Organizations, whether public or private, through the current environment development in which they operate, are experiencing a significant increase of information and data volume they need to manage it effectively. In these circumstances, work and their management becomes difficult, causing more and more problems affecting the services and current operations efficiency.

D.I.I.P wanted to improve their administrative capacity and based on this goal, the institution's representatives have found it necessary to implement within a document management and workflow performance system to reduce service delivery time.

The institution was facing high response time answering submitted requests due to necessary time for information retrieval from physical documents - which made an electronic documents retention system a critical requirement. D.I.I.P has a complex organizational structure so the communication in terms of information and documents sharing between the various departments in the institution was also an important need. Real-time decision making was another area for improvement as extracting support documents containing statistical summaries was a slow process.

To achieve the objective of improving administrative capacity and operational efficiency of D.I.I.P was necessary a complete solution to enable:

• Reduce registration, distribution, ensuring workflows and archiving documents costs;
• Reduce response times to requests addressed to the institution;
• Reduce documents retrieval;
• Facilitate communication between the existing structures at the level of the institution;
• Optimization of documents route process control at the level of the institution;
• Extraction of statistical statements in real-time as support for decision-making.

The project "Modern tools for electronic management of internal documents and territory activity at the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection (MTEMIDTA)" aimed to implement an integrated information system to cover the entire documents life cycle within the institution (licenses, equipment, computer services and subsystems) and was co-financed from the European Social Fund through the Operational Programme for Development of Administrative Capacity.

Challenges and issues

Due to regulated specific of the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection and its duties relating to obtaining, verifying, processing, storage, protection and capitalization of information, current work involves working with a large critical data and information volume. Moreover, the organizational structure of the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection involves the following challenges: the existence of a large number of structures, documents categories that are managed within and of the existing registers throughout entire organization. Thus, most of the institution activities involve frequent use of paper.
All of these things lead to high costs and the emergence of major issues affecting the operations efficiency, including the large response times and hinder communication between distributed territorial internal structures.

Solution identified by D.I.I.P to address organization internal needs was the computerization of the main processes that involve extensive paper handling. In this case, after the analysis of the initial situation and the workflow features within the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection, but also of the specific requirements set by organization representatives, Star Storage specialists recommended to client-institution to improve internal working with documents policies and processes by implementing effective tools necessary to reduce time delivery to beneficiaries of the products made by D.I.I.P as well as through implementing a modern collaborative information system at the national level, as a secretarial support and documents management.

D.I.I.P was searching for a cost efficient solution to manage the documents within the organization while integrating with existing workflows and IT systems. Star Storage implemented a solution consisting of  ERA, SEAL and STARCAPTURE, applications that are part of the company’s portfolio. The Star Storage professional Services assured the integration with third party software such as Oracle Middleware and Microsoft Active Directory to generate a cohesive solution which enabled D.I.I.P to meet the goals of the project, adding structure to their document workflows, improving operational efficiency and lowering the TCO associated with document management.

Thanks to the Star Storage experience and expertise, but also to high quality solutions, services and products of that they offer, the representatives of the D.I.I.P have chosen to follow the recommendations of the Star Storage specialists engaged in MTEMIDTA project. They responded perfectly to the needs and requirements existing at that time in the institution.

In the MTEMIDTA project, Star Storage provided a complete solution integrating cutting-edge technologies for the design and implementation of a modern and efficient document management system addressing the high complexity of their internal processes providing:

• Electronic archive management subsystem (in accordance with Law no. 135/2007)
• Workflow management subsystem – sending and monitoring documents between departments on approval workflows.
• Electronic registry subsystem - a single documents registration point allowing documents distribution in accordance with internal organizational structure.
• Reporting and business analysis subsystem - enables execution reports and analysis of operational data collected in the reporting database.
• Internal portal subsystem - the main interface to the system, enabling management applications and general interest information publication (press releases, notes, standards).
• Identities Management Subsystem.

In addition, in the framework of the project were held training sessions of the D.I.I.P specialists for use of specific software tools and were developed modern working standards for document workflows.

"One of the key reasons that ensured the success of this project is Star Storage team with experience and high qualification in implementation of information management integrated systems. We were very pleased and happy to have worked with a truly reliable partner as Star Storage. Together we formed a single team, united and capable of a very successful collaboration in this project. This allowed us to jointly find solutions to all the challenges encountered during the project, Star Storage team involved demonstrating extraordinary professionalism and overall responsibility, issues that had a very important contribution in determining the favorable results obtained so in the MTEMIDTA project realized.

The results obtained show that we have made the best choice when we decided to implement Star Storage solution and constitutes a good example because the key elements that led to the generation of such a project are applicable to all public institutions, which by their nature require a high level of activities formalization, but also to other organizations." said Adina MACOVEI, Commissioner Police Chief, Project Manager in the MTEMIDTA project of the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection.

"MTEMIDTA project conducted by Star Storage for D.I.P.I. was a great success, its objectives were successfully achieved. It was an honor and also a challenge for us, because of the very special requirements imposed on it by this project. The success of this project shows that we have implemented a competitive and efficient solution that answered even to the most demanding requirements related to the effective critical data management. Our team was noted by seriousness and professionalism, thanks to the experience, numerous technical certifications and advanced skills that they hold in this area.  

A major contribution to the successful implementation of our solution had the strong support that we received from the beneficiary institution management. We thank representatives of the General Directorate for Intelligence and Internal Protection for both special involvement they proved to obtain timely information required in project phases, such as analysis and design, as well as for opening of the institution to adapt existing procedures to the new work way based on information technology, especially given that this organization carries out sensitiveactivities to information security." said Catalin Paunescu, Star Storage CEO.

• Reduced document distribution costs using electronic format and electronic transfer;
• Documents with internal recipients are laid down only in electronic form based on digital signatures (qualified digital certificates);
• Standardization of document management procedures due to implemented workflows with predefined steps and clear work rules;
• Improved decision support by consolidating information using SEAL as a unified repository;
• Gaining real-time access to data depending on the rights assigned;
• Automation for certain tasks in order to reduce the time allocated for them (e.g. registration number allocation, allocating rights according to the rules, checking the authorization, users notification, tasks/functions distribution to substitute, automated delivery to documents in electronic archive etc.);
• Reduced time for internal approval/ endorsement requests using electronic documents and distribution system functionalities;
• Secured access to information throughout the document lifecycle by implementing SEAL access rights policies.
• Efficient grouping of documents according to different criteria, able to be searched;
• Storing and electronic archiving in the system of generated documents in the workflow;
• Improved operational efficiency eliminating the workflows associated with physical documents.