Overview:
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development had been facing a range of roadblocks to serving the state’s citizens. Access Sciences delivered the solution. This success story was presented at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) 2024 Annual Meeting
Transcript: From Traffic Jams to Open Roads
Presented By Keli Pisciotta (Access Sciences)
Keli
Hello. Welcome to today’s Rapid Fire presentation. From Traffic Jams to Open Roads, I’m Keli Pisciotta, Senior Project Manager for Access Sciences, and I will walk you through the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development’s records management journey, where we help them align with the state’s IT standardized vision, position them for future collaborative ventures, and we enhance the data retrieval and organization. Briefly, about Access Sciences. Briefly about Access Sciences, we were founded in 1985 by a librarian, Janice Anderson. Having a degree in information and library sciences, she began a consulting company to help other companies manage and govern their information, which led to our mission to tame information chaos. Headquartered out of Houston, Texas, we have major hubs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Phoenix, Arizona, Portland, Oregon and Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
Keli
In July of this year, we opened a regional office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and celebrated 20 years of service managing our records management programs at various state agencies in Louisiana. How many of you have ever looked for a document at work and couldn’t find it? You know you created it, but just couldn’t put your hands on it. Kind of like those socks you put in the dryer. Two go in, but only one comes out. You can’t really use just one sock. Well, that is kind of where the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development was when I started working there five years ago. They had a file repository named Content Manager, and everyone was allowed to upload their own documents. Sounds great, right? Well, not so much. They were allowed to enter free-form text. People had different ways to enter acronyms for the same term.
Keli
They misspelled words, and there was no standardized taxonomy. For instance, some people named the field project number, and others named it ERP number. This made it impossible to search for all documents across the company for that project. There were also limitations with file size. Some would scan a single page to a PDF and name it page one, page two until the end of the document and upload each individual page. And the software was outdated, and it was also not aligned with it standardized vision. So what does that mean? Life of agency. Files such as standard plans and as built had to be stored on microfilm. They could not find their documents. We could not make changes to the software because it was no longer supported. And when they couldn’t find their documents, they would upload them to a different location causing duplicates.
Keli
It was chaos, and a change was needed. So we did some business analysis. We interviewed 49 sections and nine districts. We did a gap analysis and identified third party integrations. We created taxonomy. We consolidated subject types, set metadata, and made each document adhere to the retention schedule. We migrated over 4 billion documents. We combined the single PDF pages of large documents into a single PDF. We removed duplicates and created forms for entering the searchable metadata. We then tested to validate the security and search criteria for the documents. And finally, we did training in person Zoom sessions, video training, and we provided user documentation. We tamed the chaos. We found those missing socks. So what was the return on investment? We enhanced data retrieval and organization. We streamlined workflows. We reduced the need for physical storage space.
Keli
We stored large files in the repository, eliminating the microfilm cost. We created text-searchable files and aligned the state’s IT standardized vision. So what value did that add? The users could find their files, so they adopted the system. This facilitated collaboration across departments and districts which led to better decision making and fostered process improvement and innovation. It granted wider access to documents with added security and improved the efficiency of fulfilling public records requests. So now that we have removed the traffic jams, we streamlined workflows. We gave them the ability to load up to 250 job descriptions at a time from the civil service application. We automatically upload completed Levy permits from a SharePoint site on a monthly basis. We allow third-party applications to generate the metadata and upload documents to the repository.
Keli
We enhance searches and can now find all project-related documents across the agency. We created text-searchable documents. We also created plugins, reusable code for existing and future third-party applications to be able to upload documents and receive the URL in the third-party application as well as search documents and download them for viewing. So what is the next stop? Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is on track by the end of this year to have a 258% increase in public records requests. That takes a lot of taxpayer dollars and agency resources to fulfill the public records request. So now that we have made the documents digital, we can find them and they are useful. It is time to make them valuable and accessible to all. Access Sciences has been working with the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality for 20 years.
Keli
We created a self-service records management public portal. This allows the public to search for their own documents from their own computer. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development is set to go live at the end of this year with a small subset of documents. So what are the benefits of the self-service records management portal? State employees and public users have immediate 24. 7 access to state documents. There is improved governance with centralized scanning and standardized indexing. It provides a streamlined record retrieval for e-discovery and litigation requests. And there is reduced cost by saving on off-site storage costs and reduced overhead processing costs for staff needed to fulfill the public records request.
Keli
Currently, Access Sciences is implementing these technologies in additional Louisiana state agencies; Louisiana Department of Health and Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, making these agencies in alignment with the state’s standardized vision. If you would like to learn more and see how our innovations enhance priority intelligence requirements and drive agency efficiency, contact me directly at kpisciotta@accesssciences.com or via our website, and we’ll coordinate a demo at your convenience. Thank you.