City administration of Ufa (Directum)

Creation of the "electronic municipality" system on the DIRECTUM platform in the city administration of Ufa

According to data of statistical investigations, projects on automation of primary activity of the organization and implementation of electronic document management systems most often are implemented by public authorities. Specialists expect that in the nearest future this trend will remain. Numerous citizens' appeals and the organizations in different instances annually generate hundreds of thousands of documents requiring operational and high-quality processing. Information which is contained in them is a basis for acceptance of important management decisions which define development of society and social satisfaction of the population.

Informatization of subjects of municipal management forms basic and very important layer of the forming e-government system of Russia. From the point of view of experts, "the electronic municipality" represents a modern form of the organization of activity of municipal authorities which allows inhabitants and the different enterprises to use a fast and convenient method of receiving the public and municipal services.

By the existing estimates, now only about 10% of all departmental information are provided in electronic form. Other 90% of data are stored on paper therefore search of necessary data is very labor-consuming. The volume of technical work with documents is often so big that is not enough for accomplishment of actually administrative activity of time. As a result document flow becomes end in itself, but not a cure of tasks.

Implementation of electronic document management helps to optimize organizational procedures, to make them simpler and logical. Today to the similar systems installed in bodies of the state and municipal authority even more high requirements, than to the solutions which are applied in the commercial sector as the most part of their document flow information of the state appointment - bulletins makes, orders, reports, resolutions, etc. are imposed.

"The computerized disorder"

Before the implementing solution DIRECTUM in city administration of Ufa work with documents was automated, in this or that type, practically in all its divisions. These local jobs were used generally by the staff of office — employees corresponded with a set of the organizations, made agreements, developed plans and regulating documents, prepared different references and reports. However information was not systematized, the applied software tools only registered documents, but did not support important functions — routing of documents, automatic tracking of a current status, full-text search, etc.

The complex workflow automation covering all its procedures was required: creation of the document, approval, distribution, search and archive storage. Within preparation of the project the following tasks were formulated:

• automation of control over execution of management processes;
• reduction of the terms of consideration of the applications arriving from the population and the organizations, ensuring transparency of the corresponding processes;
• acceleration and regulation of the movement of documents;
• ensuring quick access to any documents in city administration and its divisions;
• ensuring the protected and reliable document storage.

Search of the solution

At the beginning of 2007 the staff of city administration of Ufa carried out the estimated analysis of the existing electronic document management systems; by its results the public contract on system implementation of DIRECTUM was signed with MITTs Municipal Unitary Enterprise (Ufa) — the certified partner of developer company.

According to the head of information technology and communication of administration of the city district of Ufa of Marat Rakhimkulov, the DIRECTUM system profitable differs from other proposals of market participants: it conforms to domestic standards of office-work, has flexible integration opportunities, a replicaiton engine, functions of the electronic digital signature (EDS) and enciphering of documents, but also, provides remote access. Existence of ready tools of development of IS-Builder with support of the powerful and modern Microsoft SQL Server database allows to complement standard functionality of a system with specialized modules and industry solutions.

The DIRECTUM system became the central link in the created information system "electronic municipality". The general structure of the solution can be conditionally separated into two parts: internal and external. The internal part aimed at increase in efficiency of local authorities integrates an information and analytical system of municipality and an electronic document management system of DIRECTUM. An external part is directed to increase in openness of local authorities and consists of the Internet portals using which interaction of administration with the population of the city and the enterprises registered in its territory is performed.

Structure of electronic municipality of Ufa

Project Implementation

System implementation of electronic document management of DIRECTUM in city administration of Ufa was performed in several stages. At first specialists conducted a research of the current processes of work with documents. It allowed to generalize the existing documentary flows, to compare them with standard functionality of DIRECTUM and to define structure of business processes. Then the DIRECTUM system was installed on the server and jobs and configured according to the approved list of modifications.

Personnel training became the following task. As the MITTs company which was engaged in project implementation is the center of the certified training of DIRECTUM, the staff of divisions of the city administration could actually without separation from the main work undergo training and certification and to receive certificates of users of a system.

Since the beginning of commercial operation in a system more than 200 active users — from the heads accepting documents for consideration to ordinary employees who receive orders and resolutions are registered already. Besides, 10 remote places for self-service of citizens are connected to a single system.

Results of Implementation

The solution created on the DIRECTUM platform supports uniform storage of electronic documents with a possibility of tracking of their lifecycle, has the powerful built-in system of search, executes operations on registration, processing, approval and mailing of documents, allows to transfer them to archive and to prepare for destruction.

A system provides automatic documents acceptance, arriving by fax, to e-mail or in the form of written applications of citizens, allows to execute primary registration in any division and then to exercise the centralized control of their movement, creates reports about execution of instructions. In a system account of all internal and administrative documents and also agreements (agreements) and office correspondence is kept; work with the interconnected documents is supported. Electronic images of all documentation, regardless of its format, are stored in uniform electronic archive, and access to it is controlled according to user rights.

Structure of a single system of electronic document management of administration of Ufa

Office-work and work with citizens' appeals are conducted completely using system resources. All processes are constructed according to the organizational interrelations accepted in divisions of city administration and areas and consider an established procedure of the reporting, check, assurance and issue of the state documents. Observance of regulations of the movement of documents between departments of the city administration and executive bodies of the city and republic allows to coordinate accurately work of power structures and increases efficiency of their activity.

Safety of transactions is ensured not only in an information network of municipality, but also beyond its limits — in interaction with higher executive authorities, the enterprises and individuals. The full value of process of approval of documents in electronic form is provided due to use of the electronic digital signature applied to vising.

Thanks to the thought-over organization of processes repeated information input is excluded, delivery time of correspondence is reduced, material and labor costs decrease, the quality and reliability of data increases.

Useful additions

Usually municipal divisions resolving issues of the social sphere (management of town planning, land committees, etc.), work most tensely. They are engaged in setting in queue on receiving housing and land allocations, issue permissions for construction of new objects, sign agreements therefore are forced to process a large number of requests in a short time.

For automation of activity of staff of bodies of management of housing policy automated information system "Accounting and distribution of housing" created based on DIRECTUM was implemented. She allows to keep account of housing stock of the municipal entity and also contains data on the citizens needing improvement of living conditions. The specialized functions put in a system, procedures and services considerably simplify work for which the staff of municipal divisions of the city is responsible.

As a result of implementation of the AIS "Accounting and Distribution of Housing" not only heads of administration and municipal employees, but also ordinary citizens had an opportunity to get acquainted with reliable information. Due to quality improvement and data availability and also thanks to complex automation the performing discipline considerably increased. And the most important, people should not wait long — their requests are expedited also with due quality.

Further perspectives

As the deputy head of administration of the city district of Ufa Alexey Oshchepkov notes, with system implementation of DIRECTUM it is not revealed any case of loss of information, time spent for document retrieval and report generation was reduced, control of execution of instructions increased. Heads had a useful tool for the analysis of citizens' appeals and job evaluation of subordinates.

Improvement of a system continues. After a while electronic document management will cover also those staff of administration of the city district and areas which continue to use traditional paper technologies for work with documentation so far. The perspective plan of development of the workflow system provides also consolidation of servers in a cluster for performance improvement and reliability of a system.

In further plans of city administration of Ufa — solution integration with already existing information systems (housing and public utilities and UMS) and development of new modules on the DIRECTUM platform.