How corporate Australia battles information overload

By David Braue, ZDNet Australia

26 June 2006 02:48 PM

Tags: storage area network, cms, government, european union, emc, jetstar, case study, cio

	Introduction
	Jetstar CIO Stephen Tame explains why information management is critical to the airline.
	Family Court of Australia Information management officer Paul Taylor recounts the overhaul of FCoA's paper-based records management system.
	Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority How Virginia Orr led the charge for a massive digital document and information repository.
	Count Wealth With profits well into the millions, IT lead Stephen Aguilera-Mendoza decided it was time for some (document) spring cleaning.
	MBF Online manager Michael Valaris on why content management is crucial to the success on any business.

Editor: Fran Foo
Copy Editor: Stephen Turner
Design: Melissa Siu

Paperless office a safe harbour on Sydney foreshore

Filing your working documents electronically can really make your company shine for the auditors -- but getting employees onboard can be another thing altogether, as the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority found.

It's one thing to say that the organisation needs to move away from a dependence on paper, and another thing entirely to make that move into reality. Just ask Virginia Orr, who has spent much of the last six years helping the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority (SHFA) wean its employees off of paper files onto a massive digital document and information repository.

SHFA is a state government agency charged with managing the development of The Rocks and Darling Harbour precincts within Sydney's CBD. With so many historic and publicly used buildings within its range of responsibility, the organisation's 250 employees handle a broad range of documentation including planning approvals, marketing designs, graphical illustrations, CAD files, Word documents, and many other types of information.

Because of the depth of paper information it was managing, the SHFA was an early advocate of electronic document and records management and back in 2000 implemented its core electronic system, Avand DataWorks, to handle structured recordkeeping of its many paper files.

Convinced that funnelling paper and electronic documents into the system would provide even more value, the organisation eventually laid down plans to streamline business processes by digitising all incoming paper correspondence. The reaction, however, was hardly what technical staff expected: -it went down like a lead balloon," says Orr.

The problem: most of the organisation's work processes were based around paper, and simply expecting people to give that up proved to be overly optimistic. It's a problem that isn't overcome easily -- but SHFA is hardly the first organisation to encounter such issues.

-As time has gone on, we've looked at what other organisations are doing and have found everyone has had pretty much the same problem getting rid of hard copy," Orr explains. -When we first put the system in, we focused on getting people to put the information into it -- but we didn't focus enough on telling them 'the reason you're putting it in is to get it out later'. People thought that DataWorks just meant more work for them."

Slow and steady
Years down the track, the DataWorks environment has become endemic to the way SHFA functions. And while paper still abounds at the organisation's offices, extensive user consultation and training has gradually helped deliver the online information management environment that Orr and her peers envisioned all those years ago.

The key to success, Orr explains, has been to focus on both facilitating the entry of documents into DataWorks -- much of the metadata is automatically generated -- and, more importantly, convincing employees that the system is providing benefits for them.

-It's the kind of system that needs to build some critical mass," Orr explains. -You need to get to the level where if you're looking for something and run a search, you know you're going to get something back. If people are searching and can't find what they want, they're not going to use the system."

It was only in mid 2004 that the organisation actually began scanning all incoming correspondence. This effort -got the ball rolling", Orr says, and began populating the database with useful information. At the same time, employees were being evangelised to in order to encourage them to participate.

One major selling point was the security provided by a digital copy: once a document is stored in DataWorks, it cannot get lost -- a point that was not wasted on employees who spent more than their fair share of time chasing down files. Paper files were also less secure than their digital counterparts, which can be protected using passwords and encryption.

Ultimately, a compromise was reached: employees that wanted to work with paper files could do so, as long as they also put a version of the documents into DataWorks. Paper files are named using the same subject indexing conventions as the digital system, and are managed using normal recordkeeping rules right until the time they're scheduled for destruction.

-Some people still prefer to work with paper, but we say 'just put it all in Dataworks and if you want to keep a paper file that's fine,'" says Orr. -If they want to do both, that's a duplication of effort -- but at least when it's in the system, it's protected and named meaningfully. You can't just put something in there; you have to link it to at least two indexes and give it a description."

Because DataWorks also captures electronic documents, the system has enjoyed strong take-up amongst employees that have increasingly warmed to its value. In March alone, for example, the system's database grew by 1,829 new Word documents and expanded its database with 146,000 e-mails (including 92,700 incoming messages). All told, the database occupies more than two terabytes of a 4TB EMC Centera-driven storage area network (SAN).

Making the grade
With the DataWorks environment now well established, SHFA is now using regular reporting to improve the visibility of employees' data management activities.

A set of regularly reviewed key performance indicators (KPIs) allows trending over time by tracking metrics such as the number of documents registered in the system; which business units are using the system the most and least; the number of users in the system per month; the number of people being trained; and the speed with which DataWorks is delivering search results. Those results are also graded for relevance by users, who are prompted with each search to click on a radio button to indicate how relevant the results were.

Being a government agency, we have a lot of legislated requirements. We're audited both internally and externally on our recordkeeping and procedures, and the standards we are required to achieve are quite rigorous compared to those for a private organisation.

Virginia Orr, Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority

SHFA's information management efforts have been driven by much more than just a passing interest in efficiency, however. -Being a government agency, we have a lot of legislated requirements," says Orr. -We're audited both internally and externally on our recordkeeping and procedures, and the standards we are required to achieve are quite rigorous compared to those for a private organisation."

Those regular audits were another motivator for SHFA to spread enthusiasm about the new system, and the ongoing metrics helped Orr's team get a clear picture of what was working in the new system and what wasn't.

This analysis was backed by a major business process mapping exercise, which identified key business processes and dependencies between them so the group could revisit the information systems and manual systems supporting them. With those processes clarified, the organisation could focus on tailoring the system to both complement and improve the workers' everyday activities.

In the end, initial worker apprehension about DataWorks has gradually dissipated as it became clear that the electronic information management system is just a natural progression for the employees.

-People always had the responsibility for managing corporate records and making sure they were captured right," says Orr, -but we had no way to know whether they were doing it or not -- until someone lodged a [Freedom of Information request] and we couldn't find the file. I'm sure we suffered as a result of that: a lot of information must have been walking out the door and been lost, but now we have a way of keeping an eye on it."

The system cost SHFA around $150,000 and slightly more for the SAN. Despite its inauspicious beginnings, the agency's concerted efforts to increase user buy-in have paid off -- both in terms of easier access to important documents, and in improving SHFA's compliance with regulatory requirements.

Later this year, that compliance will be further strengthened through the establishment of a secondary disaster recovery site. Regular additions to SHFA's SAN ensure there is enough headroom to cope with expected growth, while backups to WORM (write once read many) optical disks ensures that SHFA has accurate, non-repudiable copies of its information.

It's all part of an organisational transformation that has successfully navigated SHFA from the world of paper to a heavily digitised information management environment. The success of the project was recently confirmed when the organisation scored a four out of five on its last compliance audit -- a result of which Orr is suitably proud.

-We keep quite detailed records and have discovered from that that we're getting less and less hard copies," she says. -We still have the legacy of all these [hard copies] that we manage, but everything goes into the system as well."

-It's really been about achieving efficiencies and making sure that we're demonstrating best practice. We don't force people to use it; people can create documents somewhere else -- but we just let them know that we hope they don't. One way or another, as long as the information is in DataWorks, the system is working."