With the state's Information Services Division acting as a centralized imaging bureau for document storage, database management and services, state agencies will be able to set up imaging, document management and workflow applications, using Web browsers as the interface to the overall system.
"Montana has broken the mold with this solution, which makes it exciting," said Dan Van Alstine, a principal in charge of government imaging at KPMG Peat Marwick, a partner with Montana on the project.
Montana's statewide imaging project is part of a new trend in document imaging. No longer are organizations deploying the technology for specific workgroup applications, but rather as a solution for the entire enterprise. They are using the explosive growth of the Internet and intranets as the catalyst to bring about this change. They are integrating different document technologies, such as workflow and document management, based on standards that are helping to engender greater interoperability.
Already, California, Idaho, Tennessee and Utah have contracts, RFPs or plans to deploy statewide imaging systems. Oklahoma City is rolling out a series of document imaging applications that will give the city enterprise document storage and retrieval capabilities.
"The development of these solutions is being fueled by a widespread recognition that knowledge is power," wrote Gerry Murray in the report, "State of the Document Technologies Market, 1996-2002," published by the Association of Information and Image Management International (AIIM) in 1998. Murray, an analyst with International Data Corp. (IDC), added that in today's world, organizational knowledge is critically important.
"The flow of information needs to reach across the enterprise instead of being relegated to just a few select areas," Murray wrote.
A Change is Gonna Come
The document technologies market has surged in recent years, growing from $7.9 billion in 1996 to $17.7 billion today. With a 25 percent growth rate, the market is expected to reach $33.7 billion by 2002, according to IDC. The term document technologies, which has replaced imaging and document management solutions, includes imaging, document management, workflow, computer output to laser disk (now referred to as enterprise reporting; see page 52) and text retrieval. For years, government has been one of the largest segments of the document technologies market. With a 26 percent annual growth rate, the government sector is expected to spend nearly $3 billion on document technologies and related services this year, surpassing all other industries except insurance.
Behind these numbers is a market that has undergone major changes in just a few years.
"The landscape is changing and the Internet is driving a lot of that change," Van Alstine said. That's no exaggeration. In a survey of document technology users and suppliers, AIIM found that 58 percent felt the Internet had increased the demand for document solutions.
According to Murray and others, the Internet affects document technologies in two ways. First, it plays a vital role in distributing document-based information. Any user with a browser on their computer can view documents, regardless of where the document is stored. The document can be a scanned image, an electronic form or a report full of eye-popping graphics.
Second, Internet-based document solutions are cost-effective for large-scale users. According to Van Alstine, vendors such as FileNet are offering attractive software licenses for the Web-enabled versions of their document imaging and workflow software. Audrey Hinman, manager of Montana's Information Services Division, pointed to price as a prime reason the state and KPMG chose FileNet's Web solution.
"We chose a Web-based solution because it's more cost-effective on the licensing of users," she said. FileNet user licenses are priced as low as $1,600 per seat in certain configurations, according to the company.
From Documents to Portals
Document imaging has always dominated the state and local government markets. These systems, which convert paper-based information into images that can be electronically stored and retrieved, have been the basis for automation in many city, county and state departments. Today, however, document solutions rarely involve just one technology. In fact, more than half of the imaging systems sold are integrated with two or more technologies, such as workflow, document management, text retrieval, enterprise reporting and microfilm or fiche.
According to the AIIM report, integrated systems have become so significant that they are expected to become the de facto market standard by the turn of century. Leading the way is the integration of document management and text retrieval technologies.
"The primary trend," according to Murray, "will be incorporating image, workflow, retrieval, etc., into a Web-based document management environment."
The best example of this is the advent of the Web portal. On the Internet, Web portals have become the latest hot trend, with companies such as Lycos, Yahoo, Microsoft, America Online, Disney and Time Warner offering a broad array of resources and services, such as e-mail, forums, search engines and online
shopping.
Increasingly, however, corporate intranets are becoming portals to company information and services for workers (see "Intranets," March). These portals provide workers the means to distribute, retrieve, manage and query documents and forms, as well as perform other tasks, such as computer training. Document technologies are the tools that make portals work. "As the market evolves towards corporate portals, intranets will intersect with document technologies," Murray said.
While Montana doesn't envision its statewide document imaging system as the basis for an intranet portal just yet, the integration of document technologies is clearly part of their plan. "We've discussed workflow and document management with some of the departments interested in using the imaging service," Van Alstine said.
Two Montana agencies, labor and revenue, will use the imaging system. Several other agencies have expressed interest in joining the project. Each participating agency will develop its own application and will have at least one scanning station for document input. Hardware and software for document storage, database management and image processing will be run by the information services department at its data center.
The state will run FileNet's Panagon system on an IBM RS/6000 and store documents on a 160-gigabyte optical disc jukebox. Total system cost is approximately $1 million, according to Hinman.
"This model allows the state's agencies to share infrastructure costs by having a common architecture and software," Van Alstine said. Agencies will pay for their use of the imaging system through a complicated chargeback procedure that splits costs according to the amount of storage they need and the number of users they have. "Our state agencies are too small to afford an imaging system on their own," Hinman explained. "Fortunately, we've had a lot of experience sharing resources over the years."
Improving Standards
The Internet, along with integrated, scalable systems that can grow to serve an entire enterprise, has fueled the change in document technologies. None of this would have happened so successfully were it not for better standards. While viewed as less important than the other trends, standards, have enabled vendors to offer enterprise systems with integrated technologies, according to the AIIM report.
For the Internet, HTML and PDF standards let organizations publish documents relatively easily. Imaging, document management and workflow standards, such as TIFF, DMA and WfMC, have enabled vendors to build enterprise document systems that span different repositories, file types and storage media.
Interest in standards among document technology users has never ranked very high, however. What has always sparked user interest is, of course, return on investment. Even in government, where such an issue matters less than, say, constituent service, return has been important. The use of imaging has always been tied to cost savings associated with reductions in manual labor for paper processing. Land registries and revenue agencies have invested heavily in document imaging because of its ability to reduce labor costs as well as storage costs.
But according to AIIM, integrated enterprise document systems will have a more difficult time showing a return on investment because the large-scale processes involved are not well understood, nor are the costs that are associated with them. One way to reduce the costs of these larger, more integrated systems is with better service contracts.
In government, as in the private sector, the convergence of document technologies with the Internet means more mainstream customers using the technology for the first time. "Service vastly lowers the cost and time to deploy a system," said IDC's Murray. "Service can also improve the return on investment, so governments should make sure they are getting the right level of service for their need."
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Tod Newcombe is author of "Electronic Commerce: A Guide for Public Officials," published by Government Technology Press. Additional information is available online at or by contacting Lucinda McKevitt at 916/363- 5000 or via e-mail.
