Listed Australian software company, Objective Corporation (ASX:OCL) has been awarded a contract by the South Australian Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF) to deliver an enterprise-wide electronic document and records management solution (EDRMS) to underpin its business processes and assist with legislative compliance.
The DTF provides economic and policy advice and financial services to, and on behalf of, the South Australian government to strengthen the state finances and the South Australian economy. All 600 staff working for various agencies within the DTF will use the EDRMS as a primary system underpinning their daily work.
"The majority of our business practice is conducted by researching, authoring, reviewing and publishing documents – from managing the state budget process to drafting legislation, from managing the public sector superannuation scheme to delivering business support to the Treasurer's Office – its an information intensive environment," said Rick Persse, general manager, corporate services, DTF.
The selection of an EDRMS is a major component of the department's reform of its records management practices. Following extensive evaluation and testing, the department selected objective.
"We are required to comply with standards and legislation such as the State Records Act 1997, the Freedom of Information Act 1991 and the Electronic Transactions Act 2000," said Mr Persse.
"As the use of electronic documents in government business practice becomes pervasive, the DTF required a solution that would allow it to increase the scope of records management to include all types of information, such as electronic documents and emails, in addition to paper records.
"No longer do we operate in an environment where documents are considered records after they have been published or printed. Some records, such as emails are never printed – yet are still government records, for other documents it is just as crucial to maintain the version history and audit trail of the approval process of the document as it is to manage the end result. All types of documents, at any stage of their lifecycle need to be managed according to record keeping disciplines." said Mr Persse.
In addition to assisting the DTF meet its legislative obligations; the department and its people will experience a range of other business benefits:
- It will improve people's access to information through comprehensive search and retrieval tools and by consolidating multiple repositories of information.
- It will enhance people's ability to collaborate on document authoring by decreasing the reliance on personal filing systems and introducing comprehensive version control.
- It will enable the organisation to better manage tacit information, which is difficult to identify and is often lost.
- It will improve the integrity of information through tighter access controls to information and security around documents sent from the department.
Tony Walls, ceo Asia Pacific, Objective Corporation said: "The contract with DTF represents another milestone in Objective's expansion in the Asia Pacific region.
"Benefiting from the experience of other state and federal government departments, the DTF is the first department in the South Australian government to undertake an enterprise implementation of EDRMS.
"Being able to welcome another high profile government department to our growing user community is very pleasing. We are currently advising other South Australian government organisations indicating further opportunities in the medium term." said Mr Walls.