Forest Service Wants To Grow Its ECM Capabilities

By Karla Paris

With more than 40,000 users, the world’s largest forestry research organization has high expectations for its potential vendors.

The Forest Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a multi-faceted agency that protects and manages 154 national forests and grasslands in 44 states and Puerto Rico. It is the world’s largest forestry research organization and its experts provide technical and financial help to state and local government agencies, businesses, and private landowners to help protect and manage non-federal forest and associated range and watershed lands.

Now the Forest Service is preparing to upgrade its own technical capabilities. According to GCN, the Forest Service – in concert with Washington Office Acquisition Management (AQM) Information Technology (IT) Support Branch, Chief Information Office (CIO), and Office of Regulatory and Management Services (ORMS) – is conducting market research and analysis:

• To determine the pool of potential contractor/vendors with the capability to provide viable solutions for the objectives listed below;
• to refine the performance-based requirements, and to determine the most suitable approach to design, develop, and deploy the next generation Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system;
• and to ensure the solution is aligned with the Forest Service ECM Reference Architecture.

Regardless of the vendor it chooses, upgrading the agency’s current ECM system will be no easy task. The Forest Service has more than 40,000 users with a sizable seasonal workforce that access its central repository which contains more than 250 million documents, more than 150 terabytes of data, and more than 70,000 permission groups.

The Forest Service is currently collecting information on vendor’s ECM solution(s) that address the following agency objectives:

• The new “system” makes eDiscovery easier and less expensive.
• The solution will provide the ability to find it, save it, share it, reuse it, repurpose it, and retrieve it anytime, anywhere, on any sanctioned device, and with any sanctioned internal or external person or entity securely, quickly and efficiently.
• The new environment creates a content ecosystem that not only increases productivity and accuracy, but also truly enables the mission of the Forest Service, “Caring for the Land and Serving People.”
• Metadata is no longer considered “a tax” by end users, yet some minimal (automated?) capture happens that facilitates appropriate business context to the information.
• The solution “system” integrates seamlessly to and works efficiently with the day-to-day work, by not adding burdensome procedures. Rather it is viewed as enhancing productivity.
• People are not only able to find information, but also to discover, connect, and collaborate with other people; and information can discover, connect or link to other information.
• Other automated systems and services are able to find, securely access, use, and share content with the new “system” and vice versa. The ability to discover content in other applications works seamlessly.
• Agency information is secure and protected; Security is managed centrally; The Government maintains control over the content.
• Appropriate retention of content and lifecycle records management is simple, efficient, and repository agnostic.
• Records are managed in federally compliant ways, are easily (and non-burdensomely) captured, while easily being found.
• The new environment supports business processes that use “case and project electronic folders”; any information “linked” to these folders is accessed and used seamlessly, and not disposed of prematurely.
• Information that no longer has business value can be disposed of as required, helping ensure incorrect information cannot be mistakenly used and improving overall productivity.

SOURCE: GCN