1-page Solution Brief - Posted 9/21/2006
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Ministry of Attorney General connects justice partners by exploring the 2007 Microsoft Office system workflow, search, and collaboration tools
Situation
The Ministry of Attorney General for the Province of British Columbia (BC) is responsible for law reform, the administration of justice, and for providing legal services that ensure lawful public administration. To effectively connect its vast set of constituents, it needs a technology solution that will help its offices collaborate on, find, and share information in a secure environment.
After several years of delays in a proposed government enterprise portal and content management solution, point-specific solutions were adopted. These solutions, however, have failed to provide the desired level of integration with existing systems, resulting in limited search functionality, the loss of “corporate memory,” and incurred costs from ineffective document retrievals during litigation. Supporting multiple solutions has also increased training and maintenance costs, and limited access to and reuse of information. The Province is now working on a number of new initiatives to automate workflow and enable greater collaboration, knowledge management, and information sharing throughout its offices. The first initiative will be primarily focused on the Executive, which has complex requirements for search, content management, secure collaboration, and workflow related to briefing note preparation and approval.
Solution
As a participant in the Microsoft® Office Rapid Deployment Technology Adoption Program, the Province plans to pilot an integrated enterprise portal and content management solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The portal will serve as a centralized document repository, providing a consistent mechanism to organize, categorize, navigate and manage a large number of documents. Employees will be able to modify content types as well as change settings to add customized workflows, define retention policies for the repository, or to add new templates. Additionally, out-of-the-box workflows will enable information to be automatically routed to the appropriate person at each stage of the business cycle. Role-based security features will allow for quick retrieval of case information in a more secure environment.
Because Office SharePoint Server 2007 enterprise search integrates seamlessly with the existing BC Government core infrastructure, employees will be able to perform queries against a myriad of resources including content, processes, people, and relevant data, helping them access critical case information and resources more quickly.
The Province is also hoping to improve efficiency by using Office SharePoint Server 2007 to provide more automated forms-based processes, to ensure the accurate sharing of information, and to help eliminate time-consuming manual procedures and duplicated data entry.
Benefits
• To enhance content management by adding out-of-the-box workflows that enable users to define retention policies, assign permissions, and add content types
• To increase productivity by allowing employees to easily search a myriad of resources to quickly find critical information
• To reduce administration and litigation costs by providing employees with a more efficient way to access, use, and reuse documents
• To reduce training and maintenance costs of supporting incompatible point-specific solutions with a centralized portal and consistent workflows.
© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. The information contained in this document relates to prerelease software product which may be substantially modified before its first commercial release. Accordingly, the information may not accurately describe or reflect the software product when first commercially released. This document is provided for informational purposes only and Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to this document or the information contained in it. Microsoft, the Office logo, and SharePoint are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. Document published August 2006.
