Document Management
Filippo Eros Pani
1
, Beniamino Valcalda
2
, Simona Ibba
1
and Simone Porru
1
1
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari,
Piazza d'Armi, 09123 Cagliari, Italy
2
T Bridge, T Bridge S.p.A., Genova, Italy
Abstract. An analysis of one's organization is a necessary first step for any
effective business strategy. Such an analysis needs to begin from one of the most
notorious sources of costs and inefficiency: document management. This is an
area where a transformation is in order to meet the need for an increase in
company productivity and in process efficiency, while reducing operation costs.
The proposed project is placed in the context of IT and Cloud Computing, and
aims at creating an integrated system capable of providing a set of solutions and
dedicated services for document management. This project is developed by the
Department of Electrics and Electronics Engineering of the University of Cagliari
and T Bridge S.p.A. It is financially supported by the Autonomous Region of
Sardinia with European local development funds.
1 Introduction
Companies are undergoing a rapid transformation, under the pressure of an increasingly
digital world and increasingly competitive markets.
Rationalization, simplification and automation of processes have become an
essential leverage to free resources, which in turn can be invested in technology to
accommodate business innovation and generate competitive advantage.
Public Administration in Italy has an established legal framework defining the
digitalization of the administrative action. The latest reforms focused on new
technology as the main tool to interact with citizens, with a consequent impact on
communication processes between public institutions and private citizens, as well as on
the internal organization and instruments of public institutions themselves.
This paper is structured as follows: the second section describes the context in which
the proposed project lies, while the section following it describes activities and
objectives in detail, and the schedule of the project is outlined. The last section hosts
our final observations about the project.
2 Context of Research Proposal
The potential market segment to which document management is associated offers a
swath of products and services capable of supporting communication and
Valcalda B., Porru S., Ibba S. and Pani F.
Document Management.
DOI: 10.5220/0006163800970103
In The Success of European Projects using New Information and Communication Technologies (EPS Colmar 2015), pages 97-103
ISBN: 978-989-758-176-2
Copyright
c
 2015 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
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interoperability among different subjects. These products and services target all
business users, such as institutions and public administration.
Regarding information flows and communications, business users who choose the
proposed solution will be potentially able to save both time and money.
Companies, under the pressure of an increasingly digital world and competitive
markets, are adapting at a fast pace. Processes rationalization, simplification and
automation have become a fundamental means for unleashing resources to invest in the
technology necessary to foster business innovation and create competitive advantage.
In this scenario in order to develop a successful strategy, managers must first analyze
the organization they work for, starting from the information management, being one
of the most common sources of inefficiency; then, also, the management of all of the
processes related to documents. This is the aspect where a deep transformation is
required, as it reflects the need to increase business productivity and process efficiency
while reducing the operating costs.
Public administrations and specifically the local ones, organizations usually
relatively complex, could especially benefit from these solutions: an increased
document management capability without the need for conspicuous investments to
increase disk space, application servers, front-office extensions and back-office
maintenance.
To provide a effective and tangible response to each and every one of these
challenges, it becomes necessary to make the most simple choices, which are also easily
shareable and implementable in a short time: the solution is the employment of a series
of services provided by a website, where the users will be able to fulfill all of their
needs: tasks organization; communication; electronic documents creation, digital
signing, marking, registering, safe submission with return receipt on multiple channels
(mail, email, fax, certified email, SMS), and storage in accordance with the law.
By leveraging these services, companies and professionals will be able to organize
their work without worrying about all the aspects related to the management of paper
documents (printing, mailing, cataloguing and storage), while a public institution will
benefit from being delivered from all of the back-office processes requested by the
management of the electronic document in different departments (registering, general
affairs, accounting, and so on).
3 Research Project Description
This project aims to create an innovative software platform for document management.
The platform will be offered to users “as-a-service”, and be used to manage
communication, electronic document creation, digital signature, digital registration,
document recording protocols, and secure transmission. It will ensure messages will be
received through several channels (mail, email, fax, certified email, text messages,
voice), and that archiving and storage will be performed according to local laws.
The main goal is to provide end users and companies (that already use Gmail, Google
Calendar, and Google Docs) with a suite of web-based RIA tools both safe and reliable,
which will serve as a means of communication with other institutions, such as public
ones, but also banks, companies, freelancers, etc. The applications dedicated to
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document management will be created leveraging the open source development toolkits
provided by Google.
An advanced Lean-type approach to software development is deemed to be suitable
for the project. The Lean approach was meant to be used to support systems'
maintenance and evolution, and the first applications of Kanban actually concern
maintenance processes [1]. Moreover, it allows to effectively manage the development
of several concurrent projects by a single team, that is not an ideal situation but a very
common one. It is indeed a fairly flexible approach, which meets the actual needs of
the organizations that must develop and maintain software, especially if compared to
other less recent approaches.
The Lean approach is spreading fast. In order to avoid past mistakes, however, it is
vital for the “Lean” approach to undergo a rigorous and experimental observation [2]
[3]. Given the radical difference of this approach in comparison to more common
models of software development organization, it will be important to understand the
impact of its introduction at marketing, organizational, and company level [4], [5].
The solution we intend to create in this project makes use of powerful and widely
tested development tools, already adopted by wide developer community, which can
provide support to implementers.
As for the reference market, this solution will be able to be transmitted through the
widespread usage of the tools provided by Google.
Concerning the production model we adopted, the development tools we used ensure
a high productivity in the solution selection process, guaranteed by software
development platforms provided by Google.
Fig. 1. Proposal system and interactions.
With regard to the prototype, modularity will be a regarded as a key feature of the
architectural solution chosen for the system, since it requires the integration of software
components, which are themselves modular, interoperable and flexible, thanks to the
adoption of open standards.
Attention will be paid on the building of a prototype that solves the complexities
arising from the interaction of separate, although interdependent, processes. An
interoperability infrastructure between solutions and specific services will be studied,
to fulfill each user request through an integrated and transparent manner, and also
taking the Cloud Computing paradigm into account [6]. The paradigm offers several
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advantages in terms of reliability, scalability, resource optimization, cost reduction,
failure recovery, environmental impact, etc. [7].
The project is highly innovative and ensures acquisition of valuable new knowledge
for all the involved parties, especially because of the dense cooperation network it will
foster. Knowledge and technology dissemination will be ensured by the intrinsic
features of the project, being it an open-source project: it is open to external
contributions, particularly from those entities that see the project as a solution for their
business challenges. The open-source diffusion lead us to face a revolution in the IT
market,which in the recent years made us witness the evolution of the business model
from the development of stand-alone software packages to the so-called “System
Integration”, thus proving the shifting of the investments on services.
New knowledge acquisition will be ensured by the tight collaboration between T
Bridge and University of Cagliari, together with the dense cooperation network which
will be generated, also with the aim of creating clusters of IT companies.
The project will lead to a considerable advancement in the state of the art, as it is
concerned with the process management related to Service Oriented Architectures
(SOA). It will foster the integration with the tools for the management of the documents
involved in such processes, and the management of all the data deriving from those
processes [8] [9].
3.1 Project Subdivision
The project officially began on October 1, 2015, and its conclusion is estimated to be
on September 28, 2018.
The project covers a number of operational stages. Every stage of the working plan
is organized in Work Packages (WP), parallel phases in which operational objects are
reached with work group activities, through the production of expected results and
products and the application of a specific methodology.
The WP included in the project are five:
 WP 1: State of the art evaluation.
 WP 2: Software development tools and technologies assessment.
 WP 3: Applications and services definition.
 WP 4: Architectural solution design.
 WP 5: Prototype development.
Below is a brief description of each phase of the project development.
3.1.1 WP 1 - State of the Art Evaluation
The first work package is focused on the study of the wide-ranging needs of innovative
Cloud Applications, with the aim of performing a proper selection, and drive the project
towards the development of the most disruptive functionalities. These functionalities
will be selected based on their potential practical impact on the industrial project.
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3.1.2 WP 2 - Software Development Tools and Technologies Assessment
This work package concerns on the one hand the design of an innovative Lean approach
for supporting software development in a Cloud environment, and possibly in a
distributed and collaborative context, on the other hand the design of an integrated Lean
approach oriented towards the management of the business processes of the partner
company. The activities will go beyond the study and design of a Cloud development
methodology, as also the idea of “developing software for the Cloud leveraging the
opportunities offered by the Cloud” are to be followed to determine which key modules
to select in a stand-alone environment.
3.1.3 WP 3 - Applications and Services Definition
Challenges specifically Cloud-related will be here studied, together with the
effectiveness of the solutions currently proposed on the market, in view of future
developments in the medium to long term. The tasks in this package have a primary
role in the project as, currently, there are no similar studies that use data from student
projects, and that could be regarded as representative of an industrial or professional
development.
3.1.4 Wp 4 - Architectural Solution Design
The aim of this package is to study suitable architecture solutions, and finally design it.
Basically, the final objective is to analyze a possible technological infrastructure, which
can integrate the primary issues and those related to the associated applications.
Cloud computing will be taken into account from the point of view of technological
cooperation, and of cooperation logics between applications and data, which can come
from both different systems and different entities.
The infrastructure will be able to handle document management streams in support
of an effective application engine for applications management [10], [11], in addition
to a presentation through Google apps tools, in a SOA logic. The ultimate goal will be
the definition of an easy-to-use tool for the end user.
3.1.5 Wp 5 - Prototype Development
In this phase, the prototypes for all the software components of the document
management system will be implemented and validated. The development will require
specific modules, that will consider key features such as modularity, interoperability,
and flexibility, by leveraging open standards. Special attention will be paid on the
development of a prototype which, in the context of applications, will solve all the
issues which originates when making distinct yet interdependent processes interact.
Another aspect that will be taken into consideration in the prototype development
phase is the SOA integrated security management for the Cloud, in a dynamic
implementation, with focus on access authorizations. Moreover, in this work package,
the results of the project will be published, through specific planning activities and the
organization of workshops, participation to international conferences, and scientific
articles.
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3.2 Project Results Protection and Valorization
All the acquired knowledge and expertise will be protected through the ownership of
the know-how in the specific context in which the project will be developed. As the
industrial partner features an open source business model, and most of the tools selected
for the system are also open source, it is not wise to perform expensive procedures for
patenting all the proposed methodologies and practices. Also, this would not be suitable
because obtaining and, particularly, making patents respected in such an intangible
context is extremely difficult. Moreover, it should be noted that, as of today, software
in Europe can not be patented, considering all the currently available procedures for the
patenting of both methodologies and practices.
Enterprise protection is a process based on professionalism: its foundations are its
superior know-how and the know-how continuous development with respect to the
competitors. This will make the company rely exclusively on it acquired expertise.
Enterprise value will be obtained through added value services sellings (services
development, installation, training, customization, etc.), which will be all the more
marketable and remunerative the greater the specific know-how and visibility of the
company.
Scientific and technological results which will be obtained through research are:
 the study of the interoperability infrastructure in its basic applicative challenges;
 SOA integrated security management for Cloud support, paying special attention on
access authorizations;
 the application engine for the applications management and a presentation via
Google Apps tools;
 the definition of an innovative architecture for integrating a service development
tools suit;
 the industrial results which will be obtained through research are:
 the acquisition of the relevant know-how related to open contexts and their
application on the service-oriented Web, in order to increase users productivity, and
quality;
 the development of specific modules which take into account all the fundamental
aspects, such as modularity, interoperability, and flexibility, through the use of open
standards;
 the acquisition of the know-how concerning Cloud processes, in a model where the
application-centered aspect is integrated with a document-centered approach;
 the acquisition of the relevant know-how related to the use and integration of open-
source tools for supporting software agile development.
4 Conclusion
The solution will be an easy-to-use tool for end users, and, as it is based on Google
technology, will offer high security with low downtime levels. The results of the project
will be disseminated through workshops, conference participation and international
scientific publications.
The presented project financed by the Autonomous Region of Sardinia with
European funds (Single Programming Document 2007-2013 - P.O. FESR 2007-2013 -
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Line of Activity 6.2.2.d - Interventions to support competitiveness and innovation,
under the Regional Committee Resolution no. 33/41 of 08/08/2013).
The creation of the platform will stem from the strategic partnership between T
Bridge S.p.A. and the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (DIEE) of
the University of Cagliari. The purpose of this choice to use the results of fundamental
research as well as of industrial research to elaborate an innovative prototype.
This project is coherent with the strategic objective of the regional planning in
Sardinia, since it aims to implement innovative methods of the ICT sector in the library
industry, and it complies with the objectives described in the Regional Strategic
Document (Documento Strategico Regionale, DSR) 2007-2013 for Sardinia.
Acknowledgements. Simona Ibba and Simone Porru gratefully acknowledges Sardinia
Regional Government for the financial support of his PhD scholarship (P.O.R.
Sardegna F.S.E. Operational Programme of the Autonomous Region of Sardinia,
European Social Fund 2007-2013 Axis IV Human Resources, Objective l.3, Line of
Activity l.3.1).
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