Design of an electronic document management system with configurable approval routing and assignment deadline control for it companies

Abstract

Information technology companies frequently handle operationally critical documents through email and messaging tools, which weakens traceability, version integrity and accountability across approval and execution chains. This paper presents the design concept of an Electronic Document Management System (EDMS) that supports document registration and storage, configurable approval routing (visa workflows), assignment of responsible persons, and systematic control of execution deadlines with reminders and escalations. The solution is implemented as a web-based client–server system with a Representational State Transfer (REST) Application Programming Interface (API) over the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), using standardised error responses based on Request for Comments (RFC) 9457 problem details. Security and governance are addressed through alignment with International Organisation for Standardisation / International Electrotechnical Commission (ISO/IEC) 27001:2022 and ISO/IEC 27002:2022, supplemented by the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10:2021 and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication (SP) 800-218 Secure Software Development Framework (SSDF). Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), encryption in transit via Transport Layer Security (TLS), and tamper-evident audit logging are proposed to ensure accountability and reduce unauthorised actions. legally meaningful approvals are required, electronic signatures can be supported using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) approaches aligned with European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) EN 319 102-1. Data quality is enforced through metadata schemas and validation rules that conform to ISO 8000-1:2022, while accessibility targets are mapped to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.2. As empirical deployment metrics are not yet available, the paper defines an evaluation plan that covers functional completeness, reliability, performance, and governance indicators, such as cycle time, overdue rate, and rework frequency.