case - Aarhus Kommune
September 1, 2020
Aarhus Municipality creates flexible processes with robots and DCR
ESDH serves many purposes in the country’s municipalities, but sometimes additional functionalities may be needed. When the country’s second largest municipality faced such a concrete need, process modelling from DCR was chosen to create an easy and efficient solution. ESDH with integrated process control is on the rise.
"We find ESDH useful in many contexts. In addition to using it for all our administrative cases, we typically use it when we do not have a professional system for a specific area, and here ESDH is often an obvious solution"
IT consultant and ESDH expert at the Magistrate's Department for Social Affairs and Employment in Aarhus Municipality
Mette Ernstsen
Aarhus municipality is located in East Jutland and with their approximately 350,000 inhabitants (2020), it s Denmark's second largest municipality.
Smart solutions with robots and process modelling
Electronic case and document management (ESDH) emerged more than 40 years ago when digitalisation began to creep into society. Danish authorities had a long and proud tradition of journalism, and now it had to be done electronically. The result was ESDH, which continues to thrive in terms of method and technology. Virtually all Danish authorities today use ESDH to ensure quality and legal certainty in case processing, including Aarhus Municipality. But even if ESDH is not to be bypassed, there is always room for improvement. Aarhus Municipality is thus continuously working to make the systems smarter and expand its functionality. This is not always possible in the ESDH system itself, which is why the municipality has found other methods.
One of the ways to do this is using your own robot solutions. "We have three developers who build software robots to perform specially designed, but simple, repetitive processes in the system. For example, we have one solution where a robot collects data from different systems - data that the caseworker needs to process an application form, so, the caseworker can then instead spend his time on the citizen contact" explains Mette Ernstsen
Another method of achieving these goals is DCR's process modeling, where the ESDH system has easily given new functionalities. It became relevant when the municipality had to phase out the professional system KMD Case, which was used for case processing of reimbursement cases.
A system on the way out and ESDH with deficiencies
"Reimbursement may not sound so exciting, but it is a vital mechanism in the municipalities' finances, where authorities settle with each other for the use of public services " Mette Ernstsen explains. "Specifically, these are 2 subject areas for us. One is inter-municipal reimbursement, where a citizen from another municipality receives services or services from Aarhus Municipality, for example by moving into a care home. In such case, the home municipality must pay us for the service we provide. The second area is the state reimbursement that Aarhus Municipality receives for refugees and immigrants who are placed in the municipality. "
When processing refunds, it is crucial to have control of information such as dates, paragraphs and other data depending on the area. This could be done in the system on the way out, KMD Sag, but not in the municipality's new ESDH system, KMD Nova, Mette Ernstsen explains. "We need to collect this data and pull out lists. This is not yet possible with KMD Nova, and we therefore had to invent something new. It was a challenge until we became aware of DCR through our supplier, KMD, and the possibility of integrating their process modelling into case management. This proved to be a good solution, both in terms of quality and resources. "
More flexible process management in the future
By using the DCR process modelling tool, the users got the same functionality they had been used to from KMD Sag. We will see more of this kind of built-in flexible process control in ESDH systems, says Mette Ernstsen, "KMD Nova is working to fully integrate DCR into its system, and I know several other ESDH vendors are working to enable integration with DCR's process management tools."