GovNews Blog | Extract Systems

In my first post in this series, I made the case for ECM. A successful court Electronic Content Management System (ECMS) includes lots more than its hardware, software (read more in the blog post in this series dedicated to technology), and network components. From the first serious consideration of implementing ECM, through planning and implementation itself, and continuing after the system becomes established, the court must devote substantial care, consideration, and effort to management of the People, the Politics, and the Governance of ECM.

When making the business case for Electronic Content management, rarely does Process Improvement rise to the top of the financial justifications. But any court manager who has implemented ECM with workflow will tell you that ECM Workflow has generated far and away the greatest financial savings the court has ever experienced. Although an ECM system without workflow can provide a court with some real benefits and savings, fully leveraging ECM requires taking advantage of the power of configurable automated workflow.

Courts have to not only CAPTURE documents, as described in the previous post; they also have to USE the documents in a myriad of ways. Some documents, like Motions, initiate their own processes for decision, resolution, notification, and subsequent activity. Others, like Release Agreements, provide referential information that must be made available to decision makers. Still others, like Affidavits, Admissions, or Waivers, bind or commit the signer or party to a particular position. Documents drive activities, acting as triggers; and activities generate documents.

Workflow, in a technologically agnostic sense, consists of the interconnected flow of activities in a process or set of processes. The reception, identification, and routing of documents through their lifecycles across the tasks, processes, and procedures with which they are involved constitute workflow.

Fully leveraging ECM requires using the appropriate technologies across these six activity groups: Capture, Workflow, Access, Integrate, Measure and Store.

CAPTURE involves 1) Getting an object such as a document or a file (whether physical or digital) into the ECM system (ECMS); and 2) classifying the captured documents and files within the ECMS. In other words, get the object from outside the ECMS (from, say an external filer) into the ECMS, in such a way that, unlike a huge dumpster, the object may be located when and as needed.

The First Pillar: A Good Start

Overview

While court managers know that court records management "Best Practices" include implementing Electronic Content Management (ECM), that hardly answers the question of how to leverage ECM to meet a particular court's needs in ways that will result in faster, more efficient, and higher quality court management.