The ability of a purpose-built search engine to find and deliver an electronic “package” of documents to meet a range of information needs is proving to be the icing on the corporate governance cake for one of NSW’s oldest councils.
Randwick Council in suburban Sydney got its first taste of the productivity benefits of streamlined search technology when, in 2008, it became one of the first councils to adopt iPlatinum’s WebWombat, a purpose-built search engine for local government.
But this raised a major question: once the information was located in any of a number of data repositories how could it be collated in a readily accessible electronic format to be made available to those who needed it for such things as formalised GIPA and subpoena or court-related requests.
It followed therefore when iPlatinum recently introduced iFerret, the successor to WebWombat, that Randwick was keen to see if it could secure further productivity gains in the area of corporate governance.
The Council’s Manager Administrative Services, David Kelly explains.
“They are not uncommon problems reported to any council call centres: the damaged footpath which results in someone falling and sustaining an injury or a tree in a public space that drops a large limb and damages private property.
“If such incidents are consequential enough they will set in train a search for information stored across numerous data repositories. That information may be required to satisfy insurance claims, assemble the facts for subpoenas in judicial proceedings or in some instances, respond to Government Information (Public Access) information requests.
“In short it’s information to help ensure good corporate governance,” Mr. Kelly says.
iFerret has solved a number of problems previously identified by Randwick in locating all relevant information across key application systems including documents, land information, customer request management, email and its network environment.
But it is a new function that is helping deliver far greater productivity. The Managed Results Set enables the user to prepare a “package” of documents in an electronic form to address such things as formalised GIPA and subpoena or court-related requests. It allows the creation of a narrative for the document package, as well as the ability to store the result electronically for future reference.
Using iFerret Council insurance officer Stacey Jeffries can easily capture relevant documents across all Council systems which the Managed Result Set will then place in a folder for rapid dispatch to relevant parties, either legal advisors or insurers.
iPlatinum managing director Trevor Wilson says iFerret represents a quantum improvement in search technology because of functions such as OCR support, synonyms, duplicate documents recognition and user configurations of ’administrator’ and ‘super user’.
*Copy supplied by iFerret
For more information visit the website at www.iplatinum.com.au
