On 20 May 2010, Softline, together with the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine and Microsoft Ukraine, held a conference on "Modernisation of public administration: implementation of e-government in the system of executive authorities" at the School of Senior Civil Service.
During the event, the civil servants, of whom there were almost 100 in the hall, became closely acquainted with the latest technologies of Softline JSC. Some of the company's software products have been in use in public authorities for more than ten years. Almost all of the presentations were interactive, and during the discussion the specialists shared with Softline representatives their wishes, from the point of view of direct users, for further improvement of the electronic document management system.
The feedback was positive. As Volodymyr Dunaiev, Deputy Director of the Centre for Adaptation of the Civil Service to European Union Standards of the Main Department of Civil Service of Ukraine, put it figuratively in his speech, "If you took electronic document management away from us and asked the staff of the Main Department of Civil Service to go back to the paper system, a revolution would break out." No wonder: according to him, the result of introducing the electronic document management system is simply impressive — each document now moves six times faster!
However, faster processes are only one of the many advantages of an electronic information processing system. The distinctive features of the Softline software product, built on the company's own Megapolis.DocNet platform, are the automation of collaborative document creation and use, the ability to assign tasks and monitor their execution (which strengthens performance discipline) and even savings on consumables and stationery (the Main Department of Civil Service alone issues almost 23,000 documents a year). And a problem such as overcoming communication barriers between employees of government institutions has become a thing of the past altogether.
The introduction of electronic document management revealed yet another advantage, one that came as a surprise even to the software developers: the qualification level of civil servants began to rise rapidly. Conference participants attributed this to two factors. First, thanks to process automation, many employees gained time for self-improvement; second, training in the electronic document management system is designed in such a way that users develop general computer skills.
As it happened, on the day of the conference the Head of the Main Department of Civil Service, Tymofii Motrenko, held a meeting with journalists on the modernisation of public administration. Mr Motrenko said that in future an automated system similar to the one already introduced at the Main Department of Civil Service is to be launched in all public authorities across the country. "Electronic documents will be transmitted from central authorities to the Secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers and back," the senior official said.
It should be noted that the Main Department of Civil Service is the first public authority to have introduced an electronic document management system that almost completely eliminates the movement of paper documents. Commenting on the company's cooperation with government institutions, Softline JSC Vice President Oleksandr Smyrnov said: "Today we are all taking steps towards the future together. In fact, today you are creating a strategy for the further development of the public administration system, and we are helping you with our knowledge and experience."
The next steps of the joint work will be the introduction in government bodies of an electronic civil servant passport and personnel records system, and the automation of electronic document storage in state archives. In total, Softline software products are currently in use in more than 70 government institutions.
Softline JSC has been operating in the IT market since 1995 and specialises in developing highly complex software products. It is a partner of global brands: IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, Teradata, Hewlett-Packard, SAP, Oracle. Softline specialists have developed and implemented 40 modern software products and specialised solutions and have completed more than 500 successful projects in finance, telecommunications and communications, energy, utilities, public administration, industry and transport.