The Client
Co–Ownership is a not–for–profit organisation that helps people get onto the property ladder who cannot do it by themselves. Co–Ownership is the regional body for shared ownership in Northern Ireland.
The Problem
Co–Ownership help large archives of paper files that were taking up a large amount of storage space in their offices. This was causing staff to waste significant amount of time manually searching for relevant files and Co–Ownership wanted to create a digital backup of their records to ensure their lasting integrity. This work was to be carried out over two separate projects.
What We Did
The two projects were broadly similar in their outlook, but each project related to a specific area of information that Co–Ownership held. The processes for the digital capture of the two projects are detailed below:
Project 1 – Scanning of Housing Files
Co–Ownership held a large paper archive of data from 7,000 Housing files, dating from the early 1970’s to the present day.
This project required Mallon to undertake a large collection of over 500 files from Co–Ownership Housing headquarters in Belfast to our purpose–built data capture facility in Cookstown. Once they arrived, the files passed through our secure document check–in procedure to our climate–controlled file storage area. As required, these files were signed out of the storage area and moved to the document preparation section where they were set up ready for the scanning and data capture process.
Preparation of the files included the removal of staples and treasury tags, fixing of dog–eared pages and sorting of the files into confidential and non–confidential information for scanning. Files were then scanned using our A4/A3 production scanners and captured in TIFF format. As specified by the customer, information was captured at 200dpi and maps were captured at 300dpi. From these, derivative PDF images were created.
Following their capture, all images entered the Quality Assurance process before the file was restored to its original state and transferred back to our secure storage area. The captured images were then moved to the OCR processing stage, resulting in fully searchable text documents.
On completion of the project, we had digitally captured 8,428 files with a total of 1,234,822 individual pages. The PDF files were uploaded to our FTP site in batches of between 150 – 200 files on a weekly basis to the customer.
Project 2 – Scanning of Various Files
The second project involved the digital capture of various paper files held by Co–Ownership Housing. These included; Housing files, Title Deeds, Bills of Costs and Property Valuations.
The project required Mallon to undertake several collections of files from Co–Ownership Housing headquarters in Belfast to our purpose–built data capture facility. Once they arrived, the files passed through our secure document check–in procedure to our climate–controlled file storage area. As required, these files were signed out of the storage area and moved to the document preparation section where they were set up ready for the scanning and data capture process.
Files were then scanned using our A4/A3 production scanners and captured in PDF format at 200dpi. Following their capture, all images entered the Quality Assurance process before the file was restored to its original state and transferred back to our secure storage area. The captured images were then moved to the OCR processing stage, resulting in fully searchable text documents.
On completion of the project, we had digitally captured 2,210 files with a total of 51,190 individual pages. The PDF files were then uploaded to our FTP site in batches on a weekly basis to the customer.
The Benefits
- By digitally capturing their paper archives Co–Ownership has been able to free up valuable office space for alternative uses
- Information can now be accessed at the touch of a button, removing the need to manually search through paper files
- A secure digital backup of their archive files ensures they will never lose access to their important documents
- Digital copies of their records will help to ensure their lasting integrity for the foreseeable future
- Text searches can be undertaken for keywords or phrases, helping to find relevant information quickly
- Multiple people can access files at the same time