ACS delivers paperless mail

An upgraded mail handling and imaging service may help agencies that seek

a safe, speedy way to view their postal mail.

Affiliated Computer Services Inc., a provider of business process and

information technology solutions, last week announced i-mail, an expansion

of ACS' imaging and mailroom capabilities for companies, federal agencies,

and state and local governments.

The new i-mail offering provides customers mailroom services and access

to digitized images of hard-copy mail via secure intranet — a system that

does not require upgrades to the client's network infrastructure.

According to the company, i-mail eliminates clients' handling of paper

mail, speeds the delivery process and gives clients access anywhere in the

world via a secure intranet. Clients can view digitized images of hard-copy

mail via a secure network 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

ACS has 79 imaging stations to handle clients' mail, according to Paul

Ryan, the company's managing general director of business technology services.

"First, the mail is sent to a facility to be checked for tampering. Once

it is determined that the mail is secure, it is imaged and sent via e-mail

to our secured server," he said.

From there, customers can access images of all parts of a mailing, including

the envelope, from a secure intranet, said Jean Murphy, ACS' vice president

of sales for business technology services. "We process 6 million images

a day," she said. "In a year, we average 1.5 billion images to federal and

commercial customers."

Following last fall's anthrax scare, ACS' number of federal customers

has skyrocketed. "There is a major safety and security issue running around

the government," Ryan said, and i-mail was a major solution to this threat.