Mitigating Disaster Risks with Document Scanning Services in Government Offices
Remember, when disaster strikes, the time to prepare has passed.
- Steven Cyros
Disasters are unpredictable. The only way to fight them is to be prepared and reduce the impact.
Is your county office prepared for a major disaster?
A quick glance at the news, and you'll notice that extreme weather events, pandemic shutdowns and supply chain issues have caused constant business disruptions over the last few years.
Despite lost work days, possible damage to important documents during flooding and rain and the financial impact of goods caught in supply chain disruptions, many institutions are not doing enough to prepare adequately for future disasters.
In the article, we review document safety measures you need to take for disaster preparedness and how your county office can proactively protect vital records using our document scanning services to create digital backups.
What is disaster preparedness?
Natural disasters like floods, tornados, earthquakes, hurricanes, or wildfires can cause disruptions in services for citizens in your county. Moreover, it can cause long-term problems if vital citizen records or legal and government documents are damaged or destroyed during a catastrophic event.
Disaster preparedness involves having a business continuity plan in place that outlines proactive steps and immediate measures (just after a catastrophe) to minimize the damage and get back to business as quickly as possible.
Does your county office have a disaster management plan and a designated recovery team?
How would a catastrophic natural event affect your county office?
While a storm will pass, flood waters will recede, and wildfires will eventually be put out, your county's citizen service delivery may not be easy to restore.
Your county offices are storehouses of vital information with documents like citizen records, government contracts, land records, legal and procurement contracts and much more. Unfortunately, when you store these in paper format, they can be damaged or destroyed during a natural disaster or calamity.
For example, Walker county in Alabama suffered 4 major records losses due to fire—the earliest recorded loss of information was in 1865, followed by further losses of county records in 1877, 1896, and again in 1932.
Baker county in Georgia lost their county records due to fire in 1873, floods in 1925 and again as recently as 1994.
Madison county in Texas lost their county records thrice: in 1865, 1873 and in 1967. (Source: US Counties with Records Losses)
Vital records are the foundation for decisions about finance, health care and civil administration policies. Government agencies access these records for validation, reviews, and approvals. In addition, citizens need to access these vital records for school enrollments, passport applications, claims for insurance or other government benefits, and more.
Imagine what will happen if these vital records are lost during a disaster. It will take monumental efforts to recreate or restore the information. And citizen services could come to a grinding halt due to a lack of information.
That's why it is crucial to assess if your disaster recovery plan includes information safety measures that will help maintain service continuity in the face of large-scale damage or unpredictable transport and supply chains.
Does your disaster preparedness & recovery plan include document safety?
Government agencies must ensure that measures to safeguard county records are part of their disaster preparedness plan.
You will need to assess whether your county records are safely stored. Will flood waters damage paper stored in storage areas or basements?
Do you have digital backups of vital business records?
The key is making file security and accessibility for important documents an absolute priority in your preparedness for disasters.
Safeguarding documents: Why your county needs to prioritize document scanning
Scanning documents and storing them in a centralized document management system or on cloud-based servers will safeguard vital information and make records instantly accessible—even in the event of a disaster.
Making document scanning a part of your county's disaster preparedness plan has many benefits:
Digital documents are accessible remotely
Scanned documents stored in a cloud-based document management system are easily accessible to authorized personnel from anywhere, allowing a faster return to work after a disaster.
Digital backups
Digital data backups are way more convenient, fast, and economical than storing physical copies of paper records. You can make multiple copies of your digital data and save them at different locations to mitigate the risk of data loss. You can even set up an automated schedule for daily data backup so no one misses out on backing up the day's latest files.
Reduce storage costs
Large volumes of documents require a lot of physical space to store. Document scanning saves you the cost of storing paper documents in expensive storage areas, as well as the indirect costs of maintaining, handling, and sharing physical documents.
Improve employee efficiency and collaboration
During a disaster, your county office may be flooded with service requests from citizens impacted by the disaster. Your staff needs to be prepared to handle these requests efficiently—even if they are not physically present in the office. When your documents are scanned and easily accessible in digital formats, your staff can instantly access digital records from anywhere. They can search and find digital documents instantly, efficiently coordinating and collaborating with the concerned departments and resolving citizens' queries quickly.
RDS provides document scanning services for disaster preparedness in your county office
RDS offers document scanning, microfilm scanning, and document indexing services to convert physical documents to digital formats.
We have rich experience handling document scanning projects for transforming county office records.
Document imaging converts your county office records to electronic files that you can store in a secure cloud-based document management system. Digitization enables you to optimize your operational processes, automate and speed up workflows, increase efficiency, and make your county office staff a lot more productive than before.
Connect with RDS for comprehensive document scanning services and document management solutions for disaster preparedness in your county office.