Document Imaging Lives On In Government

Photo: Governments continue to rely on historical records, turnaround forms, and other hard-copy documents.

Although e-government continues to be a rising trend, the public sector remains reliant on paper. Document imaging systems, which, at its most basic, creates electronic copies of papers, remains a highly popular technology for integrating hard copies into the digital enterprise.

Two large government areas that have great use for imaging systems are functions that use "turnaround documents" -- forms that people complete and return -- and records management, which includes vital records, tax processing and child welfare, to name a few key areas of use.

Here's what's hot in terms of document imaging trends:

• OCR/ICR
  Optical character recognition (OCR) or intelligent character recognition (ICR) allows users to capture data from scanned documents. While hardly new (OCR has been around since the early 1990s), the accuracy and performance of OCR has improved considerably. Key government user: The U.S. Census Bureau is currently using OCR to automatically retrieve data from various forms. In many newer imaging systems, the ability to find specific data can allow users to redact information, or even annotate documents.
• Distributed Data Capture: MFP
  The multifunction peripheral (MFP) is a single unit that houses a printer, fax machine, photocopier and scanner. This technology lets front offices scan their own papers rather than relying on a central scanner.
• Content Management System: SharePoint Server
  Content management, an umbrella term for all types of "content" including paper, has never really taken hold within government, primarily because of the absence of a killer app. Now the public sector has one: Microsoft's SharePoint Server software is a content management system, which encompasses not only document imaging, but also spreadsheets, photographs, videos and other digital materials. Since its introduction, SharePoint has helped galvanize document imaging has a highly accessible tool for many government offices.
• SaaS
  For those who don't want their own document imaging systems, software as a service (SaaS) is a growing trend. As Dan Elam, a managing director at the Gimmal Group, stated, "We've seen a lot of [governments] look to being able to say, 'I don't want to spend all this money buying servers and hiring people and building these things. I just want to write a check.'" SaaS has become particularly popular with local governments in spreading the use of document imaging -- without the pain of system implementation.
• Web-hosted Storage and Retrieval
  Some organizations outsource all of their document management and imaging to service agencies. Bob Zagami, general manager for the New England region of DataBank, explained how the process works: "We pick up the documents, we scan them, we index them and we host them, providing secure access via the Web 24/7 to authorized users."

The bottom line: We are clearly not yet in a paperless world. For as long as governments continue to rely on historical records, turnaround forms, and other hard-copy documents, paper management will be a relevant issue in the public sector.