The Laserfiche Community shined as brightly as ever at the IIMC Conference last month in Chicago. Attendees at the “Tipping Point 2.0” session heard how the City of Okotoks, Alberta, Canada uses Workflow to handle permitting—without a permitting application. How? Sign up for our “Laserfiche for Local Government = ECM+ BPM” webinar to find out, but here’s a peek at how Okotoks does it: By routing permit applications through their clerk’s office, records manager and financial departments, pulling as much as pushing its e-government innovations out to its residents.

Diane Hermann-Brown, City Clerk for the City of Sun Prairie, WI, was inspired after seeing a pre-release demo of Laserfiche Agenda Manager 8.0. (Keep reading the UserNews for more release information.) “It’s more user friendly and has more helpful features and processing options, which will make it a lot more advantageous and efficient for our users,” she says, referring to, among other new features, Agenda Manager 8’s new in-place document editing and enhanced notification capabilities.

Currently, Hermann-Brown is looking to the future to fund a Laserfiche/Granicus integration to publish and distribute the city’s minutes, as well as webstream city meetings. And she’s encouraged by what she saw in Agenda Manager 8. “It’s good to see Laserfiche is still evolving Agenda Manager to meet the changing job requirements of our users,” she says.

Changing is right. Hermann-Brown is cautious but optimistic about the coming year. “It’s hard to convince the city council to spend money on technology, when budgets will be constricted, even when that’s exactly what we need to do to be more efficient,” she says. “Residents don’t expect any less from us in terms of services, so we have to figure out how we’re going to grow for the future, even in these times.” (Helpful hint: the “Laserfiche for Local Government = ECM+BPM” Webinar is a good place to start.)

Hermann-Brown can be encouraged by users like Linda Andal, City Clerk for the City of Anaheim, CA. Anaheim’s long been recognized for its pioneering use of Laserfiche, which continues with the city upgrading to a Laserfiche Rio ECM system this year. “What I noticed at this year’s IIMC conference were the many sessions on electronic content management and business process mapping, so I felt positive that we’re already getting there,” Andal says. “In this day and age it just makes sense to invest in technology - you can move ahead or you can play catch-up.”

So what inspired Anaheim to move ahead? “We said, ‘We’re here now. We’ve been doing it. Let’s see how we can use tools like Workflow to improve our internal processes for even greater efficiencies,” Andal says. “We looked at the types of records requests we get and the access we can provide, plus the need for greater transparency, and it was apparent that there were areas we could enhance.”

But for all the talk of shrinking revenues and budget cutbacks, Hermann-Brown was happy to see some things at IIMC were the same as in years past.

“We kept hearing companies were going to cut back at IIMC this year, so it was good to see core vendors like Laserfiche coming back year after year,” she says. “It shows me they’re there for us and they’re there with us.”

Tags: government, IIMC, Laserfiche Luminaries

Posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 10:32 am under UserNews. You can comment on this post.