Save by Staying Ahead of National Shifts in Digitization
Bureaucracy and government are synonymous with paperwork. Agendas, meeting minutes, RFPs, change orders, policies, procedures, white papers; all produced, signed off on, edited and filed.
The sheer scale of government operations means even small improvements to document management processes can save millions of dollars if implemented on a larger scale. Moving to fully digital documentation is already well underway across the US Government.
Cut Costs and Wastage of Paper Documents
Each year, the United States federal government spends $1.3 billion dollars on printing costs – more than the entire national budget of 35 countries! Each government employee prints an average of 30 pages every single day, but more than one-third of these documents go directly into the trash.
The majority of these pages are printed either to receive signatures or to share with coworkers at meetings; digital documentation with PDF technology makes it faster and easier than ever to digitally sign, share and send documents. Moving to electronic signatures, for example, can reduce document turnaround time by up to 80%.
Retrieve Documents Faster
This reliance on paper documents makes searching government records a Herculean task. Nearly 80% of government employees agreed that it would be much easier to both file and locate digital documents.
When documents are printed and scanned, their contents are not searchable or able to be edited. While creating documents directly in PDF format is the easiest way to make them searchable, OCR tools included with some PDF editors allow scanned documents and images to be converted into text.
Automate Information Intake and Workflows
Many government employees are tasked with receiving forms filled out by a citizen and then re-entering it into a computer program; this double-entry is a huge waste of resources for the government and their employees.
With PDF technology, data collection can be almost entirely automated. By creating a PDF form, important information can be inserted directly into the editable document. Once it has been input, the information can be easily retrieved and used to programmatically populate databases and documents.
Updating a form would no longer require printing thousands of paper copies and distributing them to different departments; everyone would instantly receive the latest version of the document, preventing any confusion over which form to use.
Process and procedure workflows can be automated and streamlined, by automatically sending documents to the correct stakeholder in the correct order, reducing document turnaround time and administrative burden.
Collaborate and Share Securely
Security is always a major concern when dealing with sensitive information and records. PDF technology can be used to build secure document management applications. Digital documents can easily be password-protected for additional security, ensuring they can only be accessed by those with both the clearance and the need to view the information.
Enhanced security does not mean a reduced ability to collaborate. Strong version control means every change can be tracked and responsibility for it assigned. Documents can be partially locked to prevent unauthorized changes while still allowing annotations. Digital signatures and digital signature verification can be embedded directly into documents using the tools provided in a PDF SDK.
Foxit PDF SDK arms developers with the tools to develop enterprise class PDF applications that fulfill the demanding requirements of the public sector. Chosen by Google to be the underpinning technology for their open source PDF engine for its versatility and power, it is the chosen PDF solution for United Nations, the US Armed Forces, Department of Transport and Department of Agriculture, and NATO, among others.
