgrade or replace our aging system with more current technology. Our goal was to ensure we maintained the existing productivity gains from the first system while pursuing additional capability and functionality.
” The MetaSource solution uses OCR for AnyDoc to capture data from tax returns and post it to our host computer. The images and the retrieval indices are maintained by Documentum’s ApplicationXtender (AX5). Check images are also captured, OCRed and stored in the system. “This solution builds on what we had before but is a much better solution,” said Dr. Bortnick. “Now any Revenue Customer Services Representative with the proper security can easily retrieve an image using a web browser while answering a citizen who comes to their desk or calls on the telephone. The next step is to implement a Check 21 capability so we can transmit check images for deposit, eliminating one more paper document. We want to scan and deposit all in one seamless process,” he said.
Pensions
To eliminate the five printed copies of pension contribution reports and automate processing of 1099R forms, MetaSource will implement a “day forward” Documentum’s ERMXtender (ERMX) program to capture print image files from the host computer, index the reports and store them electronically online. In addition, the 1099R forms are captured from PDF files stored disk. ERMXtender delivers exact presentation of these documents on workstations using the Web.
MetaSource conversion services have also converted archived microfilmed images and indexed them for on line retrieval. With the proper clearance and access, Pensions’ customer services representatives can now access and easily search their data.
Note that all three departmental applications mentioned above use a SAN (Storage Area Network) for on line and a Plasmon optical disk jukebox for archival storage.
Benefits
Fleet’s savings in staffing and reduction in duplication of effort have increased productivity. Fleets’ achievements combined with Revenue and Pensions enhanced capability to provide better services to Philadelphians have more than justified the investment in document automation.
In addition, applications in OCR for AnyDoc, AX5, and ERMX help eliminate lost documents, improve security and restrict access. For sensitive information, improving control over and accuracy of invoices and payments is critical for verification and validation. Reducing the costs associated with paper storage is also most essential.
“Our pilot imaging projects will pay enormous dividends now and in the future as we roll these applications to other departments,” said Dr. Bortnick. “Any department that asks the questions: ‘How should I collect money or how should I disburse it?’ are prime candidates for document automation. Working with our partner, MetaSource, we are well on our way to providing an integrated document automation strategy for the City.”
Integrate document management and imagining is a key infrastructure in the City’s new Enterprise Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). Enterprise SOA governs business services reuse, compliance, security, data formats, interoperability, publishing, policy, metrics and availability. The enterprise document management and imaging capabilities configured to date have been subsumed under the Governance Committee’s Enterprise SOA process and have emerged among the technology policies, standards and procedures for government business process and functions in Philadelphia. Already, thanks to this Enterprise SOA approach to services, invoicing, receiving, taxing, paying and IRS statements have best practice models and pilots.
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