Fiscal challenges continue to impact public housing authorities (PHA) and health and human services (HHS) agencies. These agencies are finding their workforce stretched to the limit as constituent demand for services continues to increase. The number of Americans receiving assistance from programs such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid and HUD Section 8 is at an all-time high,1,2,3 and the growth in public aid recipients adds even more documents to the caseworker’s pile.
The weight of paperwork is already bringing PHA and HHS agencies to a breaking point. Documents are the core of eligibility and re-certification for most programs. Employees waste valuable office hours tracking down, updating and filing documents. Applicants, who need immediate aid, spend too much time preparing repetitive submissions for multiple agencies or waiting for eligibility decisions.
Technology can help. In difficult financial times, innovation can often take a backseat to simply getting the job done. But by implementing an enterprise content management (ECM) solution, PHA and HHS agencies can better manage their skyrocketing caseload, in spite of dwindling resources, by better controlling their documents. ECM helps them serve the growing number of beneficiaries more efficiently, more personally and at a lower cost.
This Issue Brief will describe how ECM can improve document management in PHA and HHS agencies and identify some key criteria for investing in an ECM solution.
