The Hindu Business Line : The verdict: Go digital

WHETHER it is the Government interacting with the public, or vice-versa, what is generated is a lot of paper. And as documents multiply with each transaction, the Government becomes a storehouse staggering under the weight of tonnes of paperwork.

Responsive governance calls for a system that can build a repository of information from which it is easy to sort, store, and retrieve the information one wants.

Feeling the need for just such a system, the Karnataka High Court has turned to technology.

The Court has outsourced to Xerox, the company whose name has become synonymous with photocopying, the task of storing its paper work in digital form.

And, the system is working well for the High Court, says L.V. Sastry, Associate Director, Xerox Global Services.

Earlier, to get a copy of the judgment, one would have to wait, on an average, 7-14 days, depending on the date of the judgement, the number of pending requests, and the person looking it up in the hard copy record room. Now a copy of the judgement is available on the same day of the judgement or the next day, he says.

The Karnataka High Court, the apex judicial institution of the State, annually addresses more than 50,000 cases. A professionally managed repository of legal documents is crucial for the smooth functioning of the court. Xerox installed the Xerox Digipath on workstation and Web server with a Xerox 4090 high-end laser printing system for judgment scanning, indexing and archiving inside the High Court.

The solution encompasses all stages of the judicial process and has saved time, resources and improved efficiency, says Sastry. Today, documents are made available electronically and can be printed instantly, on demand, he adds.

Xerox, which has deployed three site managers in the High Court, generates 800-1,000 pages of judgments per working day, and would have archived around 13 lakh of pages of judgments into the repository, up to now. The request is for around 500 pages of judgments per day, says Sastry.

The copy generated out of Xerox's system is routed through a High Court officer, who, in turn, affixes the signature and seal, then passes it to the requester. The process is the same as before, but the difference is that previously the photocopies of judgements were taken from the hard copies. Now the copies are printed from the digital repository.

Xerox has deployed the infrastructure for the solution, such as scanners, desktops, server, printer and manpower. The High Court provides space and electricity for the set-up and pays Xerox based on the volume of documents (judgments), says Sastry.

The benefits to the High Court are many. They include:

Improvement in the quality of the judgment copies (original judgments are not used for repeated copying.

When a request is submitted for a judgement copy, the copy is made from the digital repository created by Xerox)

Improvement in process time (public asking for the judgments are happy to get the copy in a matter of hours rather than days)

Redirection of High Court employees to core activities.

According to Sastry, the judgments are in a digital repository inside the firewall of the High Court network and are not published in the public domain. However, the Court plans to do this by integrating the solution from Xerox and NIC, which will do the Web publishing. Initial discussions are on, he says.

Xerox Global Services, which is the consulting-led services business group of Xerox, provides a range of offerings that touchevery aspect of an organisation, going beyond printing and copying to include document management, says Sastry.

It helps customers reduce overall costs in the areas of printing, copying, faxing, scanning or imaging.

For instance, Xerox has helped Microsoft reduced costs by over 20 per cent in the US and Europe under this service, he says. It has also helped Accenture scan and archive 40 million documents over 24 months, and convert these to searchable documents in the repository, which got integrated into the customer healthcare system.

Xerox has helped Avon with onsite capture of up to 10,000 forms a day and building a repository of forms based on which customer orders are fulfilled by the distribution system.

For UTI Bank, it helps in cheque book printing and customer statement printing, and for ING in insurance policies printing, says Sastry.

Picture by K. Gopinathan

raja@thehindu.co.in

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