Digital Document Management System (DDMS) is an electronic records management system , a national initiative under digital government project to improve operational efficiency and user productivity in government administration. DDMS supports entire lifecycle management of public records from creation, maintenance, dissemination and disposition of electronic records in compliance to Malaysian Standards International Organization for Standardization (MS ISO 16175-2: 2012) and National Archive Act of Malaysia 2003.

DDMS is a web based system which can be accessed from anywhere, anytime and on any devices (including smartphones and tablets) in a secure manner. DDMS is running in a secured government data centre and private cloud offered to various government agencies on a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to lower the total cost of ownership for individual agencies.

DDMS is one-of-a-kind multi-tenants centralized records management system for multiple government agencies. DDMS implementation started in 2016. Until now, the system has been rolled out to 135 government agencies with a roadmap to on-board approximately 225 agencies by the end of 2020. For these 135 agencies that implemented records management with DDMS, total of records captured is reaching to 4.4 million with 40 thousand registered users.

DDMS creates substantial values for both government and citizen. It creates value for increasing government productivity and forming transparency as well as accountability in record management environment. It also became a government decision making tool as all records captured in a central respository and can easily be retrieved. DDMS brings enhancement of public service delivery, improves efficiency and creates trustworthy towards government administration.

https://ddms.malaysia.gov.my

• nationwide, Malaysia

The uniqueness of DDMS is not solely on its underlying technical elements, but also on the objective of having a central registry for records management. The manual practice of managing records prior adoption of DDMS is every division in organization will be having separate filing system. Besides leading to duplicating records being stored within the same organization, this practise consumes more papers and storage area.

Upon adopting DDMS, agency need to transform their file classification to a standard non-duplicating classification that allows file to be shared by more than one division across organization. Only one unit will be resposible to manage the physical file and all other filing system need to be ceased.

This is a model that is being replicated to every new agency that wish to embark on hybrid records management using DDMS. With the help and support of National Archives of Malaysia, there will not be any problem for these processes to be replicated for different agencies.

Looking forward for sustainability of the project, great endeavours has been planned to make sure DDMS project will always stays relevant and viable. From the beginning, the system development activity was conducted in a joint application development approach. Although the system is using enterprise open source solutions supported by international vendors, internal expertise is also developed alongside to ensure all technical maintenance aspects being competently performed.

As a security measure of ICT security compliance procedure, the DDMS is also protected with ICT security protocols to ensure that government records and documents are securely protected. Furthermore, DDMS has been awarded ISMS certification on 1st October 2019. With these achievement, it is expected that besides classified and non-classified documents, all sorts of public records will be efficiently managed within DDMS and therefore justifies the need to sustain this project.

There are some activities related to community empowerment. In this context, it is a community of users who will be using DDMS in their daily routine at work place. Champions and ambassadors were appointed to each agencies in which these champions have been equipped with series of training on how to use the system as well as some fundamental principal of public sector’s record management. Ambassadors will act as change enabler to help in change management processes. There are also online trainings as we provide video tutorial to encourage self-learning among users. Due to the fact that DDMS will be used by all personnel in any particular organisation, having face to face training with everybody is nearly impossible. To cater this problem, users who did not manage to attend training session can still have the same lesson at their own time. Furthermore, champions will have to play their roles in assisting these users should they have any enquiries or problems using DDMS. In the effort to empower the DDMS project to run smoothly in the agency, the DDMS team or community needs to be appointed. DDMS community consists of ambassadors and champions. To date, ambassadors and champions have been appointed to all 135 agencies in order to coordinate the implementation of DDMS project in their respective agencies.