Marcos Ortiz, winner of the 2015 Paperless World Scholarship is currently a sophomore at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. We at PDFfiller are inspired by Marcos’ vision for a paperless world and would like to share his winning essay with you.
How Online Document Technology Can Improve Governance in Mexico
A movement toward a digital online document management system is an ideal and mutually beneficial method for governing officials and citizens of a country like Mexico. The necessity of such a system was particularly apparent to me during a clerical task, in which I had to get an IFE card (a document of similar importance as a license is to American citizens). This process can be bothersome because it requires two paper copies of four different documents, including a CURP (Mexican supporting document), a proof of residence, birth certificate, and a photo ID. This totals 8 copies needed, as well as original documents, in order to be considered for this card. Moreover, this service is only provided every other day between 8 to 12 in the morning, which makes it hard to be attended along with the hundreds of other people. The root of this problem is due to unawareness of technologies and services such as PDFfiller, which would be able to manage large quantities of documents much more efficiently.
Most clerical offices in Mexico, as well as other developing countries, may have computers in their offices, but choose not to use them because no real training is given. However, if they knew of services like PDFfiller, it would cut down on the unnecessary task of storing and maintaining large amounts of paper files for every citizen in the city’s district office. Keeping online documents would also help governing facilities by allowing every department in the government’s system to access information for every citizen. Currently, one can only get things done within their district office because no other office has the required information readily available. This potentially leads to a bigger problem: namely, if one of the offices experiences a natural disaster such as an earthquake (which happens often in Mexico City), then those documents are lost, leading to chaos for all residents.
On a more ecological note, the digitization of documents would dramatically decrease the consumption of paper. No longer would each person be required to bring 8 copies of their documents. Instead, countries could adopt a more modern system, one that the US could also use, which would allow citizens to bring a USB drive with their scanned official documents to carry out formal transactions such as the one I outlined earlier. In addition, once those documents are in the cloud infrastructure of the governing body, then no more paper copies would ever be needed for future transactions.
As a student of Finance at the McCombs School of Business, I increasingly wish that my own school would adopt a digital online document management system. I want to increase awareness of PDFfiller, as it is one that I use fairly often to complete homework assignments. I am in a position where I can push my school to implement electronic document signing, and once I graduate I intend on returning to Mexico to promote this kind of modernization within local government offices. My country’s internal functions will vastly improve with online document management, and we will lead the way in eradicating the use of paper.
– Marcos Ortiz