The Tampa Port Authority faced a huge challenge in looking for documents in the Port&singlequot;s IT infrastructure. No document management system existed--instead, the system was a bunch of "loosely interconnected Windows-based systems with subdirectories that went from here to eternity," according to Ken Washington, the director of Information Technology.

The problems that the Port faced were with file naming and the location that the filed would be stored. It often took staff members up to two days to track down a single document. You couldn&singlequot;t find anything unless the person who created it knew where it was.

While the movement of ships and the smooth operation of the docks are the most obvious daily concerns, there are also business issues dealing with tariffs, real estate, shipping permits, as well as construction of facilities. For all these business areas, the Port needed a system that would support several discrete areas of functionality, including the tracking, encryption and cataloging of documents--as well as their routing from user to user. The Port was also under pressure to comply with the state&singlequot;s "sunshine laws," put in place to guarantee open access to all regulated data.

Key features of the Port&singlequot;s new document management system from Hummingbird include the search and retrieval capabilitys, which support document check-in and check-out, audit trails of document use and multiple levels of document security and storage management.