Northern Ireland civil service goes electronic

The Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) is training 16,500 civil servants to use a new electronic and document records management system (EDRM) intended to improve efficiency.

The EDRM system, provided by IT services company Steria, is part of a programme of public sector reform, and will see records management centralised across all departments.

The new system will enable civil servants to operate more efficiently by providing them with up-to-date information while ensuring security and access rights. The system will also dramatically reduce the use and holding of paper.

Chris Thompson, corporate services director within the department of finance and personnel, says the system will be fully implemented over the next year involving the training of around 2,000 people per month.

‘The EDRM system will provide users with information at their fingertips and enable teamwork while reducing bureaucracy,' said Thompson. 'It will enable us to deal with the business of government quicker and more efficiently and share information in a real way.’

'Presently the ways of working involve a mish-mash of different media including email, databases and paper so when people look for information it is in lots of different places and not readily accessed,' he said.

To ensure the training programme runs smoothly, the NCIS will train 550 power users to help other users.

‘It is useful to have groups of people who are expert users, so that as each unit goes live, they can help out on a day-to-day basis,’ said Thompson.

'It is an ambitious training programme, and it will take a big communications effort to get all the staff on board, but it is vital that people understand what we are trying to achieve in terms of improving the way we work,’ he said.

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