Kofax Reports Successful Integration of Technology for Wash. State Dept. of Transportation

Kofax, an information capture vendor, announced the successful integration of its Ascent Capture and VirtualReScan (VRS) technology for the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT).

As part of a competitive bid process, WSDOT incorporated Kofax technology into the agency’s new collision records system. The company’s information capture platform and VRS is being used by WSDOT to speed the processing of thousands of multi-page traffic collision reports that are generated by law enforcement agencies throughout the state each year, as well as to help WSDOT effectively analyze and measure local traffic safety issues.

Kofax Ascent Capture and VRS were integrated with WSDOT’s collision records system to improve the quality and accuracy of captured images that the state’s collision analysis teams use to make decisions about safety upgrades on local roadways and state highways. Each month, WSDOT is required to feed statistical information about traffic collisions to their counties and cities to help them develop strategies to improve traffic safety.

In addition, collision reports are considered public information and are accessed frequently in insurance claims, making the quick processing of each report critical for WSDOT, as well as the Washington State Patrol.

With Ascent Capture and VRS, the quality of captured images has reportedly been significantly improved, and manual data processing time has been reduced to the point that collision reports are typically ready for public disclosure within 48 hours of receipt.

“By integrating a flexible information capture system to streamline its collision reporting workflow and analysis procedures, WSDOT can now provide more efficient service to the public, while outfitting local officials with critical traffic safety information they use in the effort to save lives,” said Anthony Macciola, vice president of development and marketing at Kofax. “We are seeing more and more state and federal agencies such as WSDOT adopt information capture to cope with the mountains of paper and unstructured data that they receive, increase operational efficiency, and grow their level of service to the public.”

The WSDOT typically receives thousands of accident-related forms each month, in varying states of condition, that must be analyzed accurately and quickly enough to provide both the public and local communities with the information they need to make informed decisions about traffic safety.

Kofax’s information capture technology provided the WSDOT analysts with exceptional images without the need to rescan, was advanced enough to handle difficult-to-process documents coming in from the field that — for example — could be torn or rain-smeared, and ultimately represented a clear return on their investment.

As traffic collisions typically entail a variety of factors, including different vehicle types, sequences of events and accident location, WSDOT must maintain strict records on each collision for insurance and legal disclosure.

To help implement a versatile information capture system capable of processing such information, WSDOT initiated a competitive bid process and chose Olympia-based systems integration firm ImageSource, a Kofax Certified Solution Provider (CSP) and provider of document, content and information management systems. ImageSource chose to implement Ascent Capture and VRS, along with a Bell+Howell 8000 series scanner, based on their capability to validate the integrity of keyed data and ensure that each disparate piece of data is relayed correctly into WSDOT’s collision-reporting system.

“Implementing a robust information capture system was key for the WSDOT installation, due to the incredible amount of logic and detail that needed to be captured from each collision report,” said Shadrach White, CTO of ImageSource. “The indexing and validation capabilities of the Ascent platform and VRS enhanced accuracy and seamlessly integrated into WSDOT’s collision records system, and improved the overall efficiency of their operations.”

As a result of the implementation, WSDOT has reportedly been able to reassign staff resources into other areas, eliminate a large amount of physical storage space used to house hard copies of collision reports and improve its daily processing productivity levels.