In order to minimize budgetary costs for taxpayers, local governments are forever searching for more creative and efficient ways to streamline operations. Toward that end, Upper Deerfield Township has turned to document management software to build a government database that’s turning its government paperwork into electronic images and its government staff into some of the most productive in New Jersey, according to one expert who knows a little about local government.

Earl Babb is a regional representative for General Code, one of the largest publishers of municipal law books in the country. Babb sold the new software system to Upper Deerfield and admits he’s hardly impartial. Still, Babb has worked with numerous New Jersey governments and he says Upper Deerfield taxpayers are getting more bang for their buck out of Town Hall than many of their neighbors in surrounding communities.

“Upper Deerfield’s document management system is bare bones yet staffers are getting everything out of it they can,” Babb says. “For a municipality with just over 7,500 residents, there’s minimal staff in Upper Deerfield’s government offices, far fewer than other municipalities I’ve seen.”

Upper Deerfield made a very important commitment two years ago when elected officials and municipal staff determined that municipal record keeping management needed to be streamlined. At that time town administrator/clerk Roy Spoltore asked for and received permission from the Township Committee to request proposals for the purchase of a document management software system. The Township Committee eventually awarded the purchase of a Laserfiche document management system.

During the past three summers, the Township has employed Ashley Wolk to build Upper Deerfield’s new database. Wolk pulled reams of government documents from boxes and filing cabinets throughout the building and fed them into an electronic copier that converted them into digital images. At the same time those documents were scanned they were stored in the township’s growing electronic database.

Township Committee meeting minutes and resolutions dating back decades have been scanned into the new system as well as minutes and resolutions from all Local Boards, Commissions and Committees. Records from the Construction Office, Housing Office, Zoning Office and Assessor’s Office have also been scanned into the database as well as the year-end reports for Finance, Animal Control, Fire Safety and the Tax Collector departments. Soon vital statistics such as birth, death, and marriage certificates will also be scanned into the database.

Now, when a resident requests a document from any of these Upper Deerfield agencies, the name, date or other specified means to help identify the document are typed into a computer much like searching for something on the internet. An instant later, links to electronic images of documents containing that information pop up on a computer screen. Staff then click on the link they want and a legally binding, official document is ready for printing.

“For my use, it’s easy to find anything in the database,” says administration clerk/typist Linda Martin. “I have people that come in looking for ordinances and resolutions and things from years past and I can go right to the database without the time-consuming search through books or filing cabinets. It takes just seconds to go to the computer, put in the key words, and its right there.”

Planning Board secretary Vicki Vagnarelli has also grown very fond of the new system. “Before we had Laserfiche I constantly had to go through books searching for specific documents, it was extremely time consuming,” she says. “Now, Laserfiche is the first place I search when I need to gather information relating to the Planning or Zoning boards; Township Committee ordinances and resolutions, or any other area of municipal government that is pertinent to our needs at that time.”

Along with the storage and retrieval abilities of Upper Deerfield’s document management system, another software program has been added to keep track of who accesses which documents in the database and when. Another software program being installed will automatically take internal working documents that staffers produce on their own computers and index and store them in the database without having to print and scan them first.

All this software has to be custom tailored to each community’s filing system needs, Babb said. Such filing systems can date back centuries. Upper Deerfield’s system has been in full service for just 18 months, but documents reaching back to the 1920s—when Upper Deerfield was founded—have been scanned into the database. “As more documents are scanned in, staff will become more familiar with how to find them and that will enable the system and staff using it to become more productive,” Babb says.

Similar systems are working all over New Jersey, some considerably more sophisticated than what Upper Deerfield has so far installed, Babb said. Document management technology has reached levels where meeting agendas can be compiled without a shred of paper; password-secure websites can be created to remotely access town hall databases, documents can even be worked on from remote locations using some of the new software modules available.

Babb says he hopes that some day soon Upper Deerfield will have all that technology available to its staff and residents. In the meantime, the new database has helped a small town staff handle a big city work load.

“I’d love to see Upper Deerfield some day take full advantage of all the additional technology,” Babb says. “Still, I’m amazed at what Upper Deerfield Township has accomplished with the small entry level system they invested in. They really went to town on Laserfiche and maximized those features available to them.”

Tags: Agenda Manager, Audit Trail, Local Government, Web Access, WebLink, Workflow

Posted on Friday, December 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am under Customer Stories, Local Government, Municipal Government. You can comment on this post.