Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC)

CenterVision processes all incoming correspondence, original documents, vital statistics documents, forms, payments, voided checks and other items for pensioners.

Overview
Public Works and Government Services Canada (PWGSC) is one of Canada’s oldest federal departments, dating back to 1841 when it was known as the Board of Works.  PWGSC was formed in 1993 when four departments – Public Works Canada, the Translation Bureau, Supply and Services Canada, and the Government Telecommunications Agency – were combined.  Today, PWGSC is one of the largest federal departments, and provides common services to more than 100 federal departments and agencies.

A key service PWGSC had provided over the years was the processing of paper payments.  However, with the introduction of direct deposit and electronic payments, the agency’s check reconciliation business started to decline.  As a result of a significant reduction in check processing, PWGSC was faced with declining business opportunities and staff reductions at its location in Matane, Quebec.  In order to save jobs and build a new, stronger organization, PWGSC sought to transform its business model by offering shared services in the areas of document imaging, processing and long term digital archiving. 

A new strategic partnership with BancTec provided PWGSC with software, hardware and solution consulting in the form of imaging pilots as a way to ease its transformation to document processing.  In addition, BancTec assisted with best of breed industry practices to reinforce the business transformation and increase PWGSC’s branding, solution offering and expertise as a shared services organization of digital imaging solutions. 

2007 marked the beginning of a multi-million dollar, multi year, multi-phase project to revamp the Government of Canada’s 40-year-old pension system for the Superannuation Transition and Client Services Sector, Canada’s largest payroll and pension administrator.  PWGSC’s Document Imaging Solutions Center (DISC) completed a formal response in 2008 and won the imaging component of this massive project.

Business Need
To support its winning bid, PWGSC needed a partner that could provide not only the software platform necessary to undertake such a large imaging project, but also a vendor that had a deep pool of professionals with the skills to understand, design and direct all of the project components.  Ultimately, the partner had to be able to help PWGSC achieve the following key objectives and success factors:

• Greater operational efficiency through automation, simplified administration processes, and financial and management controls
• Automated data capture of remittance and inbound mail
• Seamless information flow by linking data sources, integrating systems and incorporating business logic and rules
• Electronic document imaging system that provides instant access to any document from any location, and which replaces hard cover files
• Access to accurate and up-to-date member data for pension experts, enabling one-time call resolution
• Full, online member correspondence history

After a public Request for Proposal (RFP) process, PWGSC decided that BancTec’s professional services organization contained the depth of expertise, software knowledge base and global footprint best suited to deliver the document capture, processing and management technology at the heart of this solution. 

BancTec’s Solution
The pension modernization project would cover the processing of more than 550,000 documents per year including at least 500 different form types, with a mixture of PWGSC and Government of Canada forms, entering the system from multiple channels, including paper, fax and electronic documents.  “Track and trace” of work coming into the processing site was key to the project’s success, as was strict adherence to pre-defined service level agreements (SLAs). 

CenterVision^®, which is BancTec’s global platform for processing and managing multiple streams of in-bound information, formed the core of the solution for PWGSC.  CenterVision processes all incoming correspondence, original documents, vital statistics documents, forms, payments, voided checks and other items for pensioners.  In total, the platform handles approximately five million (paper, fax and electronic) documents each year, and has the capacity to track and image approximately 50,000 pensioner paper files. 

Three BancTec DocuScan 9000 scanners already utilized by the Canadian government capture images, while PayCourier^® Archive serves as the image repository.  CenterVision’s Logistics Manager helps track and trace critical paper documents as they are transported from the client site to the shared services processing organization in Quebec.

The Results

• Track and trace of pre-registered work enhances efficiency and lowers costs.  The Logistics Manager component of BancTec’s CenterVision solution helps PWGSC in several areas, including the ability to track work in transit 300 miles from the client to the processing site.  In addition, it provides for peak volume staff planning, follow-up on missing or overdue transactions, lower cost per document as a result of pre-registration and increased accuracy of indexing.
• Better SLA management.  The scheduling and dashboard reporting capabilities of BancTec’s solution enable PWGSC to evaluate scheduled versus actual deliveries as a way to provide metrics that aid in renegotiating or pricing of SLAs.  In addition, even though operational staff and senior management are separated by hundreds of miles, they both have access to SLA information to stay on top of incoming workloads and re-allocate operational staff as necessary.
• Documented business process workflow.  The business process management and rules engine built into BancTec’s CenterVision solution creates auditable documented business process maps, supporting compliance requirements.  The rules engine routes work around the business process maps depending on conditions. 
• Image enabled repository.  The PayCourier Archive solution delivers several benefits, such as allowing pension caseworkers to process incoming mail transactions within defined line of business SLAs.  Index correction also lets them view and correct transactions, with a full audit trail.  Finally, PWGSC has an evidentiary archive used to store original images as they were received as a ‘true representation’ of paper documents.