Inside NIRMA Fall 2020

DOCUMENT
DIGITIZATION
QC
S
ome industries tolerate
Errors and Omissions (EO’s)
in their document digitization
projects more than others. In
fact, some clients irresponsibly assume,
without properly checking, that their
Digitization Service Provider delivered
all records, all meeting the
requirements. Unfortunately, a late
detection may have devastating, often
irreparable consequences.
Clients should demand solid answers
from their providers about how their
QC methodologies apply to the project,
then trust and verify. Answers may
include:
A. Random sampling: Although
essential in most projects for testing
purposes, random sampling
overpromises and under delivers.
B. 100% QC: an elusive,
underestimated notion often
challenging due to time, cost and
other constraints.
C. Counting pages: Partially useful,
but error prone, unreliable.
D. Weak answers signal trouble. If
clients do not act, egg is on their
face.
This article aspires to illustrate some
better answers, and to lay a foundation
for a production model to prevent,
detect, remediate, reduce, trace and
monitor EOs in a document digitization
project.
The basic concept is to identify
critical points where EOs may occur
and establish preventive and corrective
semi-automated methodologies around
certain metrics. By “semi-automated” I
mean a combination of smart
automation and human oversight. I use
methodologies that enable valuable
checks and balances in four workflow
stages:
1. Origination: At the point of
custody acceptance.
2. Production (Physical Context): At
the beginning or end of each task
throughout the production
workflow.
3. Published (Logical Context): When
pages are classified, indexed and
organized as logical documents.
4. Submittal: When deliverables are
subject to final acceptance.
By cross-referencing, comparing and
analyzing aggregate numbers based on
data represented in these four
coordinate systems, EOs become more
conspicuous, allowing for remediation
processes to be effective.
A simplified production workflow
includes many tasks (*), what could
possibly go wrong?:
By Manuel Bulwa,
Integrated Scanning of America
www.isausa.com
Some documents may not have
made it entirely through the
production workflow.
Pages can be missed, mutilated,
folded, obstructed, out of sequence,
out of scale, illegible, wrongly split
or merged, overlapped, files may be
corrupted, …
Page groups can be wrongly
classified, not indexed, duplicated,
“buried”, …
Incorrect, missing or extraneous
document structures.
Incomplete, missing or “made up”
documents, …
Deliverables may be incomplete,
redundant, not fully complying with
SOW, …
Originals may be returned or
disposed of without a valid digital
counterpart.
Originals may not be returned in
full.
Originals may not be returned as
expected.
Other.
What are the causes of EOs?
Each EO is associated to a root cause
(*).
Who is responsible for
consequences?
Both service provider and client have
separate responsibilities(*).
How can EOs be detected and
corrected?: (*)
Planning, testing and training
Timing
Use production level equipment
Continued on next page.
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