Public Institutions: Case Study

Public services improvement: Modernising a government administration

The issue

For this public administration, processing requests (dossiers) in a coherent and efficient manner was rather difficult and complex because several departments with specific expertise were required to contribute. In practice, physical dossiers needed to flow from one department to the other one. The idea was to radically improve the way the administration operates through the introduction of an electronic document and dossiers management system (EDMS) in addition to electronic procedures.

The approach

An operational audit of the administration facilitated the identification of a series of improvement opportunities and an action plan. Some quick fixes were immediately implemented for immediate results. For a more thorough transformation and to achieve significant process improvement objectives, it appeared that the administration would benefit from electronic document and dossier management capabilities in addition to revised processing procedures.

A specific project was then initiated. Many processes are improved such as for example the processing of a parliamentary question, or the preparation of a new law. Beside the collaboration capabilities on dossiers facilitated by the EDMS, features such as an electronic bulletin board, calendars, contact management and so on are also available.

The outcome/benefits:

Today, the realized benefits are the following:

• All the departments and agents concerned by a new request are instantly notified and have real-time access to the underlying documents
• Agents have access to "My documents" to facilitate processing
• Searching across the entire system is possible (assuming appropriate rights have been granted)
• No more physical documents get lost between offices
• Archives are centralized and controlled
• Security is improved