Electronic document and records management software underpins Welland's vital role as part of PARSOL, the government's online planning strategy involving over 40 different agencies from local authorities to national organisations to help implement e-planning and regulatory services, nationwide, by March 2004

London, England - November 04, 2003 - Valid Information Systems Limited, a Hummingbird Ltd. company, today announced that East-Midlands-based, Welland Partnership, a Pathfinder group of five local authorities from four counties, has selected Valid's electronic document and records management solution, R/KYV, to enable the four districts and county council to process and store all planning, building control and waste management information.

In the deal, some 1,300 council staff will be able to use the R/KYV system to share information securely regardless of location or department. All of this data, which will be managed according to e-government guidelines and statutory legislation, can then be accessed directly by the citizen using community portals (gateway to the World Wide Web).

"This system is fundamental to supporting the Welland vision for e-government by providing contact centre agents with fast access to customer records wherever they may be held within the Welland, facilitating unassisted access to records via the Internet (subject to authentication where appropriate) as well as improving back office efficiency, reducing the amount of space occupied by paper files and facilitating compliance with the Freedom of Information Act," said Gordon Wisby, Special Projects Manager, The Welland Partnership

Critically, staff will be able to access all information and take advantage of R/KYV's comprehensive functionality through their familiar Microsoft Office™ interface using the R/KYV Smart Office module. This means no training and an immediate, smooth update of a new system without the usual teething problems.

Among the R/KYV facilities selected by the Welland Partnership are the ability to scan and read paper documents electronically through using the product's optical character recognition, and the capability of transforming bar-coded paper documentation into electronic files using the barcodes to reflect the existing structure. Further, staff will be able to import print files or reports from mainframes such as Unix systems and display formatted data within R/KYV as if the document had been printed then scanned using R/KYV's COLD module.

Welland will also be able to build a full library of electronic information using R/KYV's Java-based, text search engine. The knowledge management function is further reinforced by the R/KYV middleware that will connect disparate databases, i.e. the data stored in the different departments. This means any of the 1,300 users will be able to access valuable information wherever it originated across the five councils.

The Welland Partnership is one of the leading groups in the National Project for Planning and Regulatory Services Online (PARSOL). The group comprises East Northamptonshire Council - Northamptonshire; Harborough District Council - Leicestershire; Melton Borough Council - Leicestershire; Rutland County Council - Rutland and South Kesteven District Council - Lincolnshire. The National Projects are of major significance within the overall e-government strategy, representing those solutions that will benchmark all future e-government systems. The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has provided £80 million towards their funding. The program aims to ensure that all councils have access to key electronic services and building blocks without having to start from scratch.

Valid Information Systems won the business, competing against all the major suppliers in the field and this win comes in the wake of a string of recent successes in the local government market including the Isle of Wight, Epsom & Newell District Council, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council and Ceredigion County Council, among others.