IBM
Email This Page   |   Download PDF

Customers 

Fort Belvoir, Military District of Washington

Fort Belvoir, Military District of Washington

The Military District of Washington (MDW) handles homeland defense and provides military assistance to civil authorities in the National Capital Region. As part of the Army, it had many reoccurring processes that relied on as many as 2,200 types of standard documents and forms.

Before the US Army purchased an enterprise e-signature license from Silanis, MDW broke ground in implementing Silanis electronic signatures on its own, in conjunction with a document and workflow management system.

From walking around the base to obtain signatures on thousands of printed forms, MDW took it all electronic, compressing approval cycles from weeks to days, or even hours. These and other dramatic results, some of which are detailed in this case study, may have been what led the Army to adopt Silanis e-signatures enterprise-wide.


Full Success Story

Military District of Washington - Fort Belvoir Increases Productivity and Improves Customer Satisfaction

When Colonel Michael A. Leeper, was first assigned to serve as Garrison Commander at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, he was overwhelmed by the amount of staff papers and other hard copy documents he was required to sign. The former missile defense policy planner to the Joint Staff at the Pentagon immediately recognized the inefficiencies of existing processes and gave the DOIM (Directorate of Information Management) a six-month deadline to implement the same electronic signature technology, at Fort Belvoir, that the Joint Staff had used to automate their correspondence

Current Garrison Commander, Colonel Kurt A. Weaver has continued Fort Belvoir’s paperless initiative, which has resulted in the implementation of a document and workflow management system that includes an electronic signature and approval process. This has eliminated the need to print out the hundreds of paper documents previously distributed throughout the base. In addition to meeting the Government Paper Elimination Act requirement (GPEA), Fort Belvoir had understood the need to do things faster, reduce paper and become a more efficient organization, in an effort to fulfill its mission to provide quality IT services and installation support to the various army agencies and command posts housed on its base.

Summary of Problem

With over 2,200 types of standard documents and forms currently in use, the main issue Fort Belvoir needed to address was the obvious inefficiency of printing and routing hard copy documents for approval. To capture signature approvals from personnel in various Directorates and offices, the paperwork would either have to be hand delivered from building to building or distributed by fax or mail - a process that could take up to a week or more.

Without electronic signatures, paper documents such as staff papers and regulation drafts that require as many as 18 signatures and/or approvals, had to be physically routed to each Director. The entire approval process would take several days and there was always the risk of documents being misplaced or lost. Once the master document had been created and signed by the Command group, it was then sent to the printer, where hundreds of copies were made for distribution to the various divisions, teams and Directorates.

Fort Belvoir needed an electronic signature solution that could be easily plugged into their existing IT infrastructure. Prior to deploying Silanis’ ApproveIt Desktop solution, the Garrison used a very primitive electronic signing process. The problem was that these signatures could only be used with internal forms and shared among local departments. They were also difficult to manage, since they required an employee to manually control the security settings. ApproveIt Desktop, meanwhile, provided an outof-the box solution that automatically managed the security portion without the need for any additional programming or reengineering.

KEY BENEFITS EFFICIENCY & ACCURACY :

  • Approval cycles have been reduced from weeks to hours.
  • By using the same technology as the Army Publishing Directorate (APD), Fort Belvoir doesn’t have to dedicate resources to ApproveIt-enabling standard Army forms.
  • No need to print out e-forms for signatures and then scan them back into the system to make a PDF file. It can all be done electronically without reverting back to paper.
  • Several staff papers can be handled in one day versus one week.
  • Paper copies are no longer needed since documents are published online in PDF format.
  • Document corrections and comments are now made online.
  • Improved customer satisfaction with Fort Belvoir tenants due to shorter turnaround times.
  • Seamless adoption - an ePad was set up at a Directors’ meeting to capture staff signatures.

COST SAVINGS :

  • Reduced the management of “work in progress” by almost 9,000 hours per year.
  • Reduced the time spent on reproducing documents and scanning completed actions.
  • Reduced copier/supply costs by $8,000 per year.
  • Optimized existing IT investment by maintaining a completely electronic process-even when a signature was required.
  • Integrated seamlessly with Fort Belvoir’s electronic forms and workflow system with no additional development or re-engineering.

Summary of Solution

In addition to adopting a workflow and document management system, phase one of Fort Belvoir’s paperless initiative was to deploy Silanis’ electronic signature and approval management software to 575 of the Military District of Washington’s top-level personnel. The beauty of choosing ApproveIt Desktop was that it was fully compatible with their existing FormFlow e-forms; meaning electronic signatures could be used for a variety of different applications other than Word, Excel and Adobe Acrobat. By using ApproveIt Desktop, Fort Belvoir was able to optimize its existing IT investment by maintaining a completely electronic process-even when a signature was required.

Now, instead of distributing hard copy documents by mail to the 18 Directorate offices, draft regulations are created in Word, with a staff paper form attached using Microsoft Binder. The electronic document is then sent by email, through the icomXpress workflow system, without using any paper. Directors review the regulation and route it between the different offices. Comments are inserted electronically so that a master can be easily created using the cut and paste feature. It is then routed to the Command group, who all sign using ApproveIt before sending it back to the records management office. A PDF file is immediately created and published on the Web site, where everyone can go to view, print or download a single electronic copy of the new regulation.

The fact that ApproveIt is a PKI-enabled (PKE) solution was very important in the decision to eventually purchase more licenses and roll-out deployment for use with other applications across the Garrison. Since there is an initiative within the US Army to deploy PKI in the near future, Fort Belvoir will be able to leverage that PKI investment, no matter which solution is finally chosen.
The fact that the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon were already using ApproveIt also had an impact on their decision to choose Silanis’ software. Knowing that an agency at the highest echelon of the Department of Defense had researched and deployed ApproveIt, made Fort Belvoir much more receptive to the idea of moving forward with an initial installation. The advantage of choosing a product that could very well become an Army or Federal government standard was that they wouldn’t be wasting taxpayers’ money on a solution that may otherwise be obsolete.

For example, the Army Publishing Directorate (APD) is currently in the process of having all FormFlow forms ApproveIt-enabled, due in large part to the feedback received from installations like Fort Belvoir, who were constantly informing them of things they’d like to see supported in standard government forms to help save time and effort. The result is that Fort Belvoir no longer has to spend time re-designing forms to work with ApproveIt.

Summary of Benefits

The return on investment for Fort Belvoir’s paperless initiative was immediate. The time needed to complete an approval process has been significantly reducedin some cases, compressed from weeks to a few days or even hours. Personnel can now dedicate their time and effort to the job at hand, rather than managing paper.

Fort Belvoir has even invited tenants to come and see what they’ve been doing with ApproveIt to learn how they too can become paperless by routing documents like travel orders and local travel vouchers electronically. These offices have seen firsthand how electronic signatures have saved Fort Belvoir hours of walking forms from building to building. With ApproveIt they can just email it around and get the job completed in less than 30 minutes.