The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Leverages Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite to Improve Intergovernmental Collaboration

The Secretariat for Administration and Finance/Department of Information and Technology Services of the Organization of American States (www.oas.org/en/default.asp) (OAS/SAF/DOITS) deployed Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite (www.oracle.com/us/products/middleware/content-management/index.html) for the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (www.cidh.oas.org/DefaultE.htm) (IACHR), a principal, autonomous body of the Organization of American States (www.oas.org/en/default.asp) (OAS), in order to automate the processing of petitions and cases related to human rights violations in the Americas, which include 35 countries.

IACHR, which handles roughly 1,500 new petitions per year with 7,000 active petitions, used Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite to help manage all the files it receives from a broad range of stakeholders including petitioners, 35 member states and non-governmental organizations.

With Oracle, IACHR has evolved its paper-based environment to digitally manage and automate workflows for all documents related to its system of petitions and cases. The system has also enabled electronic signatures.

IACHR increased the amount of data it stores by 206 percent, from 30,260 to 62,208 documents in the first four months of operation and has reached 100,000 documents after being in production for one year. The system also supports 17 custom workflows in four languages: Spanish, English, Portuguese and French.

Additionally, Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite has provided IACHR with a secure digital information system for sensitive human rights case information, ultimately increasing reliability and improving information sharing across the organization.

IACHR plans to implement a second module that will expand online access to petitions and case information with additional collaboration, petition/case auditing and status reporting capabilities. This initiative will enable a faster, more efficient and almost paperless system that helps the organization protect more than 700 million people across the 35 member states.

This project was the first initiative within OAS to implement an enterprise-wide system to effectively manage unstructured information. After IACHR's successful go live, OAS plans to expand the use of Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite to redeploy core systems such as the OAS Document Management System.

This award-winning implementation of Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite, executed by OAS/SAF/DOITS, has received recognition from the following organizations:

“We needed a scalable system for the IACHR so that they can manage the various documents and workflows around processing petitions and cases related to human rights violations. With Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite, we now have a fully integrated, Web-based case management system that enables us to manage digitally all documents – ultimately enabling more efficient collaboration among all stakeholders,” said Juan Jose Goldschtein, CIO of the OAS.

“The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights needed a way to efficiently create, capture, secure, share and distribute digital and paper-based documents throughout the entire lifecycle of a human rights case. With Oracle Enterprise Content Management Suite, IACHR has turned its petition documents into intellectual assets and created an effective, secure system to improve collaboration,” said Mark Johnson, senior vice president, Oracle Public Sector.