Document Management System for H&SC

The directorate of Housing and Safer Communities has a long-established need for a dedicated document management solution. This is especially relevant to services that make use of business systems, such as NEC Housing, that do not provide built-in document storage capabilities of their own.

The incumbent system, TRIM (provided by Hewlett Packard), has been in operation since 2007. The system has more than 500 users and now contains ~3.6 million documents, amounting to ~3.5 TB of data. The ability to store and access these documents is critical to service delivery.

The Council's version of TRIM is outdated and all vendor support has been withdrawn. The Council does not have an active contract with the supplier, Hewlett Packard, or means of seeking renewal of any support agreements given the age of the system. The system is no longer commercially available for purchase.

TRIM is not compliant. The system is dependent upon legacy infrastructure, namely 2003 and 2008 servers, which no longer receive security patches or support. As a result, TRIM and the hosting infrastructure present a major risk to the Council's PSN compliance. Though Digital has taken steps to secure TRIM, these are interim measures only and do not satisfy PSN requirements.

Working in collaboration, Digital and H&SC started a technology options appraisal in December 2022. The appraisal aimed to determine the best document management solution available to replace TRIM and meet the Council's requirements. When the appraisal was concluded, the team presented a recommendation to procure and implement NEC Documents. The recommendation was approved by H&SC Digital Board in March 2023.

The proposed contract with NEC Software Solutions UK Ltd will secure provision of the preferred document management system, NEC Documents.

The documents retained in the incumbent system are critical to service delivery. If we do not proceed with the award of a contract and subsequently implement a new document management system, the Council faces significant risk of reputational, legal and financial damage resulting from potential data loss and system failure. Without a replacement system, it will not be possible to decommission TRIM and the Council's PSN compliance will also be at serious risk.