The South Dakota Department of Worker’s Compensation was sinking under a load of paper files. As a state agency that oversees that employees are treated fairly when they are injured on the job, the agency had a plethora of paper files and filing cabinets. If a person (or company) called to see the status of an injury claim, the clerk who received the call would have to take a message, get the paper file, review the status, and call the person back. Files were stored in huge filing cabinets and were entered by year and case number (e.g., the 415th person injured in 2008 would be in a file numbered 08-415). But most people did not remember their file number and would give a name, address, and date of injury. The clerk would look in a spiral notebook for the last name around the date that was given and then find the file number to retrieve the folder.

Some folders were small—possibly a minor cut or minor injury that was taken care of quickly and the employee was back to work. Other folders could be very large, with medical reports from several doctors verifying the extent of the injury (such as an arm amputation). A digital solution was suggested; reports could be submitted online using a secure website. Medical reports could be submitted electronically, either as a .pdf file or as a faxed digital file. This solution would also mean that the clerk taking the phone call could query the database by the person’s name and access the information in a matter of seconds.

Questions 1. The digital solution was going to change the work process of filing injury claims, interacting with people who filed the claims (or companies) wanting to see the status of the claim, and with the process of claims. What might this mean from a work-flow analysis?

2. In many ways, this was a business process reengineering solution. The proposal was to throw out the old process for a completely electronic version. What might a systems analyst do in the data-gathering stage?