Government Agencies Should Consider Document Management to Deal with Paper Problems in 2021
Despite the fact that we are now in a digital age, in the last 20 years, the usage of paper products in the US has actually increased by 126%. And some of the worst offenders of paper usage are government municipalities – for good reason! Serving your community and ensuring a high quality of life to your citizens requires lots of paperwork! According to The Paperless Project, a typical employee spends 30-40% of their time looking for information kept in filing cabinets, which can create a lot of stress for government workers who are already overburdened in so many ways. One consequence is that “treading water” becomes the new norm, and the backlog of documents needing to be filed, scanned or destroyed grows to become the literal elephant taking up an entire room – or several rooms – in an office building.
If this sounds familiar in your government municipality, a full-service document management program may be able to alleviate some of the paper production issues.
For over 17 years, Secure Records Solutions has worked with counties in North Florida and South Georgia to handle a variety of projects involving identifying, moving, and destroying 30+ years of county records. We complete projects either at our secure facility or even onsite if that is what county ordinances require. Projects vary in time, scale, and price, but no matter what your government municipality’s issues, we are confident we will be able to create compliant, cost-effective solutions.
While each project is unique, typically our comprehensive engagements include the following services: a regular shredding program, one-time purges following extremely busy times such as election seasons, offsite indexing and storage, scan on demand access when files are needed, and secure destruction after retention is met. In this case, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts in solving the paper problem for government agencies.
The SRS Process
While a full-scale document management program sounds complex, our team of experts has years of experience and can keep your office focused on constituents while we focus on your records!
The first step in an arrangement is to understand what records your government office actually has. Through a process called indexing, our staff will go through and reorganize records at the file level. In this stage, we typically find that government agencies are able to destroy between 30-40% of their records immediately. Next, any records that require ongoing storage will be housed in our Prism Privacy + certified facility. If at any time staff needs access to one of those records, our scan on demand will deliver it within 30 minutes during regular business hours. On an ongoing basis, our process automates the destruction as it meets retention.
To prevent paper from building up again, we recommend that offices implement a regular shred program. This will ensure confidential information related to the government is securely stored in our shred containers then properly destroyed using a NAID AAA certified method. Finally, if a large project or busy time of the year fills up your regular bins faster than normal, a one-time purge is a fast and secure way to get rid of those records.
The Benefits to You
Investing in a document management program typically enables offices to save space, save time, save money, and ultimately do your duty to your community. Let us explain:
Saving Space: Wasting rooms to simply store records, is money down the drain. Even if space isn’t an issue yet, look at your track record and you can estimate when it will become a problem. When you outsource your records storage to SRS, you can utilize that space more efficiently, stop paying for unsecure storage units, and lower operating costs.
Saving Time: If the statistics are true, office employees spend 30-40% of their time searching for records. When your staff needs a file, they simply request it via our scan-on-demand system. Our team will promptly deliver it, typically within 30 minutes. Thirty minutes versus 30% of an entire workday… the math makes it easy to understand the effeciencies created.
Save Money: In a time when the economy is uncertain and budgets are being squeezed for every available dollar, an outsourced document management solution will create efficiencies with tangible results.
Fulfill your duty to your constituents: Even if your staff has undergone proper training, unsecured records rooms are at risk from a breach due to vendors, temporary employees, or virtually anyone who enters your office. When you store records offsite with SRS, your records are kept in a locked, safeguarded storage facility with 24/7 video monitoring.
Secure Records Solutions has a team that are experts at organizing and indexing records, which saves clients time and money. It keeps government workers focused on the constituents they’re serving – not their records! If a customized, comprehensive document management program sounds appealing, please contact Secure Records Solutions today. One of our team members will discuss your current situation and, if necessary, review your facility to get an accurate count of boxes in order to create a proposal. Our aim is to create a solution that cures your current problem while setting your government office up for maximum success in the future.
