Walsall Council’s digital records strategy realises cost, efficiency and property savings sooner

Industry

Government

Challenge

Accelerate the transition to digital records while ensuring secure compliance throughout the collection, transportation, imaging, and destruction of paper and microfilm files.

Solution

Iron Mountain® fully managed end-to-end secure collection and scanning service enhanced with InSight AI and ML capabilities.

Value

• Avoided £6 million expense and major scanning resource burden
• £60,000 saved within first six months; £120,000 within 24 months
• Faster turnaround of FOI and SAR legal commitments
• Two buildings were relinquished, lowering real estate costs
• At-risk legacy records preserved in perpetuity

Digital commercial drivers

Based in the thriving industrial heart of the West Midlands, Walsall Council supports around 280,000 residents with daily issues ranging from education, social care and benefits to housing, waste management, and planning services. Like many organisations, the Council is transitioning from paper-based manual processes to electronic records supporting agile digital workflows.

“Our main drivers for digitisation were speeding information access and employee efficiency, simplifying compliance by not over-retaining records, and reducing overall budget and resource pressure,” said Paul Withers, Data Protection Manager at Walsall Council.

A clear case for outsourcing

The first step on that journey was consolidating internal archiving operations, offsite document storage, and shredding contracts placed with numerous providers. With varying retention requirements, the dispersed records management estate contained paper documents servicing all departmental activities, including social care, planning, highways, land registry, legal, bereavement, and more.

“The cost of doing nothing would have been around £6 million over ten years, so launching a document scanning programme was a no-brainer,” added Withers. “We spoke with other councils. Some had tried to manage digital scanning internally and quickly canned the idea due to equipment and resource limitations with one saying it would have taken seven years to complete. That would have been a lot of savings to miss out on.”

Achieving scanning objectives quicker

As a long-standing contracted storage partner, Iron Mountain® was invited to submit a proposal for a fully managed scanning service. The solution ensures secure compliance throughout all stages – collection, transportation, imaging, and destruction of paper and microfilm files.