CTG has engaged in numerous projects that have bridged the gap between theory and practice by producing generalizable tools that link business objectives to sound information mangement practices. CTG has worked with the US Library of Congress on digital preservation strategies for states; partnered with the New York State Archives and Records Administration and National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) to develop a set of practical guidelines to support and promote secondary uses of electronic records; and conducted a case study with the NYS Adirondack Park Agency to develop a practical way to incorporate essential electronic records requirements into the design of new information systems. Through these projects, CTG has developed a robust set of guides and tools, as well as used our expertise to conduct numerous electronic records workshops with organizations such as the United Nations to facilitate many of these best practices.

Scope of Work for Enterprise Content Management Project

CTG and the New York State Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) project team developed an Enterprise Content Management Strategy based on the work conducted over a six month period. Below are the key project activities.

Conduct Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system tools orientation with CTG team and identify business processes to be used during the project. This will include a Developer Workshops where CTG and HIS teams discuss how HCR is using current ECM tools and learn more about the capabilities of each (Sharepoint and Livelink).

Map out a selected core business process and information relationships and conduct a business process improvement activity. This resulted in an improved business process model and the identification of key records and determine the records to be retained in ECM system for the selected process.

Identify records retention requirements and security classifications including a Records Classification Workshop with records manager, business process owner, OCS, NYS Archives and ITS. The result was a Record Classification Document for Single Process and Records Classification Criteria Template for Additional Processes.

Map the business process and associated documents to the ECM system. A developer workshop was held and focused on presenting a draft standardized entity/document relationship diagram based on the selected business process. The result was a Standardized Entity/Document Relationship Diagram for Single Process and Dataset Design Document to include Controlled Vocabulary and Standardized Index Value Templates.

Finalize ECM Strategy “How To” Guide and additional tools. All analysis, findings, and recommendations developed during the project were integrated into a ECM Strategy “how to” guide and additional tools to support the design and implementation of an ECM strategy.

This Guide was originally published under the title of Opening Gateways: A Practical Guide for Designing Electronic Records Access Programs in 2000 and revised in 2002. Since it was issued, technological advances have given us a much broader array of tools and approaches to providing access to information. These advances have created a broader and in some ways more sophisticated community of potential users and stakeholders whose expectations of ease of access and immediacy of information have grown exponentially. These changes, combined with a social and political environment that demands public sector entities be more open and transparent in their operations, have put increased pressures on government to provide access to more and better information through readily accessible means such as the Internet.

This guide is designed to help government agencies develop affordable, manageable, and effective information access programs. Given the changing technological and social environment, the type of planning processes facilitated by this Guide are more relevant than ever. The revisions have focused on updating many of the examples provided and language used as well as including an expanded discussion of program models available due to technological advances.

Decisions to invest in digital preservation projects must be grounded in a full understanding of the ability of those involved to identify and fill the gaps between current and required capability. This toolkit is designed for library, archives, records management, and information technology professionals to assess where capability for digital preservation exists and where it must be developed in order to achieve the goal of preserving significant at-risk government information.

IT innovation is risky business in every organization. In the complex public sector environment, these risks are even greater. This handbook is designed to help any government manager evaluate IT innovations before deciding (with greater confidence) to make a significant investment.

This document reports on a project conducted by CTG on behalf of the New York State Department of Correctional Services (NYS DOCS) to explore the likely benefits and associated costs of an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for NYS DOCS. The project, moving towards an electronic health record for NYS DOCS, was initiated in the summer of 2005 by the former New York State Department of Correctional Services Commissioner, Glenn Goord.

This report provides a baseline for state government digital information preservation capabilities and activities. It includes an analysis of the results across states and territories and presents several observations on the current digital preservation environment based on CTG’s 2006 State Government Digital Information Preservation Survey.

This Web-based resource provides profiles of state government digital information preservation efforts within the United States based on the information collected from the 2006 State Government Digital Information Preservation Survey. The profiles are organized by state or territory and the library, archives, and records management units that were represented in the survey response.

This report presents the findings of a reconnaissance study on the use of parcel data in New York State. It documents the current and potential uses of parcel data, its value to many different kinds of organizations, and the typical flow of data across government and non-governmental boundaries.

Land parcels are the foundation for many aspects of public and community life. This report presents the findings of a study of information about land parcels in New York State. It identifies stakeholders and their interests as well as the needs and issues associated with the uses of parcel data in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors.

Report and press release from the June 2006 National Association of Secretaries of State and National Electronic Commerce Coordinating Council (eC3) symposium on state government archiving of digital information. CTG staff organized and facilitated the day and a half symposium session with secretaries of state, state archivists, state librarians, IT solutions vendors and others interested in the issue of digital archiving. Also, CTG wrote the symposium report, which CTG presented at the December 2006 annual eC3 conference in Sacramento, California.

Can governments come up with plans to preserve digital information for future generations? Yes, but CIOs must be on board to make it happen. > Download Article

Report of the Library of Congress Convening Workshops with States
2005 > Download PDF

Prepared by the NECCC Records Management Workgroup
2005 > Download PDF

The Center for Technology in Government developed an ECM Five Step Intake Process for the NYS Homes and Community Renewal, along with a set of tools to carry out an agency-wide implementation. These deliverables are described below:

ECM Strategy 5 Step Intake Process: Outlines the intake process and points to other materials in the packet that can support each process step.

Guide to Business Process Analysis for an Enterprise Content Management Intake Process: A “how to” guide including scripts and templates on conducting a BPA that can support the intake of program units records into an ECM.

HOME Disbursements Program Process Improvement Recommendations: High-level process improvement recommendations for the HOME Disbursement Financial Process focused on the handling of records and information.

Records Retention and Information Security Classification Guide: A “how to” guide to classifying records for retention, security and access purposes that will support the intake of records into an ECM.

HOME Disbursement Records Retention Issues: A summary of the specific records retention and management issues related to HOME Disbursement Financial Processing records.

Integrating the HOME Disbursement and Warrant Processes into an ECM System: Logical architecture and data schemas for the intake of HOME Disbursement and Warrant Processes records into the ECM based on the findings from the BPA and records classification phases of the project. Also provides a general approach for producing such architectures for other HCR business processes.

CTG HCR ECM Project Recommended Next Steps: List of recommended follow-up work to actually integrate HOME Disbursement and Warrant Processing records into the ECM.

For more information on these deliverables and how your agency can work with CTG to develop similar ECM strategies, please contact Brian Burke.

New York State Homes and Community Renewal

Our most recent project was funded by New York State Homes and Community Renewal.

Center for Technology in Government
University at Albany, SUNY
187 Wolf Road, Suite 301
Albany, NY 12205
(518) 442-3892 (phone)
(518) 442-3886 (fax)

Brian Burke

Program Manager

(518) 442-5619