A NSW government insurer is asking the market how it could collapse four separate document repositories into one. It has also put a number on what it expects to save. The target is a 20 to 30 per cent reduction in annual licensing and maintenance costs.
Insurance and Care NSW, trading as icare, has issued an RFI that seeks information on supply, implementation and migration services for an enterprise document management system.
icare provides workers compensation insurance to 340,000 NSW employers and their 3.9 million employees. It also insures builders and homeowners, and provides treatment and care for people severely injured on NSW roads. It protects $A437 billion of state assets, including the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, schools and hospitals.
The scope covers consolidation and migration of all documents, metadata and retention policies out of existing Hyland, OpenText, TRIM and Tungsten systems. Software can be delivered as SaaS, cloud-hosted or on-premise. Professional services for implementation, configuration and deployment are in scope, as are knowledge transfer, training and ongoing support for the initial term.
icare is explicit that the outcome need not be a single platform replacement. The RFI describes optimisation that "may include improving, integrating, consolidating, or selectively modernising existing systems, as well as considering a single modern Enterprise Content Management (ECM) or Document Management System (DMS) platform where this provides clear business value".
Respondents must also offer a federated option. The document requires an approach that allows content to be accessed and managed in place, "avoiding an all-at-once, disruptive migration", alongside a phased plan that sequences migration by department, document type or business criticality.
Five business outcomes
The RFI lists five outcomes against which respondents must describe their solution. They are consolidation into a single source of truth, the 20 to 30 per cent cost reduction, and low-code workflow building by business users. The remaining two are a single enforceable retention schedule with an unbreakable audit trail, and an AI-ready architecture supporting metadata extraction, classification and intelligent search.
Compliance requirements are detailed. Respondents must confirm that all production data, metadata, backups, logs, support access, AI processing and disaster recovery functions remain within Australia. Any offshore dependencies must be identified. They must show alignment with ISO 27001 Annex A controls, the NSW Cyber Security Policy and WCAG 2.2 AA accessibility. Evidence of independent accessibility testing is required.
The RFI also asks how platforms support NSW State Records requirements, including disposal authorities, permanent record preservation, transfer processes and evidentiary integrity. It also asks for examples of rapid audit trail extraction and incident logging. Those need to meet notification obligations under the NSW mandatory notification of data breach scheme.
AI questions go beyond search
Six questions cover AI and intelligent automation. icare asks whether platforms can classify unstructured incoming mail, legal notices and medical certificates without rigid, hard-coded OCR templates. It asks about embedded generative AI that lets case managers summarise long-form claims records, compare document versions and draft correspondence.
One question asks how the platform prevents unauthorised data egress and prohibits client data being used to train public foundation models. Another asks whether the platform natively incorporates automated document forensics and machine learning to detect digital tampering. Named examples are PDF and image manipulation, metadata scrubbing and altered figures. icare also asks what workflows quarantine and flag such payloads.
Other technical questions cover role-based secure sharing with external parties such as claims service providers and legal counsel. Further questions address secure virtual workspaces for multi-party case review, print-stream routing to external mail houses, and integration with catalogues including Microsoft Purview and Collibra.
The RFI names the risks respondents must address. They include disruption to claims operations during migration, data loss or corruption, and loss of access to critical records during transition. Also listed are user resistance to a unified system and loss of institutional knowledge from incumbent vendor developers.
The RFI acknowledges technical debt, described as the inability to replicate complex incumbent logic such as custom Java components in document processing. It also states that the new platform "must avoid creating a new single point of Respondent lock-in".