DC Government Public Employees Relations Board

Providing Document Management

Services Rendered

  • Requirements Definition
  • Solution Design
  • Application Development and Solution Implementation
  • Testing
  • Deployment

Project Description

The District of Columbia’s Public Employee Relations Board (PERB) resolves labor-management disputes between agencies of the District government and labor organizations representing agency employees. Legal analysts and lawyers frequently use PERB case information for valuable research. To facilitate this research and reduce in-house operating costs, PERB wanted an e-government solution that would bring its case information online.

Meeting the Challenge

Since its inception 20 years ago, all of PERB’s case documents have been stored in paper format. Case documents include opinions, complaints, briefs, exhibits, and motions. PERB enlisted InterImage to develop, deploy, and maintain an electronic document management application that enabled PERB to disseminate case information to the public via their web site. The application allows PERB staff to manage vital case information more efficiently and effectively.

The implementation of an online repository of all PERB case information and documents enables citizens, employees, and legal representatives to research case information over the Internet in a user-friendly environment. The document management system reduces the time and material costs of storing and disseminating case information as well as replying to requests for case-related documents. The application also enables improved and automated performance reporting.

Solution

Miles and Miles of Documents

The first challenge PERB faced was determining a method to convert thousands of pages of documents into an electronic format viewable via the Internet. As part of the designed solution, InterImage advised the PERB to use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology and Adobe’s Portal Document Format (PDF).

InterImage trained PERB staff to scan case documents and convert them into PDF format using Abode Capture. PERB now needed a way to store these PDF documents and make them viewable on the web. PERB also needed a management system to maintain the collection.

Documents Online Made Easy

InterImage’s document management solution allows PERB employees to store case information in a SQL database, upload scanned case documents as Adobe PDFs to the management system, and update case information via an easy-to-use web interface. Public users can search specific case information and view case documents through a web browser.

Searching PDF

Additionally, InterImage’s solution allows users to search the text of PDF documents. Using Adobe’s IFilter and OCR technology, users can search for keywords located within the text of a PDF document. The designed solution gives users maximum search capabilities in a clean and usable design.