Don’t let 19th-century laws hold you back

Recently, it was discovered that 19th-century legislation that is still on the books forces the federal government to spend large amounts of money printing every new law on special high-quality paper. The CBC has been covering this issue as citizens continually express disappointment in the waste that results from such a dated procedure. Similar legislation may be in place for other local governments across Canada. These laws end up costing governments a lot of time and money. Constituents may not know about these laws right now but they will at some point and will be disappointed to discover it is happening in their own communities.

These outdated laws may require a government to:

• Print everything on paper. This can be very expensive in terms of buying printers, ink and the paper itself. In addition, there are many hidden costs to having paper records such as the cost of storage space and maintenance for all records, including those which haven’t been looked at in decades; 
• Use different types of paper to print different classes of laws. These different paper types may be expensive or hard to obtain;
• Store all paper records in very specific conditions. These conditions may be difficult to maintain and include recurring fees.

These requirements significantly affect the efficiency of a government and render no benefit to its workers or constituents. Such procedures result in thousands of extra paper documents every year which employees burn valuable time digging through. There is also the cost of storing, maintaining and insuring these documents. These things add up very quickly and make the entire process very costly for the government. 

Be a leader. Take a new approach to these government by-laws as you move into the 21st century. Save costs and time while providing increased protection from possible PR issues in the future. Ricoh can provide a comprehensive customized ECM solution which has many benefits:

• All documents will be stored digitally and their retention dates will be integrated into the system. This helps to ensure that records are not accidentally deleted and helps your government to remain compliant;
• As these systems will be electronic your government will no longer need to maintain storage space and thus avoid maintenance costs;
• Search and retrieval will take seconds rather than hours as employees will only have to enter in keywords to retrieve documents;
• The scalability of our systems means that governments only pay for the space that they need;
• Mobile-friendly automated business processes mean that employees will be able to work from their devices while on the go;
• We provide extensive support so that your IT team will not have to worry about installing patches every week, as with other case management software systems.

We constantly update our systems to stay current with leading-edge technology. Corporations have trusted us to handle their records for years and over a hundred local governments across Canada have reaped the benefits our solutions provide. Unfortunately, some governments have been slow to adopt modern records management practices. Don’t continue to be stuck in the past; it’s time for your government to join the 21st century with Ricoh.