DGT

Challenge

The Dirección General de Tráfico (DGT) is the body in charge of managing vehicle traffic and road safety in Spain. Every year, it processes millions of purchase/ sale registers, new registrations, penalties and other proceedings. Therefore, it offers a high-impact service for individuals, companies and also for other public administrations, collaborating, for example, with law enforcement authorities in the provision of key information for the identification of crimes. In short, the modernisation of document management and processing is a permanent challenge for the DGT, especially because of its high impact on citizens.

Before 2015, the DGT’s organisational culture was 100% paper-based. Among other issues, it presented significant difficulties in the traceability of its documents, with the resulting cost overruns in both archiving and human management. The path towards a solid institutional digitisation strategy involved a radical change in the organisation and a major technological challenge, in which Hyland is still involved

The DGT technical team not only had to convince an entire organisation of the benefits of the paperless office, they had to plan a successful migration by prioritising issues such as interoperability, transparency and agile management. They calculated the ROI of this challenge: a saving of more than 2 million euros per year

The objective was to develop an electronic document management system that would include paper, electronic and hybrid records, integrating the entire lifecycle of these records based on a technical solution with guarantees for the future, using market solutions with a high capacity for customisation (avoiding the high cost of ad-hoc solutions) and facilitating the integration of multiple business applications. Flexibility, autonomy, scalability and future projection are the keys to this success story, which is currently evolving with the incorporation of a tool that systematises the procedures prior to document management.

Solution

Up to the current stage of development, focused on the automation of electronic procedures, the DGT solution has been evolving and incorporating new challenges.

In 2015, it took place the definition of the reference framework and implementation of the first system that allowed the DGT to comply with the current legislation on digitisation of documents, the ENI (National Interoperability Scheme). This law requires that the documents issued by the administration have a format with specific metadata assigned to them.

In 2018, the implementation of electronic signatures, the geolocation of records, the development of a multimedia repository and the control of the life cycle of records were addressed.

In 2020, the institution experienced a large increase in the volume of electronic records and an expansion of digitisation in general, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Currently, DGT and Hyland are working on automating processes through the RPA, optimising interoperability, and developing a new file handler. The processor assigns files to the DGT staff in charge of handling them, which is the equivalent of the counter where the official receives requests from the public and is an ideal complement to document management. All of this using the product’s own work-flow capabilities and resorting to non-relational databases such as Mongo DB.

Advantages

Time Saving

Before digitisation, each employee spent half an hour a day searching for, organising and sending documents; now they no longer do. In addition, the DGT will save around 800 working hours in the first year with the new processor.

More efficient use of data

During implementation, millions of data were transferred to more efficient management processes. Currently, the number of files that are processed in physical offices is less than 5-10% of the total.

Complexity simplified

Using RPA, a complex process involving multiple systems and stakeholders was streamlined into a single process.

Interoperability of records

Exchange with other public administrations is becoming increasingly sophisticated. The system allows the results of the DGT’s records life-cycle to be dumped into the administration’s general archive.