Social Services files at Ghent public social welfare centre and correspondence at the city of Ghent to go digital

Ghent, February 2011 – The Social Services files at the Ghent public social welfare centre (OCMW/CPAS) and correspondence at Ghent city council are set to enter the digital age. Digipolis, the IT supplier for the city council and the OCMW/CPAS, and content management specialist Amplexor are working together to implement this new project.

6,000 Social Services files

The digitisation project consists of two parts. The first is the ‘Digitaal Sociaal Dossier’ (digital Social Services file) project for the OCMW/CPAS, which will see at least 6,000 active client files replaced with a digitised copy. In practical terms this means that existing letters and documents will be scanned and the file will soon be available to the relevant employees in electronic format.

The digital files will of course be subject to strict and extensive rights management. Employees will only be able to view information relevant to their task within the file. The fact that the digital Social Services file contains confidential information and will be used daily by about 500 employees with different roles makes this project quite a challenge.

In addition to digitising the current paper files and making them available electronically, the project also entails creating a number of workflows to handle documents digitally from start to finish. The activities of the various people involved will also be recorded in a database.

The exchange of information between systems will be a key component of this project, as the digital Social Services file will always be linked to the same client's administrative Social Services file, which is maintained in another application.
Correspondence in eight building blocks
For the second part of the project, the city of Ghent commissioned the ‘Briefwisselingssysteem’ (correspondence system) project, which is aimed at the city clerk and assistant clerk and the departments, services and cabinets of the city of Ghent, representing about 600 letters each day. Soon every letter and e-mail – both incoming and outgoing – will be handled according to a new process. Correspondence will be processed via eight building blocks (see illustration). This new method is aimed at improving the process of locating and following up letters.
In the new system, letters will be scanned and then placed on a platform. The employee can then assign specific meta data to the letter and deliver it to the addressee.

Why Alfresco and Amplexor?

Digipolis chose Amplexor for the implementation of a Document Management System to support both projects; scanning and archiving is considered as a separate assignment. Stef D'Huyvetter, project leader at Digipolis, tells us: “During the initial stages there were five candidates, each putting forward a different platform. The Amplexor-Alfresco combination went down well with Digipolis. In the long term, the city of Ghent and Digipolis want to set up more digitisation projects and Alfresco is an ideal partner for that purpose.”
All the providers had a good proposal, but Digipolis gave preference to Amplexor. “They offered an excellent price-quality ratio”, says Stef D'Huyvetter. “Compared with the other suppliers, Amplexor had a lower start-up cost, average recurrent costs, fair man-day rates and low licence costs. Moreover, Digipolis had already worked with Amplexor in the past, to both parties' satisfaction.” Lode Vandermeulen, Sales Manager at Amplexor, is also happy with this cooperation: “We are particularly happy that Digipolis have entrusted us with this project. The assignment is complex, but I am convinced that with our many years of experience in Document Management, we can handle this project successfully.”
The correspondence project and the digital Social Services file will go live in spring 2012.