The state of Connecticut is harnessing the advantages of XML and workflow tools to ease regulation management. Connecticut had made government regulations publicly available in PDF format. However, this posed difficulties when it came to updating information. Updates were done on paper documents, which became outdated quickly. Agencies found it difficult to keep track of updates and quality control became difficult to implement.
The government has resolved these issues by initiating e-Regulation, a document management system incorporated with XML components such as XML author, publishing platform, content manager, and case manager. The requirements and the design phase of the proposed system have been completed and they are moving towards the system testing phase. According to a recent report, the new Web portal is expected to become operation in October and will be supported by a system for writing and tracking regulations through the approval process.
The new publishing and content management solution will utilize the existing IT infrastructure and offer the following benefits
- Preview of regulatory documentation before publication
- Drive content reuse and multi-channel delivery
- Facilitate authoring for regulatory documentation
- Provide centralized access to the documentation
Components of the Proposed System
The project involves many challenges for the document imaging service provider. While new and recently revised regulations can be easily managed, there is the challenge of incorporating and providing access to a large number of regulations that are already in use. The existing PDF documents have to be converted into XML, for which text has to be extracted from the PDF. This is being done on a modular basis and after the task is complete, the pieces of each document have to be put together to form a consistent XML document. Finally, the converted documents have to be put through a manual editing and quality control process. Finally, the system has to be configured for the final user. The main components of the proposed system are as follows:
- XML Author: A Word add-on that helps in XML document creation.
- Publishing Platform: A system that automates the assembly and delivery of content to different digital formats (such as PDF, HTML5).
- Content Manager: Acts as a repository for content for streamlining management and delivery.
- Case Manager: Software that approves the regulation documents. Evaluation is done by integrating information, processes and people, with the help of analytics, business rules, audit trails and collaborative tools.
XML Conversion – Many Benefits
XML or Extensible Markup Language makes a big difference to the way data is stored and displayed online. XML makes a document readable, understandable, extendable, and portable, irrespective of the platform and environment. Fields that benefit immensely from XML conversion include content knowledge and management, Internet publishing, and data exchange. The best way for businesses to make their data easy to archive and retrieve with conversion to XML format is to team up with a professional document conversion company that offers quality services at affordable costs.
