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In
the administration of the Freedom of Information Act, federal agencies
are increasingly looking to the use of document imaging and the potential
of automated FOIA processing as a means of enhancing the efficiency
and cost-effectiveness of their operations. Rapid advances in document-imaging
technology in recent years have provided strong impetus to such efforts
at several agencies.
As
a general rule, electronic documents take much less time to find, handle,
refile, and route. They also can potentially be "processed"
for FOIA disclosure in an automated fashion, rather than by hand. This
led federal agencies--especially those with large-volume FOIA operations,
such as the Department of State and the Federal Bureau of Investigation
at the Department of Justice--to begin using this technology for FOIA
purposes.
Tangible
Benefits:
- Improve
internal efficiencies by reducing research time.
- Heighten
the quality of information supporting research.
- Reduce
costs of handling, storing and copying paper documents.
With
Image Data, documents are on-line and available for the departments which
require access to files. Existing and new documents are also added to
the system in one of several ways:
- scanned
onsite then added via the document import process
- scanned
off-site
- mainframe
reports are added via the COLD process
- Native-source
documents are added via the COLD process
Documents
that are added to the system through scanning or import take advantage
of automatic indexing with minimal manual keystroking. This process reduces
the amount of time required to add documents to the system while eliminating
many of the data input errors associated with large data entry operations.
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