When a person is charged with a violation of immigration law, one of 550 attorneys in 40 offices nationwide initiates a case file, and begins assembling a large collection of documentation.
The INS Office of the General Counsel
is the legal branch of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. When a person
is charged with a violation of immigration law, one of 550 attorneys in 40
offices nationwide initiates a case file and represents the agency in
immigration court, assembling a large collection documentation.
With several million cases in the
system, keeping track of paper files can be a struggle—especially when they are
needed by other agencies such as the Office of Immigration Litigation or the
U.S. Attorney&singlequot;s Office. The Office of the General Counsel initiated the General
Counsel Electronic Management System (GEMS) in 1996 with the goal of improving
access to information while reducing reliance on paper files. GEMS included
three components: case management, document management and a digital law library
of Internet and archived resources.
The goals of the INS were the
following: Improve tracking and management of case files, correspondence and
documents; Eliminate bottlenecks created when crucial case files are needed
simultaneously in multiple offices or by multiple INS branches; Enable attorneys
to respond to questions about past cases without having to retrieve paper files
from the Federal Records Center.
The first attempt at building a system
ended in disappointment when the previous document management solution fell
short.
iManage WorkSite was then selected--it
provided the robust document management and collaboration system GEMS needed,
integrated easily with LawManager and even provided a utility to quickly and
painlessly import all the data from the failed document management solution.
WorkSite&singlequot;s low cost of deployment also helped the GEMS project come in
substantially under the planned budget.
GEMS is now up and running in five
offices: Seattle, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore and Falls Church, Virginia.
Digital case files are maintained electronically, with both structured and
unstructured data tracked through a single interface. Attorneys across the
country have easy access to the information they need for court appearances; the
system may even be accessed live from courtroom computers.
Document Management 
