RTA initiates Electronic Document Management System

Abdulla Al Madani, CEO of Corporate Support Services Sector of RTA stated that this initiative defines RTA's business requirements, scope, and transition plans for the implementation. Based on the strategic findings and conclusions, RTA has started implementing the Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) for the entire organisation.

"The purpose of the system is to increase productivity of employees through minimising the handling of paper documents. The benefits of the system are huge, it saves employees time retrieving the business documents, reduces the risk of losing documents and most importantly it accelerates the business process that involves paperwork. All these benefits have direct impact on how RTA serves its internal and external clients," added Al Madani.

Abdulla Al Bastaki, ITD Director said, "The Hummingbird OpenText had been selected as the product to meet the EDMS needs. Phase I of the implementation was initiated in February 2007. After a successful implementation, the system went live in August 2007. Currently, EMDS is functional in nine departments across RTA. A roll out to other departments would be executed in the next phase. This would guarantee a full track of history and progress for all departmental communications such as correspondences and instructions.

"Another stream of the EDMS implementation project is to provide backlog conversion services. The backlog conversion is a crucial process, which involves digitizing of approximately 10.3 million pages by April 2008. Until now, 4 millions pages have been converted successfully," explained Al Bastaki.

He added that the EDMS implementation is a very important achievement for ITD and RTA. It is considered as one block in the ITD roadmap that takes RTA to the highest level of technological development to serve its clients.

Al Bastaki said the biggest challenge was changing the approach of how employees handle daily work. "We have accomplished our objectives by focusing on details, especially with the end users of the system. We have made sure that they are trained effectively and understand the benefits of the system. This approach granted a smooth transition to a better paperless work environment. We want to make sure that the current application represents the backbone of any document workflow in RTA."