In working with school districts one of the most frequently requested records that they keep in their records archive is Student Records. In almost every state student transcripts are permanent records and must be made available upon request by the student. These boxes and filing systems for managing these student files can take up a large amount of space stored. Additionally, pulling the files can waste a huge amount of employee time. Often these files are poorly inventoried and may also be stored in remote locations. These files are also 
protected by both FERPA, and HIPAA regulations and school districts are responsible for properly securing the information regarding the release of documents from these files. The solution to better managing these documents is to have them digitized and then store them in an Electronic Content Management system (ECM). Here is the process we use to digitize student records: Steps in the process:
1) An assessment is made of the documents and indexing requirements with the school district’s records management staff
2) A complete inventory of the files is created
3) A cost proposal is presented to the school district’s management for approval
4) Upon receiving a Purchase Order from the district:
- The documents are boxed up and moved to our scanning center
- The files were prepared for scanning and scanned on our highspeed scanners
- Indexing is accomplished using database information from the district’s student information system whenever possible or manually indexed
- The scanned documents were uploaded to a cloud-based or on-premise Electronic Content Management (ECM) system
- The ECM system is linked to the student information system allowing the student record staff to retrieve the files without having to log into the ECM system
- The scanned files are returned to the district for long tern storage or shredded
Benefits of the solution:
- Retrieval times were reduced from hours or days to minutes
- Staff utilization was targeted to more valuable tasks
- Alumni satisfaction rates were greatly improved
- A disaster Recovery solution was implemented by digitizing the files
- Auditing the access to these files was now electronically secured and tracked
The Cost versus Value Decision:
The cost versus value decision has been simple for our school district clients. The wasted employee time looking for records and the poor customer satisfaction situation had to be addressed. The digitization of Student Records solved these and many other issues.
Contact us for help:
If you would like to learn more about our Student Record scanning experience or the other record digitization strategies that we have developed for our clients please give us a call or email us, we will be glad to help you.
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