State Government Moving from Disconnected Manual Publishing Process to Automated Workflow to Provide Citizens Access to Up-to-date Regulatory Documentation

DENVER, CO – Quark Software Inc. announced today that the State of Connecticut is implementing a publishing and content management solution from Quark and IBM that will improve the process of creating and delivering regulatory documentation. The State of Connecticut manages and makes available more than 1,000 regulations created across more than 50 state agencies. It is critical that citizens are able to access up-to-date documentation about the regulations in real-time; however, the State of Connecticut’s manual and disconnected publishing process makes it difficult to deliver timely and discoverable documentation.

To better serve its citizens, Governor Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut is driving an initiative to improve the efficiency of the regulation-making process, increase public access to regulations and allow real-time records of the regulation-making process to be publicly available. The initiative requires that the State of Connecticut overhaul its publishing process to improve collaboration, accuracy and delivery. The initiative’s key requirements are to:

• Utilize existing IT infrastructure including IBM FileNet Content Manager
• Allow authors of regulatory documentation to create content with Microsoft Word
• Provide centralized access to regulatory documentation
• Enable final preview of regulatory documentation prior to publication
• Drive content reuse and multi-channel delivery

To meet these requirements, the State of Connecticut needed a dynamic publishing solution capable of creating and managing componentized content in an XML format that could be automatically assembled and published to any desired output format – PDF, Web and digital.

After a lengthy solutions evaluation, the State of Connecticut chose Quark Publishing Platform^TM and Quark XML Author^TM integrated with IBM FileNet and IBM Case Manager. The integrated solution includes:

• Quark XML Author, an XML authoring and editing add-in to Microsoft Word that allows anyone to create XML documents – without seeing tags, being constrained to boxes or being aware of the technical complexities associated with XML.
• Quark Publishing Platform, an end-to-end platform that enables the automatic assembly and delivery of content to print, PDF, HTML5, Web, XML, tablet and mobile apps, and other digital formats.
• IBM FileNet Content Manager, an enterprise content management solution that acts as a single repository for content that streamlines management and delivery and enables collaboration.
• IBM Case Manager, software that enables the State of Connecticut to bring together information, processes and people to create a 360-degree view of each regulation process. It includes the integrated analytics, business rules, audit trails and collaborative tools that exceed the workflow solutions offered by other content management solutions.

Becoming a Leader in Regulatory Transparency
By building on and modernizing existing IT infrastructure with solutions from Quark and IBM, the State of Connecticut will dramatically improve its process for creating, managing and delivering regulatory documentation while improving productivity and collaboration. In what is traditionally a manual, disconnected and print-based workflow, the State of Connecticut will be able to leverage component-based authoring and lifecycle management with automated output. The new publishing and content management solution will:

• Fully leverage investments in the IBM Enterprise Content Management (ECM) platform
• Allow content authors to write and edit in Microsoft Word while creating native XML components behind-the-scenes
• Provide a 360-view of the publishing process across all agency contributors
• Deliver content to print and Web channels from the same workflow

“By updating our publishing system with an integrated solution from Quark and IBM, we are working to transform the State of Connecticut’s regulations process from an outmoded print-based model to a useful set of smart content components. With modern and automated publishing processes we expect to achieve a higher level of automation, collaboration and productivity,” said Christopher Drake, Deputy Legal Counsel for Governor Malloy.

“The work the Governor and his team are doing to update the publishing process will help the State of Connecticut become a leader in providing citizens timely public access to regulations as well as allow for increased transparency throughout the regulation-making process. Once fully implemented the solution has the potential to help other regulation reform efforts proceed more effectively,” said John Grillos, Vice President of Business Development and Strategic Alliances for Quark Software Inc.