This European Government Digitizes Its Decision-Making Processes to Increase Compliance

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The cabinet is the executive branch of this government. Unlike in other parliamentary systems, the government is both the de jure and de facto executive authority, with the constitution explicitly vesting executive authority in the government.

Challenge

The cabinet’s documents were paper-based and distributed manually, resulting in delays and information security concerns in addition to making collaboration and knowledge-sharing difficult and time-consuming. Consultants concluded that automating the creation, distribution and management of cabinet documents would significantly improve efficiency, including the running of cabinet meetings and the recording and issuing of subsequent cabinet decisions.

Solution

The government implemented Quark PublishingPlatform (QPP) with Quark Author to automate the cabinet’s foundational processes for decision-making. It replaced volumes of paper with an end-to-end, secure and collaborative system for digital publishing that is used by 6,500 knowledge workers across 15 departments.

They wanted to move from paper to electrons to modernize how government memoranda, documents central to its decision-making process, are created and managed – from initial draft to presentation at a cabinet meeting and including distribution of the subsequent decisions to relevant officials.

Referred to as “eCabinet” by the government, QPP provides real-time, secure circulation of all documents to streamline the decision-making process. It is a common, intuitive system for all users, whether civil servants or government ministers, to access the information they need more quickly. For example, ministers preparing for a cabinet meeting can see the evolving agenda as each item is submitted to the cabinet secretariat instead of having to wait for the circulation of a complete, printed agenda.

Government memoranda must adhere to specific guidelines for structure and content, and there are rules to determine the processes for creating and collaborating on these documents to ensure all necessary information is included and that the appropriate government sources have been consulted.

With Quark Author, a browser-based authoring tool, users are guided through the creation of memoranda components in line with established rules for the content – depending on the nature of the proposal/decision sought. Documents are easily accessed and authored via the web, and XML is generated automatically in the background to ensure requirements are met. Previously, decisions were delayed due to incorrect formatting and missing information.

The metadata produced while an author is writing a document enables the personalization and delivery of the content as soon as it is approved. Securing and publishing this critical information in a collaborative environment was all manual work prior to QPP and Quark Author.

Now novice authors with no experience in writing memoranda can be as efficient as frequent users. Content is instantaneously and dynamically published, with information presented to different users in the ways that will enable them to best absorb it. Politician or senior manager, maximizing the use of time and being able to access and absorb relevant information is key to their job.