The City of Tampere’s archiving solution involves the automation of digital archiving: users of the Visma InSchool Primus system mark documents ready for archiving, and the archive automation implemented by Enter retrieves these archiving requests and sends the required documents to the city’s digital archiving system.
“The Act on Information Management in Public Administration obliges us to digitally archive all important documents related to students. The requirement for digital archiving originated from a National Archives requirement. In the world of educational institutions, every student is involved in several documents. The documents archived in secondary education institutions may include certificates, agreements, decisions, apprenticeship contracts and a wide range of attachments to the documents,” says development manager Elisa Helminen of the Tampere Vocational College (Tredu).
A large number of documents to be archived
A city the size of Tampere has a large vocational school and 6 upper secondary schools. The number of students is approximately 18,000, which translates to very high volumes of documents to be archived. The annual number of documents can be around 20,000.
“In the past, we would scan all documents for archiving. This involved a lot of work, and time was spent both on archiving and on searching for materials in the archive. Now, with the new archive automation solution, contracts, certificates and other documents are produced digitally and, thanks to the automation, are copied to the archive if the document is marked for archiving,” Helminen says.
Thorough groundwork
Helminen says it was essential in the project to do the groundwork very carefully. They themselves had an overall understanding of the documents in use and the practices related to them.
“Each student involves several documents, some of which require longer storage in a digital archive. Our project with Enter started with reviewing all the different document types and determining which of them require archiving, how long they are stored and in what format they are needed afterwards. Enter’s specialists had a solid understanding of the subject, as the previous archiving automation for elementary schools had been successfully implemented in Tampere,” Helminen explains.
Archiving automation transfers data reliably, but human effort is also needed at certain points.
“The documents are automatically transferred to the digital archive when the information in the documents has been filled in correctly in the appropriate parts and the document is marked for archiving. An identifier is generated for a document that has gone through the archiving process, indicating that it is stored in the archive. In order for all phases to succeed reliably, joint discussions with Enter’s specialists were required during the planning phase,” Helminen says.
Time saving and equality as advantages
Helminen is satisfied with the efficiency and clarity of the solution.
“Automation saves the working time of many people. The system also improves the equality of students, because the archive automation makes document management more structured and robust. In vocational education, students can graduate any time of the year, so digital archiving works perfectly in this sense as well, because it does not require manual work from employees,” she adds.
Enter implemented the solution as Visma’s specialist partner for Primus integrations. Helminen particularly appreciates Enter’s knowledge of the school world. According to her, the cooperation with Enter has been smooth.
“Enter’s experience with the systems and databases of the school world makes it easier to implement the archive automation project. We held joint meetings regularly, where we could openly discuss any issues that had come up. Personally, I especially value the fact that the quality of information improves as a result of such a project in the automation of digital archiving. We train teachers on how to fill in the documents carefully, so that the digital documents are properly prepared and the archiving process proceeds as desired,” she sums up.
Enter implements the automation and integration of digital archiving with the ENTER Ruutuvihko™ service.
Read more at www.ruutuvihko.fi
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