Montevideo, Uruguay -November, 2009- STATUM wins the call for bidding made by AGESIC “Agencia para el Desarrollo del Gobierno de la Gestión Electrónica y la Sociedad de la Información y el Conocimiento” (Agency for the Development of the Electronic Management Government and the Information and Knowledge Society) referring to the Support Program to the Management of Electronic Government in Uruguay. The Agency required a solution to face the responsibility of developing a strategy of Electronic Government which made use of the utilities of the Information Technologies and, as consequence, improved the service to citizens.

The aim of the call was the acquisition of Software for the Application of Electronic File for the Uruguayan State, to which 10 regional enterprises applied. After a technical and functional evaluation, AGESIEC chose ApiaDocumentum as the technology that will lead the technological reform of the public administration.

The file is a widely used tool in the public administration, for which there are several experiences of digitalization. However, reality shows that some departments of the State –of different size and importance- still manage their files in the traditional way, that is, paper files. The aim of AGESIC is to build a platform that could make possible a State with a total number of electronic files in all the organisms and departments.

In order to do so, there was a proposal for the implementation of two applications. The first one is an Electronic File Application, which will be available for any department of the State, as to have an option of low cost and fast implementation. This application will have two versions: a basic version, and an improved version, which will differ in terms of functionality and technically, even though, in real terms, the improved version will be an upgrade of the basic one.

The compulsory requirement for both is that they must be capable of interacting with Routing and Trazability Application in order to:

• Send and receive files to and from other Organisms in the Electronic Files Exchanging Format, which is described in appendixes.
• Notify all the changes of offices of a file internally stored.

The second implementation is the Routing and Trazability Application of Electronic File, an application that fulfills the following functions:

• Routing: Allows sending an Electronic File from one Government Department to another one, in the Electronic Files Exchanging Format.
• Trazability: It is informed of all files sending, which allows performing a tracking of any file from any department. It will have to keep a record of all the actions performed, with the received and sent data to and from the different offices within the same department as well as with other organisms.
• Application of trazability information: It consists of a Web application that will allow the citizens consult about the status and location of their administrative or legal procedures for instance, dates of the actions performed and other useful information.
 
This is the second call for bidding of AGESIC in which Apia is chosen as the technology that will lead the Government digital reform. The previous one consisted of the Implementation of business processes of the Uruguayan State, in a Business Process Management System (BPMS) tool, including the managing of the organizational change.

Regarding the implementation of the Electronic File, Apia had already shown its attributes in similar projects, when starting the digitalization of files and other types of records in the Central Bank of Uruguay, in SERNATUR (Chilean Government), INAU (Spanish acronym for Institute of the child and adolescent of Uruguay) and URSEC, (Spanish acronym for Communication Services Regulatory Unit), among others.

About AGESIC
The goal of AGESIC is to endeavour the improvement of citizen’s services, by using the possibilities that Information and Communication Technologies offer. Its mission is to promote the advance of the Information and Knowledge Society and its vision lies in the aim of being an organization capable of managing to get the country to occupy a relevant place in Electronic Government and Information Society in the international context.

For further information, www.agesic.gub.uy