ECM Briefs

Bailey Spencer, who heads Open Text's Public Sector Business, is leading the charge for helping public sector organizations better manage vast amounts of unstructured information, and deal with such trends as the retiring baby boomers. We had an opportunity to catch up with Spencer recently about his perspective and vision for enterprise content management in the public sector.

Q: What are some of the key challenges facing governments?

A: Virtually all the business of government is document and content centric…dealing with all forms and types of information. In today’s world, we can’t make good decisions without a lot of supporting information that historically was paper based and increasingly is electronic. The world is struggling, and the public sector is no exception. Government agencies are using electronic information and must be able to manage it, hold on to it over time, and then have that information available to help make good decisions on a real-time basis. In the 21st century, you can’t do what you need to do in the public sector without having ways to convert electronic documents into actionable information.

Q: What is your vision for ECM software?

A: From a vision perspective, my main points are: Increase citizen satisfaction with government. Assist government in the defense and security areas where protecting electronic information is so critically important. And finally, provide a true level of transparency. Government is accountable to citizens, and citizens have a right to expect that their governmental organizations provide a level of transparency so that citizens can understand what the government is doing and how they are doing it.

The summary comment about content management at the moment is that through the 1980s and the 1990s and really up until the present with the explosion of content and electronic information, there’s a new dimension to managing public sector information, and that’s dealing with all the word-based, picture based and sound based information that is now woven into our day to day lives. The vision that Open Text brings is to be able to make a real contribution to the missions and goals of the public sector and address the word, picture and sound based content that the database applications of the past 10 or 20 years do not provide. So we see ourselves as a complementary provider at the enterprise level and offering capabilities that extend and enhance a lot of the IT investments that have been made in the past.

Q: What difference do enterprise content management systems make?

A: In the post 9/11 world, the metaphor used often is connecting dots. One of the real requirements that everyone understands needs to be built on and improved to enhance the homeland security of the United States, and the national security of our allies, is connecting all of those disparate types of information, and being able to draw conclusions and take appropriate actions. So the true picture of some of the threats and situations only comes when you’re connecting all the information together. One of the areas that Open Text has focused on is an area called secure collaboration. That is a platform that allows all of these different kinds of information to be gathered together in an integrated and searchable manner and then allow people who are often times spread all around the world to be able to analyze that information in a collaborative way, to share information, to interact through various kinds of instant messaging, various Internet based meeting technologies…the world of 9/11 security is an area where Open Text is getting involved and starting to have an impact.

Q: Who are some of your major partners?

A: Open Text is now a major participant in one of the most rapidly growing areas of information technology in the market. As a result we are teaming with some of the blue ribbon companies like SAP, Oracle, Microsoft and Accenture.

Q: How important is public sector for ECM and Open Text?

A: We’re providing capabilities and services for an area that is core to the business of government. Government historically has been in the information processing business. Everyone interacts with the government in paper and forms and now that is increasingly electronic. The public sector is core to our business and strategy. We have a set of solutions that are content-centric and deal with some of the most important areas of government operations, be it national security and defense or criminal justice or supporting the mission of government agencies in an informed and comprehensive way.