Put digital documents to work for your government agency

Image credit: Adobe Stock/VideoFlow.

Government agencies are increasingly leaving paper-based processes behind in favor of adopting digital document workflows. Digital forms offer benefits for agencies, employees, and constituents alike, including:

• Greater efficiency — speed up transaction times, view/fill/sign anywhere from any device, validate form entries
• Wider accessibility — ensure 508 Compliance (the requirement that federal government websites are safe and accessible for people with disabilities)
• Further reach — make services accessible to constituents who can’t physically travel to an office, support agency employees working remotely or in the field
• Better recordkeeping — secure archiving and audit trails
• Stronger safeguards of sensitive data — enhanced security and password protection settings

However, digitizing a form or document and making it available online is simply the first step of what agencies can do with modern document workflows. Digital documents offer further opportunities for improving efficiency, security, employee experiences, and stakeholder interactions. They can also be easily measured and tracked in order to help build smarter, faster processes over time and unlock other strategic insights that might impact productivity.

PDFs: Not just convenient, a groundbreaking digital standard

Take PDFs, for example. PDFs are the dominant online document format, and many agencies are already using fill and sign capabilities to increase their reach and streamline their paperwork processes. But PDFs also offer advanced tools and APIs that enable you to do more with workflows and data.

Automation capabilities further expedite signing workflows and create more engaging experiences for agency employees and constituents. The ability to automatically route approvals to the correct people simplifies support functions such as onboarding and training. And integration with productivity tools such as Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, document workflows can be managed with the same set of tools agencies use today.

Data tools, such as the ability to prefill forms, push and pull form information into existing databases, and extract data from static documents help simplify back-end processes. And with the ability to track engagement and other analytics, agencies have added insight into how to optimize document experiences internally and externally.

Today, all areas within government agencies are under pressure to be more strategic and efficient. This also goes for support services like HR, IT, Finance, and Procurement, which often already contend with outdated legacy systems, lack of funding, or staffing shortages. Leveraging advanced digital documents can help ease bureaucratic burdens on these departments, enabling employees to focus on more strategic work. For example:

• HR: Digital onboarding processes can leverage pre-existing templates, electronic or digital signatures, and remote notaries to decrease time to new hire start from 14 days to 1-2 days
• Finance/risk management: Digital overtime and reimbursement requests can be set up to ensure all fields are filled before processing, reducing risk of inadvertent non-compliance
• IT: Digital authorization forms enable system administrators to easily identify missing documentation and route training notifications or signature forms to users, reducing audit risk

While forms and documents may feel like a mundane part of the governments business, they’re a necessary and important part of keeping society running. Our goal is to help agencies identify where they can automate repetitive tasks and leverage new tools to make document workflows easier and more efficient for all.

Support for meaningful modernization

In partnering with agencies over the years, Adobe knows the unique constraints of government workflows, and the necessity for modernizations strategies that enable innovation without sacrificing compliance, security, or accessibility. That’s why Adobe offers a range of options to help agencies securely expand the reach and impact of their services, powered by Adobe Document Cloud.

Our goal is to help government agencies meet their missions by supporting the digital ecosystem for documents, signatures, and workflows — including Adobe Acrobat (create, convert, edit PDFs), Adobe Acrobat Sign (e-signature and digital signature workflows), and Adobe Document Services (automate document processes).

Learn more here.