South Africa Department of Transport takes the fast track to effective transportation with EMC

One of the most important components of a healthy economy is a strong and efficient transportation infrastructure - one that stimulates innovation while promoting reliability, safety and affordability. At the Department of Transport South Africa, we are considered the 'heartbeat' of economic growth and social development.

Like other government bodies, our goal is to ensure transparency, accessibility and accountability across all operations. Efficient technology is crucial to keeping the 'heartbeat' pumping, and that's why we found EMC Documentum to be a natural solution to our data management challenges.

Breaking down silos and driving transparency

With five branches and 12 independent agencies, our Department supports various processes, from responding to constituent inquiries and processing licence applications, to submitting and responding to Parliament and Cabinet inquiries. While we followed a case management pattern of work, over time each agency developed and implemented its own processes and retention policies, which resulted in slow workflows, undocumented processes and unacceptable service levels. More critical was the amount of manual processing and struggle to comply with government regulations for standardised file systems and timely access to non-classified government information.

We embarked on an organisation-wide e-government initiative, leveraging the EMC Documentum platform, EMC Documentum xCP and EMC Captiva. Today, we have a single, integrated information management solution for document capture, case management and retention policy management, enabling the Department to transform the way it manages all cases in a centralised, standardised way across all branches and agencies.

We're able to efficiently manage case workflows, ensure accountability in all case-related activities, comply with relevant regulations and guidelines, and deliver significantly higher levels of service to all stakeholders. Not only do we respond to the public within required timeframes, but we can also file and track both the original documents and subsequent responses. Response times have improved from weeks to days; and 80% of document recipients comply with timeframe requirements.

While this project is impressive in and of itself, I am also happy to share that the Department recently received the 2013 Global Excellence in Case Management Award! This prestigious honour, co-sponsored by Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC) and BPM.com, recognises our demonstrated excellence in implementing an innovative adaptive case management (ACM) solution.

Edgar Mabothe, Public Sector Manager, EMC Southern Africa, comments: "EMC's cutting-edge document management solution empowers the Department of Transport to derive maximum value out of the data that is at their disposal in an effective and efficient manner, and allows them to utilise this information to make sound business decisions and accelerate the implementation of their service delivery priorities."

To read the full Department of Transportation/EMC Documentum case study, click here.