Governments around the world are aware their document processes are inefficient, yet fixing them is not a priority, especially in this period of austerity. Government agencies as a result, however, are missing substantial opportunities to save money, better serve constituents and retain valuable employees.
These are the findings of an IDC Government Insights Market Spotlight based on an IDC white paper sponsored by Ricoh entitled Government: Fixing Document Processes Improves Constituent Services While Reducing Costs, July 2013.

“Government agencies, even within an austerity context, have great opportunities to drive out costs and reduce spending while maximising service quality to the public,” says the IDC Government Insights Market Spotlight.

“The agencies don’t need to increase their capex or opex to achieve these gains,” says Richard Pinker, MD of Ricoh SA. “They can often leverage existing technology and partnerships through a strategic approach to cutting costs.”

Several key findings arose from the IDC global survey of 1 516 document-driven process owners and information workers:
* Ineffectiveness, inefficiency – only 36% of government respondents characterised their constituent-facing document-driven processes as efficient and effective, compared to 52% for commercial sector customer-facing processes. Government was among the lowest-ranked industries for document process efficiency in the survey.

* Lack of urgency – even though they are aware of process efficiencies, only one-in-three government respondents placed greater importance on projects for improving document-driven processes than over IT projects. That’s 10 points lower than the commercial sector.

* Substantial cost-saving potential – if they could fix all issues in their constituent-facing processes, government respondents said their overall costs would be reduced by 9%. These fixes would also improve services to constituents, help retain employees and help attract younger workers, the research indicated.

“Many observers believe governments should try to operate more like businesses, and businesses are clearly committed to improving document processes,” says Yoshi Sasaki, GM, business services centre, business solutions group at Ricoh.

“Although government budget constraints are real, this research proves that investments in improving document workflow, even modest ones, can be substantially recouped through cost savings, retention, satisfaction and increased capacity.”

A simple example, document process improvements can correct errors that currently result in late or incomplete tax collections or overpayment of expensive human services benefits.
For best results, Ricoh recommends taking a broad view of the document process improvement.

“Although many government agencies have budgets that are restricted to their own units or departments, documents typically span most every government agency and processes,” says Sasaki. “Consequently, we would advise government agencies to take a more strategic view and look to work across agencies for improving their processes to maximise their return.”