DENR-EMB San Fernando Digitalizes its Archives with Epson Scanners

In today’s modern workplace, traditional organizational archives are slowly becoming a thing of the past. Gone are the dusty, dim-lit storage rooms, floor to ceiling shelves full of paper and stacks of cardboard boxes bursting with files and folders.  Enterprises are learning to effectively manage the growing mass of documents they generate and use modern scanning technology to digitally archive vital documents fast and efficiently.

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Like most offices that value productivity, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources – Environment Management Bureau (DENR-EMB) office in San Fernando, Pampanga, has embraced the benefits of going digital.

The Environment Management Bureau is a line bureau of the DENR mandated to formulate programs and appropriate environmental quality standards for the protection of the environment. The bureau ensures the implementation of these programs and standards through its regional offices, which issue hundreds to thousands of permits and clearances each year.

The records section of DENR-EMB’s San Fernando office receives and safekeeps all applications for permits and clearances in the municipality, such as the Environmental Compliance Certificate (ECC) or Certificate of Non-compliance (CNC), among others.

Cristine Dunca, a staff for the branch’s Property in General Section, emphasized that one of their major roles is to find new technology to improve the document archiving system in their records section.

In the past, hard copies of applications would be filed into folders and placed in ceiling-high shelves. To retrieve a file, staff would need to check a logbook and go through thousands of folders stacked upon one another, unidentifiable with its fading labels. File safety also became an issue when hard copies were lost and, in some cases, eaten by termites, which made it extremely difficult for the staff to recover records.

This was when the EMB San Fernando office decided they needed a change, which came in the form of the Epson WorkForce DS-310 and DS-530 scanners.

“We considered its quality, durability, affordability, and its environmental friendliness,” Dunca said. “We began exploring Epson products in 2018 and found that their scanners would help improve the workflow of our records section.”

Compact and lightweight, the DS-310 is portable and can easily fit into small spaces, allowing the branch to use their desk space more efficiently. With scanning speeds of up to 50ipm and automatic feeding mode, large volumes of documents are scanned continuously.

The versatile DS-310 has a dedicated card slot for plastic cards, and a maximum scan size of up to 215.9 x 1,117.6mm, proving that it can cater to the variety of document sizes that the DENR-EMB San Fernando branch receives for different permit and clearance applications within the municipality.

The DS-530 is another versatile workforce scanner of the DENR-EMB San Fernando branch that complements the DS-310. Boasting a scan speed of up to 70ipm, the DS-530 handles a wide variety of media between 27-413 gsm, allowing the branch to scan anything from papers to plastic cards efficiently and seamlessly. Different groups can also access the same file through ethernet connectivity, making the different departments more aligned and the workflow smoother.

“Thanks to Epson, we can provide our clients with efficient service and fulfill the Environmental Management Bureau’s goal of safeguarding the environment,” said Ma. Theresa Pangilinan, Head of Records Section, DENR-EMB San Fernando, Pampanga.

The digital revolution may have ushered in the age of the paperless office, but for many businesses in the Philippines, massive quantities of data are still generated in hard copy. Government bodies, like DENR-EMB, still create mountains of paper records through form-filling, reporting, accounts, book-keeping, and much more.   It is clear then, that a digital archiving system that holds, protects and integrates documents in a central, secure location is an essential component of modern business practice.