• Application Forms
• Correspondence - letters faxes and memos
• Minutes
• Reports

Because HotDocs has the proven ability to dramatically cut down the time required to produce even complex documentation, the savings in time and money it achieves is directly proportional to how much and how often it is employed.

This is no truer than in those areas of local and national government that are required to regularly provide and maintain accurate and often comprehensive documents for the benefit of their clients.
This was just one of the demands placed on the Child Support Agency and this was their reaction to HotDocs.

Olive Skelly from the Nothern Ireland Appeals Team explained, "Feedback from the CAU has been very positive. The new templates mean a streamlined, automated approach to appeal writing resulting in a faster, more professional end product. The new templates will quicken the process of writing appeals and as the NI appeals writers will soon start presenting appeals, they will have more time to concentrate on this new area of work".
Child Support Reforms News - April 02

For more on this story click on to Case Histories

Case History

The Child Support Agency
Background
In response to new legislation and Government programmes such as Child Support Reform, Working Age, Pensions Modernisation and Integrated Child Credit, the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) had to find a strategy that would help it meet the new objectives.

The CSA is the first agency within the DWP to undertake this re-structuring process that will ultimately impact on staff throughout the whole department nationwide.

The Department recognised that in order to deliver the government’s welfare reforms, it would have to undergo significant changes in its use of IT and so the Early Office Infrastructure (EOI) project was set up.

The EOI is the term used to describe the IT – namely the hardware, software and networks that needed to be upgraded. The Central Appeals Unit (CAU), a unit within the Child Support Agency (CSA), had a submission writing tool in Word Perfect 5.1 for DOS and was using PCs that were, in some instances, 15 years old with out of date software (386s with Windows 3.11)

The upgrade of the submission writing tool is the focus of this case study.

The Early Office Infrastructure
The purpose of The Early Office Infrastructure is to produce standardisation across the department and make the movement of staff as easy as possible from the point of view of IT training and familiarisation.

It will also alleviate compatibility issues between agencies and different sections that need to share information. To achieve this, it was necessary that everyone in the department adopted a standard word processing package - Microsoft Word 2000.

The submission writing tool had been constructed using WordPerfect macros but the WordPerfect macros could not be converted to Word Macros automatically and so the EOI Board asked Schlumberger SEMA, a leading global IT services company, to identify the best options available and subsequently to recommend and supply a replacement system.

The selection process
The brief was simply to replace the existing system with the proviso that the CAU would have to bear the cost of any additional features that were outside the previous specifications.

SEMA contacted a number of companies and undertook product evaluations. From this initial research the field was whittled down to a group of 4 main contenders including HotDocs.

A detailed questionnaire was submitted to each company in this final group asking for specifications, capabilities and pricing. The responses were compared with predefined criteria and a scorecard produced. The various contenders were then invited to make formal presentations to SEMA and the end-users at the Central Appeals Unit, with the result that Capsoft UK and its HotDocs software were selected and awarded the project.

The project
The function of the project is summed up in its title, Faster Appeal Submissions to TAS (The Appeals Service) or by the more memorable acronym, FAST.

The Agency regularly has to produce documents of 35 pages or more and the first step in the process was to convert 10 existing interactive documents into HotDocs templates, which included automating 350 clauses for selective inclusion.

It is estimated that HotDocs can now be accessed by over 240 end-users with colleagues in Northern Ireland also looking to take advantage of the software for the benefit of their customers.

As well as building the FAST system, Capsoft UK also undertook training for 5 members of staff up to developer level with the result that the team at the Central Appeals Unit is self-sufficient with the technical ability and confidence to run and maintain the new system with minimum external support.

Post launch report
It was recognised that the existing system was not able to respond to the future needs of the CSA. Whatever replaced it had to be faster, more accurate and easier to use. One part of the solution was to move from a 16-bit to a 32-bit Operating System.

This and the implementation of HotDocs means that documents can now be produced in a fraction of the time previously taken and although some training was necessary, users can now automate many more parts of these documents.

HotDocs is intuitive software and provides a question and answer session to gather the unique data for each personalised document. The questions themselves are organised into related groups, which helps to make completion of the document a more straightforward process. It is also possible for end-users to make mathematical calculations during construction, an option not open to them with the old system.

Having the additional inline help feature further enhances the ease of document production. This allows users to get assistance on context specific issues during the assembly process and with the Graphical User Interface the whole process is much improved and easier to handle.

Another benefit over the old WordPerfect system is the ability of HotDocs to store ‘Answer Files’. This facility enables users to store the variable information specific to each document, which can be re-used in future documents: it’s a very useful and flexible feature. And, if the user has to stop while the document is only part complete, they can simply come back to it at a later date and pick up where they left off saving time, energy and a lot of frustration.

In addition, the ability to handle computations has proved a major benefit since this greatly reduces the production time and improves accuracy.

Central Appeals Unit is a unit within the Child Support Agency and based at Lytham St Annes, Lancashire. Roll out for the Early Office Infrastructure commenced in September 2001 and is due for completion by the end of 2002.