Ontario government embraces ECM … long term

The Ministry of Government Services for Ontario has contracted with enterprise content management (ECM) vendor Open Text in a 10-year deal for solutions that include social media tools such as wikis, blogs, forums and communities.

Open Text software will serve as the foundation for the government’s enterprise information management strategy for all provincial government ministries, agencies and crown corporations, according to a press release from Open Text. Included are solutions for records and document management, workflow, collaboration, Web content management and document imaging.

The latest social media software for enterprises also will be incorporated to help improve productivity and collaboration, and provide new ways for government agencies to engage constituents and interest groups, according to Open Text. The overall goals of the implementation are to improve Ontario’s efficiency, transparency and responsiveness to citizens.

“Governments have some of the most complex information management challenges, given their size, multiple agencies and responsibility to serve the public,” says John Shackleton, Open Text president and CEO. “The Ontario government is getting out in front of these challenges by taking a strategic view of the way they manage information, finding the important connections between content, processes and the productivity of employees across the organization.”