DOC first Government Department to implement ContentWorX

Department of Conservation (DOC) becomes first Government Department to implement ContentWorX, a new Enterprise Content Management solution from approved panel.

TEAM Asparona has successfully deployed ContentWorX to the Department of Conservation’s 2000 staff.

“With a geographically spread and diverse staff, DOC required a flexible service which met its changing needs and offered increased search capability for content users,” said Craig Hampson, Director of TEAM Asparona Limited.

ContentWorX, provided by TEAM Asparona and powered by Oracle, is one of three services available to public sector agencies as part of the New Zealand Government’s ICT common capability Enterprise Content Management-as-a-Service (ECMaaS) panel. The others are Intergen with a Microsoft-based offering known as Cohesion and OpenText with their content suite. The Department of Internal Affairs, as Government ICT Functional Lead, manages the service on behalf of all government agencies.

Following the award of this panel contract to TEAM Asparona in October 2013, DOC became the first agency to implement this service to meet its content management needs and deploy nationwide.

ContentWorX offers a flexible solution to meet agency requirements. It supports a folder-based approach, a search-driven or ontology based service (“folderless”) or a hybrid of both the folder and ontology.

“However, the true value of ContentWorX has been recognised by the enhanced ‘findability’ – the different ways to search for documents, and the ease with which users can save in to the system, all enabled by DOC’s adoption of the ‘ontology-based’ intelligent information architecture”, said Hampson.

“TEAM Asparona is pleased the content intelligence and enhanced search feature has been embraced by DOC and demonstrates the power of ContentWorX to deliver a secure and scalable service in the government-cloud.

“We look forward to expanding the ContentWorX content and records use case at DOC with secure mobility and increased opportunities for greater internal and external collaboration,” continued Hampson.

Allan Ross, DOC Director of Transformation and Threats, and Senior Responsible Owner for the project, said removal of the traditional folder structure was a deliberate decision by DOC and part of the organisation’s wider strategy to become a more open organisation.

“We recognised a cultural change was required for staff to adapt to the new content management system as it felt unfamiliar for staff to save documents into a repository with no requirement for manual classification or tagging (this is all done automatically in ContentWorX although you can add your own tags),” Ross said.

“We also wanted to ensure that DOC was aligned with the Government’s ‘open access’ policy and its desire to treat information as a ‘resource’ to be shared and to increase productivity and connectedness.”

Ross said a big focus for the project had been ensuring staff felt well-supported through this change and developed skills to use the new system effectively.

“The implementation of this system went right to the heart of some of DOC’s wider organisational changes as it was is the implementation of a service requiring leaders and their teams to put into practice the language of collaboration, sharing, access and mobility,” he said.

DOC and Team Asparona had worked closely throughout the project to manage these cultural concerns and respond to staff feedback as it arose, Ross said.

ENDS

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