Since 2001, the Center for Digital Government has honored America’s Top Digital Cities on an annual basis. Spanning four population categories, this year’s 41 winners have at least one thing in common—they’ve all found innovative ways to leverage technology in order to create operational efficiencies and realize strategic objectives. Additionally, all 41 winners have done so in the face of glaring fiscal challenges. In fact, the latest U.S. Census Bureau data reports that in 2009, state and local governments brought in 22.1% less revenue than the previous year.

But 19 of this year’s Top Digital Cities have something else in common—a secret weapon of sorts—Laserfiche.

As my colleague Kimberly Samuelson puts it, “What Laserfiche contributes to these winning cities is ECM infrastructure that improves service delivery while reducing costs.” By truly leveraging its ECM infrastructure, each of these 19 cities is turning technology into new ways of doing things that save money and time, and increase overall effectiveness.

For example, Laserfiche customer and first-time Top Digital City, The City of Long Beach,CA focused on a three-pronged effort to reduce costs without compromising service delivery, including:

• Consolidation of information and communication technology (ICT) services.
• Increased transparency and collaboration across the enterprise.
• Digitization of processes, forms and workflow.

Implementing Laserfiche as part of these efforts enabled the city  to cut its annual ECM support costs by 50% while bringing a wide range of documents online for citizen consumption.

Read more about the City of Long Beach’s journey to Top Digital City recognition.