The United States Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City
Industry
Government
Services Type
Microfilm/Microfiche Records Digitization
Service Description
The United States Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City (USCG) has stored the application forms on both microfilm and microfiche. For easier access during the Visa application processing time, they want to digitize the data and link the digital files into existing Record Management System. The project volume is 350,000 pieces of microfiches and 777 rolls of microfilm. The total volume is approximately 16,000,000 images of mostly A4 size pages. The microfilm and microfiche are 15-20 years old and scanning them into good quality images is a challenge.
Harvey Nash, because of its successful track record in scanning & digitization services, was chosen for executing the whole project. Harvey Nash set up a systematic process with the following features:
- A tight delivery schedule to ensure the project timeline with 24/7 working basis, using 1 high speed Sunrise Microform Scanner (for raw scanning), and 1 low volume Minolta Microfilm Scanner (for rescanning).
- Automated tools/softwares, developed by the Harvey Nash’s Software Development team, are used to optimize the project performance and avoid manual error’s, such as indexing, file merging, file naming, automatic files linking, etc…
- A separate process of Quality Control/Quality Assurance is applied to ensure that all tasks/phases run accurately. This QC/QA works include: 100% visual check of scanned images, double indexing, 10% of final product random check.
Result
After 11 months of working, 10,000,000 million of images have been processed and delivered to the client. Data access time at the client’s office is now significantly reduced; previously it took a consular officer 5-10 minutes to retrieve a record on microfilm, and now just 3 seconds using the digital formats and library.