The age of government paper-shuffling is drawing to a close.
The Australian Government Publishing Service announced last week a major electronic publishing development and there are signs of greater E-mail use in government and greater public demands on government to accept e-mail as a standard way of doing business.
The AGPS announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Canberra-based SoftLaw Corporation for electronic publishing within government.
At present most departments have four or five critical internal-use publications which are forever being updated. They are usually one or more Acts of Parliament, some regulations, a set of head of department’s instructions and perhaps a manual or two on how the department administers its Acts.
Large departments, especially those with offices around the country, struggle to ensure updates get sent to everyone who should have them, let alone ensure every person pastes them in in the right spot.
There is no guarantee that every departmental officer is working from a properly updated set of internal working documents. Moreover, even if they are, it can be an extraordinary act of paper shuffling to marry the Act, regulations and manuals to get the right answer.
SoftLaw’s electronic solution is Windows software it has developed called STATUTE E-Publish.
Departments taking up this option with AGPS will get their major publications produced electronically. Now that every public servant in the land has a networked PC on the desk, this has many advantages.
1. Everyone uses the same fully updated publications all the time.
2. Updates are immediate and universal. No more hoping that everyone puts the right piece of paper in the right place.
3. Indexing is comprehensive. Searches can be done through the text of all the publications at once for individual words or concepts.
4. An officer can have the Act, the regulations, a manual and several other documents all open at once and click between them.
5. Words specially defined in an Act of Parliament (or other publication) are colour coded in the body of the Act, so you can click on them and a small window with the definition appears.
6. Officers can cut and paste from the documents to their word processor (without losing formatting) for letters or other documents. This saves time and ensures accuracy of transcription.
7. Electronic publishing saves on costly reprints.
SoftLaw has already had some success with the electronic publication of the White Paper “”Working Nation”, the 1994-95 Budget and the Industrial Relations Act.
The Industrial Relations Act illustrates the point.
A major reprint was done after the Government legislated to incorporate United Nations declarations on discrimination and unfair dismissal. It was about 240 pages.
No sooner had the thing came out, than the Government put through some amendments. So the nation’s IR experts are shuffling about with two documents, never sure which part of the first document has been amended by the second.
With E-Publish an update is a fairly simple matter.
SoftLaw is based in Canberra (Phone 2421982). It works from the Canberra Business Centre in the old Downer Primary School and has 17 employees. The Canberra Business Centre is an incubation centre for small business supported by the ACT Government.
The AGPS will also use E-Publish for some government-service-wide publications.
SoftLaw’s Michael Johns said, “”From the customers’ point of view there is no difference between preparing for paper or electronic output. They simply give the raw material to AGPS and receive back material in electronic form ready for distribution.”
AGPS would be able to create the publications from any word-processing files.
From the officer’s point of view the key advantage is in being able to search across several key departmental publications together.
The screen is just like any Windows screen with pull down menus, icons and point-and-click.
The text is in very legible 12 point Arial type, but after cutting a pasting into a word-processor can be changed to whatever type is required.
SoftLaw’s STATUTE suite of software wont he Best Australian Product award at PC 94.
On the e-mail front, an article in (ital) Commonwealth Government IT News (end ital) has predicted that by December most inter and intra-agency communications will be electronic, not paper.
“”Current paper memos, minutes and letters will be replaced by completely electronic equivalents,” it said. “”As most communications will be created, transmitted and received electronically, there will be a demand for them to be stored and archived electronically. It will not be acceptable to ask people to print a copy and put it on a paper file.”
Adding electronic storage and transmission to present systems was minimal.
The article said that by the end of the year about two million Australians would have access to public data networks.
“”These people can be expected to demand that government agencies accept e-mail as a normal means of correspondence,” it said.
The article predicted a pressing problem for government records management. It likened the anarchical take-up of e-mail with the take-up of fax. It just happened because it was there. Guidelines would have to be worked out to ensure records were kept electronically, it said.
It seems paper shuffling in government will disappear into the cyberspace.