State of Iowa Project

The State of Iowa Economic Development wanted to reduce time it takes for legal & compliance work teams to find, share and store documents related to economic development grants, and also eliminate the need to print and mail documents for review by state officals, compliance auditors and public access requests.

We provided a virtual workplace that automates the creation of virtual binders that are stored in virtual workrooms. Data is exchanged via stored procedures. When a work team- member logs in, they arrive in a 3-D virtual workroom. They can click on a State map showing all 99 counties. Clicking or selecting a county opens a county's virtual workroom where binders for each county project are "stored" on virtual shelves.

Clicking on a virtual binder opens it up like a book in which tabbed pages open access to files, data, applications, documents, etc. that replicates the way physical binders are now assembled. There are working binders for confidential information, and public binders that can be shared as needed. All data is "pulled" via stored procedures from the State's data server only when acccessed by a user.

Work teams are now seeing how this system can be applied across many State agencies. The previous method of using email, shared drives and printed documents was time consuming requiring hours of manual effort. We have now been asked to assist the State in providing imaging hardware and software to automate the process of moving all paper documents into virtual binders and virtual workrooms.

The workrooms and binders are only part of a full scale virtual workplace where each team member has their own "virtual office" with all of the objects and artifacts of a physical office replicated into virtual funtionality. The system also includes video webconferencing so that team members can reduce travel and increase contact with the companies and officals they work with around the State