Our role
Rebuild the system, then build the thing that tells you whether it is working.
The brief
The document system was still running. Nobody had used it in years.
Global Health Development operates the Eastern Mediterranean Public Health Network across programs spanning disease surveillance, immunization, emergency management, environmental health, workforce training, and research — funded by different donors, on different cycles, reporting on different terms. Around 140 staff work across four country offices. It had a document management system, built years earlier for a smaller organization.
It had stopped being used. Teams had migrated to collaboration tools, personal storage, and wherever else was convenient. The folder structure no longer matched the organization it was built for, information sat split across two separate systems, and nothing was being archived or maintained. The system was technically operational and substantively abandoned — which is how document systems fail. They do not crash. They stay switched on while the organization’s memory quietly relocates to places nobody can search.
That is the real cost. An organization that cannot find its own history cannot build institutional memory, and for one reporting to donors by project, quarter, and work breakdown structure, it is an audit exposure rather than an inconvenience.
What we did
Rebuilt it in eight weeks, and left a way to see whether it stuck.
The brief was explicit about horizon: build something to serve the organization for the decade ahead, not to tidy the decade behind. The existing system was reclassified as the archive for its period, and the new one designed for what the organization was becoming.
01 / Agree
Distributed the design, then held it to a standard
The engagement opened by agreeing why the system was being rebuilt, and settling the top level in the room. Everything below it was delegated: a site manager was named for each team, responsible for developing their own structure with their own colleagues and for supplying the permission list for every library and folder within it.
They were not left to improvise. Site managers worked to a template and a brief — consult every team member, look at how people actually store things today rather than how they say they do, classify by fiscal year or project or partner as the work demands, use subsites where growth is likely, and design for everyone rather than for yourself. Two deadlines, a week apart, for structure and for permissions. That is the difference between consultation and delegation: departments know how their own work divides and nobody outside them does, and what an external party contributes is the standard they all have to meet.
02 / Build
Implemented the architecture, the permissions, and the connection to where people actually work
The system was built on Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online using hub architecture — team sites associated with a hub rather than buried inside one another, sharing navigation and search while each keeps its own permissions and lifecycle. A team can be added, retired, or restructured without unpicking anything above it, which is what a ten-year horizon demands of an organization whose programs turn over with funding cycles. Sites, subsites, libraries, and folders sit within that frame, unified across both organizations rather than split between them, with the earlier system linked in as the archive of record.
The step most often skipped came next: a matrix mapping document libraries to Microsoft Teams channels, and the integration to match. People work in Teams. A document system that lives somewhere else is one they will visit only when they must — connecting the two is what makes the storage layer part of the working day rather than an errand.
03 / Monitor
Built the mechanism that reports whether the system is being used
This is the part that distinguishes the engagement. Alongside the user manual, ISEET designed a monitoring regime combining three independent views: platform usage reporting per site, tenant-level audit reporting on document actions, and a purpose-built planning list in which each department records the documents it expects to deliver, against project, quarter, owner, and status.
The regime came with roles and a cadence. Departmental points of contact submit a documentation plan a quarter ahead and maintain it; a documentation officer reviews it, follows up on what is late, and produces three standing reports each quarter — what was delivered, what was planned and not delivered, and what is overdue. The effect is that adoption stops being a matter of impression. The organization can answer, with evidence, whether its document system is being used and by whom.
A document system is the only software that fails silently. It stays switched on while everyone quietly goes back to email — so we built the thing that reports the truth.
ISEET information architecture lead
Outcome
A rebuilt system, and a way to prove it is being used.
GHD moved to a document architecture designed by the departments that use it, connected to the collaboration tools where work already happens, with access governed by defined permissions rather than accumulated exceptions. Around 140 staff across four country offices now work in it.
Five years on it remains the organization’s document management system, and the monitoring regime still runs on its quarterly cadence — documentation plans submitted a quarter ahead, reviewed, and reported against.
140
Staff across four country offices working in the system
5
Years in continuous use, with the monitoring cadence still running
8
Weeks from first meeting to a monitoring regime in place
Most document management engagements end at training and hope. This one ended with an instrument — and the instrument is still running five years later, which is the only evidence that matters. The system it replaced was abandoned within a couple of years while remaining technically operational. The difference between the two is not the software.
March 1 – April 25, 2021 (8 weeks)
Microsoft 365 · SharePoint Online · Microsoft Teams integration
Hub site architecture — associated team sites rather than nested hierarchy
Per-team permission model; documentation officer and departmental points of contact
Approximately 140 staff across four country offices
Considering something similar?
If nobody can tell you whether your document system is being used, the honest answer is usually no.
Related work
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Information Governance and Team Workspace — Siren Associates
A document architecture designed with the teams who live in it — still their working environment five years on.
Read →
March 1 – April 25, 2021 (8 weeks)
Microsoft 365 · SharePoint Online · Microsoft Teams integration
Hub site architecture — associated team sites rather than nested hierarchy
Per-team permission model; documentation officer and departmental points of contact
Approximately 140 staff across four country offices
The platform behind this
Immunify is a product, not a bespoke build: six modules covering stock, cold chain, temperature, workforce, learning, and reporting.