Documentolog Company Transitions Civil Servants to Remote Work

This Monday, May 11, marked the end of the state of emergency that lasted for 2 months. President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, in his speech, spoke about the successful experience of remote work for civil servants, which provides grounds for creating an efficient and compact state apparatus.

Let us remind you that on March 15, 2020, the President announced the start of the state of emergency in the country. Quarantine and movement restrictions were introduced. The question of organizing work for employees of state structures became urgent. It was necessary to ensure their safety without stopping the work of the state. The next day, on March 16, the Government signed a protocol for implementing urgent measures for the state of emergency, instructing the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry to organize remote work for employees of government agencies as soon as possible.

At the beginning of the state of emergency, the situation was as follows.

In Kazakhstan, there are a total of 38 main central government agencies, consisting of about 1,200 territorial bodies with a total of more than 80,000 employees. Together with the local executive bodies (Akimats), the total number of employees is about 130,000 people. All government agencies operate within a Unified Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), implemented on the IBM Lotus Notes platform. Over the past 10 years, more than 14 billion tenge has been spent solely on purchasing licenses for the EDMS, and approximately 3-4 billion tenge is spent annually on system support.

In 2013, IBM discontinued support and further release of this product. The Lotus Notes platform had become technologically outdated by that time, requiring complex configuration of a thick client on the computer to operate. However, with the thick client of Lotus Notes, it was impossible to ensure remote work for employees of government agencies.

Therefore, to organize remote work, it was necessary to transition all central and territorial government agencies to a new platform that would allow document management via an internet browser. In other words, it was necessary to re-implement a new Electronic Document Management System (EDMS).

On March 16, 2020, all resources of Documentolog and JSC "NIT" were mobilized to implement this project. And already on March 21, 2020, just 5 days after the state of emergency was declared, the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructure Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan, the Ministry of Trade and Integration of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and the Ministry of Ecology, Geology and Natural Resources of the Republic of Kazakhstan were the first to transition from the EDMS to the Cloud Document Management System ( CDMS) on the Documentolog platform. For the employees of these organizations, remote work from home was organized in collaboration with the State Enterprise "Government for Citizens". After the transition of the first ministries, work was carried out to scan the source code of the Documentolog EDMS and to undergo information security procedures.

By April 1, 2020, another 14 ministries of the Republic of Kazakhstan were transitioned and provided with remote work from home. To date, 53 central and 29 territorial government agencies are already operating in the CDMS on the Documentolog platform. Our company continues to transition new government agencies and provides ongoing support with its own resources.

At the beginning of 2017, JSC "Zerde" initiated the project of the Service Software Product "Cloud Document Management". The design assignment (DA) for the SSP was published on the Zerde website. This project generated significant interest among IT companies in Kazakhstan. All comments on the DA were officially sent to Zerde. As a result, the approval and endorsement of the project took 1.5 years, and the final version was published only on September 19, 2018.

Documentolog participated in the competition on equal terms. It passed all mandatory procedures and, following the meeting of the competition commission on January 28, 2019, was allowed to pilot the connection of government agencies. Over the course of 3 months, the company worked on transitioning the Ministry of Digital Development, Innovations and Aerospace Industry and the Akimat of Astana to the Documentolog EDMS, completing a significant amount of work to study the current processes in the EDMS and integrate with other information systems. The Office of the Prime Minister took the CDMS project under control. However, in April 2019, Documentolog received a notification that due to budget sequestration, the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Kazakhstan canceled the allocation of funds provided for the CDMS project, and the project was suspended.

Only with the introduction of the state of emergency and the need to quickly make decisions to transition all government agencies to the Cloud Document Management System for ensuring remote work, the project was relaunched. The supplier of the system became Documentolog, as it already had 1.5 years of experience in implementing the CDMS in two government agencies at that time.

Thus, within 2-3 weeks, a complex project was implemented, the likes of which had never been seen before. This project is unique and will rightfully enter the history of the digitalization of our state. We hope it will serve as a good case study for other countries.