Catholic Archdiocese Transforms Data Archives With Ricoh

The Catholic Archdiocese of Perth needed to find a way to reform its information governance and bring it into the 21st century. It now uses Ricoh Laserfiche Records and Workflow to enable various teams across the Archdiocese central administration, multiple offices and agencies with a secure environment that allows records to be managed centrally and in a way that ensures access is provided to the right people at the right time.

 

For any information and data request, we can now readily source documents relating to particular people for the entire time they were with the organisation. Previously this would have been a completely manual process that could have taken some time and multiple resources to complete.”

Odhran O’Brien, Archdiocesan Archivist Director

An Overview

Established in 1845, The Catholic Archdiocese of Perth is one of WA’s oldest and largest community based religious organisations, with 109 parishes across a large portion of southern Western Australia. In addition, the Archdiocese also supports the social, health and educational wellbeing of the wider WA community through its provision of 89 primary schools, 33 secondary schools, 26 service-based organisations, a university, and four hospitals.

The Challenges

Incoherent paper-based record keeping system

Throughout its long history, the Archdiocese of Perth had become heavily reliant on paper-based information management and storage practices. Even email messages sent and received were printed out and stored in physical files.

As a result, locating required information had become very challenging. With records stretching back to the 1840s, locating particular items was difficult and very time consuming.

The need for a digital transformation of the Archdiocese’s record keeping and information governance was accelerated with the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Odhran O’Brien, Archdiocesan Archivist Director

 

It could sometimes take up to a fortnight to respond to an information request and our staff would have to search through multiple files in multiple locations. With the increasingly digital world around us and focus on accessibility not only for a more efficient way of working, but to continue to provide essential services effectively in the 21st century, we knew things had to change.”

Odhran O’Brien, Archdiocesan Archivist Director

The Objectives

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse published an entire volume of recommendations on record keeping best practices and true to the Archdiocese’s commitment to embrace the report, a decision was taken to find a more efficient method for archiving information.

In addition, the opportunity was also taken to put in place a governance strategy to guide how information was managed across the entire organisation, including the central administration facility of the Archdiocese, together with all its parishes and agencies.

The Solution

A robust archiving platform: Ricoh Laserfiche Records and Workflow

The Archdiocese of Perth had enjoyed a working relationship with Ricoh for more than a decade. Ricoh had provided the organisation with a secure and accessible document management system for the Archdiocese’s property and financial functions.

The long term, successful partnership with Ricoh, along with its reputation for being a leader in its field, provided the Archdiocese with further confidence when it came to extending the partnership to implementing a new document archival system. After careful evaluation of a recommended solution, a decision was made to deploy Ricoh’s Laserfiche Records and Workflow platform.

 

Laserfiche provides a secure environment that allows records to be managed centrally and in a way that ensures access is provided to the right people at the right time.

Odhran O’Brien, Archdiocesan Archivist Director

The Benefits

Significantly more efficient archiving

The Archdiocese is now enjoying operational benefits for its Archives team and wider staff who are now managing multiple information silos they need in one online space, due to the single, centralised source that Laserfiche offers. In addition, with records now held digitally, users can conduct keyword searches to find the items they require. Searches that previously may have taken time to process can now be completed in seconds. While, a culture shift in information governance has occurred where team members are professionally developing skills and can assist the wider organisation to embrace a more effective, safer and secure form of collecting, keeping and accessing data.

Bishop Donald Sproxton, the Catholic Archdiocese of Perth’s Auxiliary Bishop, and his Executive Assistant, Vanessa Strohmeier, using Laserfiche.

 

The team at Ricoh has been extremely proactive, and I am confident of their full support as we continue to undertake our digital transformation strategy.

Odhran O’Brien, Archdiocesan Archivist Director