In connection with the Archive 2.0 -project, the City of Tampere wanted to introduce a new and modern electronic archive. The city had already centralized archiving into one digital archive and Tampere wanted to continue in the same direction with the new archive.
The City of Tampere was among the first public administration organizations to introduce the first electronic archive in 2008. The previous system was already starting to show its age. The goal of the Archive 2.0 -project was to acquire and introduce a new and up-to-date electronic archive system.
The city's document control manager, Saija Kirkkola, says that document management is responsible for directing, monitoring and developing the city's document management. The digital archive is part of this whole.
Renewing an electronic archive is a challenging project
The Archive 2.0 -project has included the acquisition of a new system, the migration of material from the previous archive and the re-implementation of integrations. This is a fairly large project, even on a Nordic scale.
“We did not begin the acquisition of a new electronic archive with a clean slate; we have a lot of experience and a view of what we wanted from it. There is a lot of material to be transferred and we also had to take into account the integrations made to the previous system,” says the project manager Kirsti Säynäväjärvi, describing the challenge of the project.
"Similar projects regarding moving to the next digital archive are not common in Finland. The big picture is large and there were many things to take into account, which increased the difficulty of the project and the expectations from the service provider," says Kirkkola.
"The previous system worked well, but its technical solutions no longer met current needs. As a document management system with case management features, it was also not very practical for handling large document volumes. Due to experience and the growing volume of archiving, we decided to look for a solution that focuses solely on archiving," Säynäväjärvi continues.
The goal was to find a modern system that better takes into account the provision of materials both internally and outside organizational boundaries. The system had to be able to handle the ever-growing document volumes generated by the city's operations and to accept the approximately 4 million files produced in the city's digitization project.
An electronic archive has to fulfill many requirements
There are many requirements for electronic archives. In Finland, the National Archives controls nationally archived material.
“We made quite extensive specifications for what functional, IT and security requirements the new system must meet. We also considered how we want to operate in the future and what aspects need to be taken into account, for example, in relation to the National Archives’ Sähke2 certificate requirements,” Kirkkola says regarding the project’s starting point and emphasizes:
“We required a storage system certificate, but we also had operational requirements and the need to find a solution that fits the existing system environment and meets all information security requirements.”
The access rights of the Profium Electronic Archive can be set based on users, groups, roles and views. In particular, materials containing sensitive information require secure processing and the ability to manage access rights.
"Although information management follows the same information management plan, access rights in the previous and new archives are structured slightly differently," says Kirkkola about the challenges of the project and continues: "The issue of access rights has proven to be a challenge. Although we ourselves wanted to dismantle the models built during the previous system, we now have to learn new ways of working and it requires us to wire our brains differently."
A domestic data center ensures data accessibility
“The Profium Electronic Archive is an easy-to-use domestic solution that is produced as a service for the City of Tampere from data centers located in Finland,” says Profium's CEO Perttu Heinonen.
“A data center located in Finland gives the customer the assurance that important information stored in the archive is accessible, even if there are interruptions in connections outside of Finland.”
Heinonen also highlights that the Profium Electronic Archive is a versatile solution and it is also available for small customers as a suitable and quickly deployable version.
The Profium Electronic Archive was named Aitta-archive in a naming competition held by the employees of the City of Tampere. It has been in production use since October 2023. The first impression, however, is that it is easy to use and that searching for information is smooth.
Säynäväjärvi states that as a modern system, it is possible to produce and attach different sections to the Aitta-archive, which makes it easier to access materials. It may even create new services in the future.
In the City of Tampere, document management work is handled by a team of 15 people, which also includes the city registry office and the city archive as customer service interfaces. The recently built new city archive contains 10,000 shelf kilometers of the city's materials. Although 850 shelf meters of material have recently been digitized, it is not possible or reasonable to digitize all old archival material, so physical archive spaces are necessary now and in the future.
Since the beginning of 2022, all new material archived in public administration has had to be stored exclusively in digital form, unless the analog form of the document has special cultural-historical value.
The challenge: The old solution had already reached the end of its life span. The solution was designed as a document management system with case management features. Information retrieval and processing of large volumes of data was challenging, so providing extensive materials quickly and efficiently to internal and external customers was practically impossible.
The solution: A modern and secure Profium Electronic Archive, where managing and retrieving information is easy with smart functions. The service is designed specifically as an electronic archive and with its needs in mind.
The benefits: Storing information is simple and retrieving and sharing information is easy.
