073: OnBase for DOT: Fast Lane to Streamlined Processes

Steve Nimon:

Welcome everyone to the podcast. My name is Steve Nimon, Account Executive with ImageSoft. Today we are discussing how OnBase manufactured by Hyland assist Department of Transportation with moving to paperless process. ImageSoft has implemented OnBase for 20 years and is a Hyland Platinum Elite Partner and Diamond Support Partner.

I have worked with OnBase in government entities for over 10 years and look forward to discussing the impact that it has on Department of Transportations with our two industry experts. Paul Gorman is ImageSoft subject matter expert for government solutions, and Rob Johnson is the Government Senior Industry Consultant at Hyland Software.

So, we look forward to providing you today with information to start and enhance your paperless journey. So, let’s begin with Rob, would you introduce yourself?

Rob Johnson:

Steve, thank you. Glad to be here. Rob Johnson. I’m the senior industry consultant for government here at Hyland. And I’ve been working in government in some form or fashion my entire career. And I have to say, doing these podcasts are probably one of the highlights of, of my day. So, Steve, glad to be here today, thank you.

Steve Nimon:

All right, thank you Rob. And now Paul would please introduce yourself.

Paul Gorman:

Thanks Steve. Absolutely. My name is Paul Gorman. I’m an industry expert and account executive with ImageSoft. I’ve worked in government like Rob my entire career, starting in the federal space. I’ve been CIO for agencies in two states and a city and looking forward to talking today about how OnBase works in state DOTs.

Steve Nimon:

All right, Paul, I’ll begin with you. First, as we kind of look at our department of transportation, there are many areas that make it up. A lot of information, a lot of data. But typically, we are talking about Department of Motor Vehicles, we are talking about safety from a highway perspective, aviation, et cetera. So as we start to look at that, let’s talk about what the areas are that can see great impact from a paperless process.

Paul Gorman:

Well, thanks, Steve. You know, when you step back and look at a DOT, a common structure emerges between the states. Most DOTs have a centralized office providing a multi-stage approach to highway and state road management. The cycle is a multi-year process with planning, engineering, contracting, and delivery, always being separate divisions. With often separate systems that they’re using to meet their objectives. One of the major pain points that DOTs have is that the teams that manage the implementation are actually regional field offices. While the teams that manage the planning, engineering, budgeting, and contracting are actually centralized. The field teams don’t have access to the centralized systems that are being used by the planning, engineering, and contracting folks. Those systems are typically prohibitively expensive, and providing seat licenses to access the systems is not in the budget, is just not cost effective.

With a centralized OnBase system, what we can provide in a DOT is a single place for every staff person to go to view the content that is created from those centralized systems without needing additional seat licenses. So, for your CAD viewers, the, the project-wise integrations, the use of app enabler to integrate contracting ERPs and the Esri GIS integration for legal right of way and other geocentric content.

It’s both a money saver and an enabler to the DOT team, especially to those regional offices. Without that access, regional offices are typically resorting to paper. So, while your central office is paperless. The regional offices who don’t have access to those systems have to print and manage the content as paper, or they’re stored in shared directories that are very difficult to navigate and work with.

For DMVs permitting, registration and licensing solutions all need to be integrated with law enforce. Courts and other branches of state and local government, that’s a pain point for them. OnBase can manage the documents associated with driver license records, electronically capturing registration information, oftentimes directly from the dealerships. And can integrate to courts, law enforcement, to capture and manage content associated with the driver licensing needs. So OnBase has a big role to play in departments of motor vehicles as well as DOTs.

Steve Nimon:

Great information, Paul. And one of the things I’m hearing is when we are really talking about bringing multiple systems together and information to a single spot for, you know, the end users or the knowledge workers that are dealing with the public and internal processes.

Paul Gorman: 

Absolutely. I mean, take the, take for an example a section of the DOT that everyone has, which is the bridge inspection and management. Bridges naturally have to be inspected frequently. The rural teams that are out doing the bridge inspections, they, they’re going to need access to engineering documents, but they also need to capture this stuff in the field, and that information needs to go from those rural areas back into the centralized office for their planning activities. That too, it goes, essentially, the information needs to be shared both directions from the divisions in the field to the central office and from the central office to the divisions in the field.

Steve Nimon:

Excellent. I appreciate that. Paul. I, I kinda wanna switch gears a little bit and come to you, Rob, and, and let’s talk a little bit about just OnBase and why Paul has laid out the areas. Let’s talk a little bit more about how it really impacts that, how the automation, integration, et cetera, works in those scenarios.

Rob Johnson:

Absolutely. I think probably the biggest thing for DOT is accuracy and reducing the amount of time it takes to process and, and, and gather information. Paul hit upon the bridge inspection process within a DOT, which is mission critical to, to every DOT.

And when you have field workers that are able to do that on a mobile device and upload that information including pictures to the central. Or central office in real time, that is huge. Whereas prior to having those automated processes you would take notes, take photos, get back to the regional office. Type in all that information into the computer, upload the pictures, and then send it on its way. And that can be a significant lag of time in order to process that. And then you have to hope that it gets tagged properly when it gets to the central office so it can be located again. So, it creates a lot of challenges with those manual processes that, that our solution can, can alleviate.

I think the second piece is, , really important that Paul mentioned is just the information that comes out of that central office. That’s typically in a large city or state capital. And then out to those regions if they’re having to leverage all that managing through email. It can really get lost and, and isn’t happening in real time, and it really puts those regional offices at a disadvantage as they’re trying to execute their job.

Steve Nimon:

Excellent Rob so we’re, we’re, again, same scenario. We’re, we’re bringing the regional offices together with the central offices and creating that accuracy in time efficiency, you know, we’re really improving that process to say the least.

Rob Johnson:

Absolutely.

Steve Nimon:

So, as we’ve talked about this, a, a question for either of you from a functional standpoint, in, in this scenario, how does potentially reporting or any kind of records management play into this same scenario for the Department of Transportation?

Rob Johnson:

Paul, I’ll let you take that first.

Paul Gorman:

Sure. For a Department of Transportation, there is, there are strict security concerns that exist for federal agencies that are receiving federal funds and reporting and managing that federal information and those fed according to the terms and conditions of those federal funds is something that OnBase can be configured to provide. That’s something that many agencies of state government don’t have to deal with, but definitely you see it in all DOTs. Rob, you probably have as much experience on this as anyone.

Rob Johnson:

You know, when those dollars flow to be accounted for. And so being able to, to really map out where those projects are and provide the, that data back to the federal government is essential. And, and I think that, you know, I’m sure there’s many states out there over time that have been dinged because they have not had the record keeping that they should have.

And with a system like ours you would be able to, to manage that very efficiently.

Paul Gorman:

Yeah. The, the records management functions that exist for departments of transportation as well. They’re, they’re different for the federal government. And OnBase can be configured to manage federal fund records in, in a, in a fashion that they’re required to do under the generally the grants that they receive from the federal government.

Steve Nimon:

Excellent. Thank you, gentlemen. That was great information. To kind of take that a little further. Do we have any success stories that we can talk about with Department of Transportation in how it really improved their particular situation?

Rob Johnson:

Yeah, Paul, go ahead. I’ll let you provide an example from ImageSoft.

Paul Gorman:

Sure. One of my favorite OnBase solutions for DMVs is the Auto Registration Capture solution. We could provide a distributed scanning solution to states which allow the scanning and capture of the new and used auto sale registrations. From the dealerships throughout the state. This is a low slash no-cost solution to the state. Since it can basically be charged back to the dealers who will cheerfully pay for a registration convenience fee for instantly scanning registrations and delivering them electronically rather than pay for overnight courier costs to deliver them. We also have solutions that create temporary tags and barcode the tags to ensure that law enforcement has a way to verify the temporary tag is properly on the right vehicle. This has been a big problem in some states.

Steve Nimon:

Very good. Rob, anything you’d like to add to that?

Rob Johnson:

No, I think Paul said it very well.

Steve Nimon:

Right. Well, I appreciate you for joining me today and talking about Department of Transportation and, and really how paperless process can help them with their accuracy reducing the, the time continuum that happens as they get out for inspections, and then really just the reporting that’s required. Lot of different pieces to this. We hope that you have enjoyed our podcast today, and we look forward to talking to you again.