East Cambridgeshire Council is to install a corporate-wide electronic document and records management system to improve data access and information sharing.

Under the £164,000 contract with Anite - rising to £215,000 with IT support over five years - Anite@Work will provide a single one-stop approach to the capture, storage, archival, management and retrieval of information.

Jettisoning departmental-based policies for document management, workflow and records management, the system - which cuts reliance on expensive paper records - will enable more efficient and cost-effective record maintenance, providing access to shared information to facilitate customer service improvements.

It will encourage cooperation and information sharing between departments, improve coordination and efficiency across the council and enable integration with other service providers and partners.

It will also save time and money as research by analyst group Gartner says that the average document is copied nine to 11 times at a cost of around £9, with the cost of filing each document at about £10, retrieving a misfiled document costs £60 and replacing a lost document £110.

Andrew Killington, executive director at East Cambridgeshire District Council, said: ‘We wanted a proven system to provide efficiency and customer service enhancements across the council.’

‘The corporate-wide rollout of Anite@Work will enable more efficient ways of storing, amending and accessing information. It will ensure legislative compliance, reduce the cost of handling information and help to deliver improved public services,’ he added.