The Client
Donegal County Council Fire and Rescue Service provide services across the county, operating from 16 fire stations and answering approximately 1,000 emergency calls every year.
The Problem
A key part of the Fire Service’s work is to process Fire Certificate applications and to maintain a record of this information. Donegal Fire Service had a large archive of Fire Certificate files which had begun to take up a large amount of storage space and was causing staff to waste time manually searching for relevant information.
Donegal Fire Service required the creation of a digital backup of their records to ensure the lasting integrity of the information for the foreseeable future.
What We Did
Mallon had to undertake a large collection of files from Donegal Fire Service’s headquarters in Letterkenny and take them to our purpose–built data capture facility in Cookstown.
When the delivery arrived in our Cookstown office they passed through our secure document check–in procedure to our climate–controlled file storage area. As required, these files were signed out of the storage area and moved to the document preparation section where they were set up ready for the scanning and digital capture process.
Preparation of the files included the removal of staples and treasury tags, fixing any dog–eared pages and sorting the files into the applicable index sections. When preparation of the files was complete and the necessary information recorded, the files were passed to the scanning section.
Files were scanned into our bespoke scanning application, designed by Mallon’s own software development team. The application enables documents to be scanned in the specified format and accommodates the associated data capture of index information. using the bespoke application enabled us to fulfil the requirements set out by the customer.
The files were scanned using our A4/A3 automatic feed scanners and captured in TIFF format at 200dpi. Any A2+ sized documents were passed to our large–format sections where they were individually scanned on a 42” scanner. When scanning was completed, the captured images were visually checked for anomalies.
When the images passed the initial visual check, they progressed to Quality Assurance where they are again visually re–checked against the original document. The veracity of the index data captured was also re–checked by one of our Quality Assurance Technicians to ensure the integrity of the data.
On completion of the scanning and QA, the files were restored to their original state for return to Donegal Fire Service. The digital versions of the files were uploaded onto out FTP site for download by the customer. Once downloaded, the Donegal IT department ran a script, created by Mallon, that enables the quick and easy import of their scanned files into their Department Management System, Diamond Fire Web.
The Benefits
- A secure digital backup of their records helps to ensure the lasting integrity of all Donegal Fire Service’s paper files
- Documents can now be quickly and easily accessed, speeding up the retrieval of information
- The fire service has been able to free–up important office space for alternative uses
- All documents and files can now be searched for and accessed with Diamond Fire Web
- Multiple users can access information at the same time
- Documents can be easily recovered in the event of a disaster