The Toronto and Region Conservation Authority’s mission is to “help people understand, enjoy and look after the natural environment.” So it’s no surprise that staff seek to minimize the natural resources they use at work. At the TRCA, however, they’ve gone beyond the paperless office. By utilizing Laserfiche® digital document management, TRCA staff have simplified work processes and improved access to critical information—all while advancing the cause of caring for the local environment.

As Records Manager John Annunziello explains, accomplishing daily tasks prior to installing Laserfiche was often costly and time-consuming. Staff stored paper documents, such as agenda packets and meeting minutes, in color-coded, numerically-ordered folders, then used Lotus® Notes® to keep track of the folders. Meanwhile, the TRCA’s extensive photo library, used to create the posters, flyers and presentations that play a key role in the TRCA’s outreach initiatives, took up so much space that it had to be stored off-site. Besides taking up physical storage space, Annunziello notes, the paper-based system had many other drawbacks.

“Our previous system didn’t manage our structured and unstructured data,” he says. “All the photos in our library were stored on CDs in a satellite office. Staff had to go there, search through binders of photo thumbnails to locate the right CD, then burn the image to another CD or e-mail it to the staff member requesting it. It often took days to get a photograph.”

With an eye towards managing all its information, regardless of medium, the TRCA began searching for a digital document management solution. A four-member committee sent out an RFP, seeking DoD 5015.2-certified solutions to ensure information security. They judged the eight respondents on a variety of criteria, including ease-of-use, scalability and reliability. Laserfiche Records Management Edition™ was the clear winner, not only for its features, but also for its comprehensive support system.

“We wanted to deal locally,” Annunziello explains, noting the importance of having support close-at-hand. “Our local reseller, IKON Office Solutions, put together an excellent response to our RFP, providing a point-by-point answer to each of our questions. They also showed the best understanding of our document and records management needs.”

After the TRCA installed Laserfiche, staff quickly began scanning thousands of paper documents into the Laserfiche repository. In addition to archiving permanent records, such as deeds and agreements, they completed a back-file scanning project going back one year. Thanks to Laserfiche’s OCR capabilities, all these documents are full-text searchable.

Besides the ease and convenience of digital search, Annunziello notes the many other benefits Laserfiche has brought. “We’ve achieved peace of mind regarding our 2,300+ scanned deeds. Backup copies are available should the original be lost or destroyed. We also have our minutes from the past 50 years stored electronically.

“Laserfiche has helped us cut down on our paper use, too” he continues. “Previously, if staff wanted a copy of an agenda item, they had to produce extra copies—sometimes up to 100 pages—of the entire agenda. Now, staff can access Laserfiche to find the specific two or three pages they need.”

Taking advantage of Laserfiche’s integration capabilities, the TRCA configured Laserfiche to automatically replicate the organizational structure of their Lotus Notes-based system. Annunziello explains, “Opening a Notes record automatically creates a folder and populates template fields in Laserfiche. This enables us to immediately import information into Laserfiche without disrupting the way we work.”

Scanning paper documents and better organizing information might immediately spring to mind as benefits of digital document management. But the TRCA has enjoyed a somewhat-unintended perk in the form of its new digital photo library. As Annunziello explains, “The photo archive was an afterthought. Our marketing group has a full-time professional photographer who needed to manage her photos. We realized that we needed to create a photo library so staff could easily access corporate photographs.”

Using Laserfiche, and a bit of ingenuity, the TRCA created a digital in-house archive of its thousands of photos, ranging from pictures of local wildlife to aerial photos of waterfront projects. With the help of their reseller, staff developed a bulk utility to import multiple CDs’ worth of photos into Laserfiche, as well as downsample them for faster retrieval. “Now,” Annunziello says, “staff search for photos within categories in Laserfiche. Once they locate a photo, they can quickly insert it into their report or presentation. If an image is to be sent outside of our organization, it gets watermarked to signify that it’s TRCA property. Template information assigned to each photograph shows the location of the original CD, should we need a poster-size print. Now, the whole process takes minutes, instead of days.”

That’s a far cry from a car ride to a satellite office—and the resultant fuel savings fall right in line with the TRCA’s mission. But ultimately, staff enjoy the greatest benefits in the form of time and effort savings. Annunziello explains, “In our original proposal for Laserfiche, we suggested that we could save most of our staff an hour a day by searching for records electronically as opposed to finding the paper copies. Although there’s no way to measure, many staff have definitely realized this kind of return.”

And while the TRCA has achieved tremendous benefits so far, they’re not stopping anytime soon. “Our goal is to digitize all our forms processing,” Annunziello says. A major part of this initiative is enabling online submittal of land-use and development proposals. Sound planning is critical to building new facilities while preserving local watershed ecosystems. With that in mind, the TRCA reviews building permit applications to ensure that developers follow environmentally-friendly policies before, during and after construction. Applications for new planning and development are all currently available online, and soon, prospective builders will be able to submit them for review online as well. “Then,” Annunziello says, ”staff will be able to access a form online or through our server, fill it out and route it through Laserfiche Workflow™ to its correct location.”

In the meantime, Annunziello has many current projects to attend to, such as refining the TRCA’s records series for implementation in Laserfiche Records Management Edition. The TRCA also plans to create an organizational knowledge base for internal reference purposes.

Given the TRCA’s success with Laserfiche so far, these goals seem well within reach. And of course, there’s the larger goal of preserving the local environment for future generations. Says Annunziello, “Although a totally paperless office is not possible, it’s always our goal to conserve resources whenever possible. Laserfiche is a major part of that initiative.”

Tags: green, paperless, records management, RME, Workflow

Posted on Friday, December 7th, 2007 at 2:27 pm under Government Newsletter, Municipal Government, State and Local Government. You can comment on this article. trackback from your own site.