Supporting the introduction and evaluation of PAtrack in the administration of the University of Regensburg.
Members: Andreas Obermeier
Keywords: document tracking, hybrid records, document management, field study, public administration
The administration of the University of Regensburg still works with paper files. Although the introduction of e-files as part of the eGovernment strategy of the German Bundesregierung is the goal, a concrete date for its introduction is not yet foreseeable. Until that date, employees will therefore have to continue working with paper files. Working with paper files entails certain limitations in their work. A major problem is the findability of paper files, since there is currently no way to determine where a particular file is currently located. Employees have to coordinate with each other to find out where a file is located. At the same time it is difficult for employees to keep track of which files they currently have. Therefore PAtrack was developed in the context of a master thesis. This system enables the location of files to be tracked by using and scanning RFID tags in combination with a central database.
The next step is to introduce this system in the administration of the University of Regensburg or to test it in trial operation. The goal of this project is to accompany this process and to gain knowledge from it. In particular, it is planned to find out whether there are problems when using PAtrack and how the way employees work changes through its use.
Preliminary study:
Support of the introduction of PAtrack:
In this blog entry we outline how our research project is currently planned, including the proposed research question, methods being planned and the provisional schedule. (more...)
We want to find out how the use of an RFID-based tracking system of personnel files in the administration of the University of Regensburg changes the way employees work. (more...)
Literature research has so far been limited mainly to a keyword search via Google Scholar and the ACM Digital Library. (more...)