Mountains of paper to streams of data

It’s no secret that government agencies are seeking digitalization and data accessibility to optimize work processes and deliver improved citizen services. Whether moving to the cloud, improving their security operations, or complying with the M-19-21 electronic records directive, information and data are the lifeblood of the mission.

Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) allows agencies to take records management a step further. IDP coupled with capabilities, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) allows information to be extracted 8-times faster and with better accuracy than traditional optical character recognition (OCR) methods.

Digitizing doesn’t automatically produce an “intelligent” document that is searchable. By taking necessary steps, agencies can produce intelligent, electronic documents and records with data captured for auto classification and process automation, improving the citizen experience.

Producing an intelligent document

Scanning a paper document or record produces a ‘flat’ image file that can be stored electronically. This “simple” scan does not provide any value derived from a one-touch digitalization process. To produce intelligent documents, agencies must incorporate descriptive information and identifiers to classify records according to type, author, subject matter, creation date, etc. Metadata, essentially “data about data,” captured in concert with the digitization process will enable agencies to interface data with their core applications to glean insight and intelligence. Digitized documents make information securely accessible to support the mission.

Before you digitize, Iron Mountain’s information management experts advise every agency to establish an end-to-end information management strategy and governance plan. These crucial components should include an enterprise information framework applicable to both analog and electronic records, plus the taxonomy for the data required from the records.