Municipal Government Archive

Data Gover-nuances

Florence, AZ, gets big value from re-investing in its Laserfiche system

February 9th, 2010 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

florence AZThe Town of Florence, AZ, is a modest town of just over 20,000 located between Phoenix and Tucson. Even with its small size, Florence has always had big ideas for how to use Laserfiche to do more with less, growing its system from a simple archiving tool to a town-wide enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management (BPM) solution.

Our approach to technology has always been to be proactive, not reactive,” says Town Clerk Lisa Garcia.
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Making Enterprise Content Management Accessible to All

In Westminster, CA, a collaborative, inter-departmental team spearheads adoption of Laserfiche

February 1st, 2010 by Meghann WoosterMeghann Wooster is a Laserfiche Luminary

westminsterIt takes a village to raise a child, and it takes teamwork to change a city. For Westminster, a city of nearly 100,000 people located in Southern California’s Orange County, the need to change was highlighted when a new Assistant City Clerk—Pat Jacquez-Nares—came onboard.
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WebLink Wonderland

Mountains are for snow, not paper, in Vail, CO

December 9th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

VailcoloradotownlogoWhen you think of Vail, you think of a winter wonderland of world-class skiing by day and cozy, snowed-in evenings in front of a roaring fire by night. So do the wealth of seasonal visitors and second homeowners that make their way to the outdoor recreation destination in numbers that can quadruple the town’s modest population of 5,000 residents. “Vail’s a small town with a huge national and international visitor population which can grow to over 20,000 at times,” says Michael Wolfe, the Town’s records manager.
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“See a Need, Fill a Need”

Norfolk, VA, has dedicated itself to the growth of the Laserfiche community

November 3rd, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

norfolk-vaNo municipality has dedicated itself to the growth of the Laserfiche community more visibly this year than Norfolk, VA. So much so that the city’s in-house Laserfiche champions have encouraged user interaction by co-founding the Hampton Roads User Group, one of an unprecedented number of user groups that have sprung up across the state in the last two years.

The way W. Alondo McClees, Laserfiche Luminary and leader of the Technology Systems Team for the Norfolk Commissioner of Revenue, explains it, he and his colleagues were just “filling a need” when he and users from three other Virginia municipalities (Fredericksburg, Hanover and Charlottesville) first initiated a statewide Laserfiche user group for their Commissioner of Revenue offices at a 2007 regional conference.
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Greener Pastures

The Town of Brownsburg, IN, uses Laserfiche to deliver better, more cost-efficient service with exponential results

October 14th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

brownsburgWhen Wendi Smith accompanied her friend Kristy DeLong from the City of Carmel, IN, to the Laserfiche Conference in Los Angeles last January, she was supposed to be on vacation. But as the Administrative Assistant for the Town of Brownsburg’s Planning and Building Department, Smith started to get her own ideas about the kinds of cost-savings and operational efficiencies Laserfiche could bring to the modest but progressive Brownsburg, a town of just 20,000 that Money Magazine named the 33rd “Best Place to Live in America.”
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Solar Empowered

The City of Sun Prairie shines a light on business practices

August 5th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

sun-prairieThe City of Sun Prairie, WI, is the fastest growing city in Wisconsin with 26,000 residents and counting. But serving this rapidly expanding community has meant its municipal offices are spread out between its City Hall and satellite facilities that house various departments, its wastewater treatment and even a public access cable station. The main fire and EMS stations are housed in yet a third location.

So when City Clerk Diane Hermann-Brown says staying on top of Sun Prairie’s mounting paperwork was a city-wide problem, she literally means city-wide. “With all of our various departments that are off-site, it wasn’t just an issue of the time involved to retrieve the documents, but the time and resources involved in sending a clear, clean copy to the requesting party,” she says. “From the start our vision was to have a records management system where people could search, retrieve and print their own copies without ever leaving their work station.”
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Online, Not In Line

When Saco, ME, looked to Laserfiche to manage its information, it didn’t have a problem, it had a vision

June 10th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

saco-logoMaine’s state motto is “The Way Life Should Be,” and the City of Saco’s could well be “The Way Laserfiche Should Be.” Thanks to a commitment to user education and establishing an in-house Laserfiche administrator, city employees in every department have embraced an ecological and economical paradigm shift in how the city does business and offers services.

So much so that in just three years, Saco has set a standard for e-government so high that its regional neighbors are beginning to look into it as well.

So why has Saco been so successful? For starters, when City Administrator Rick Michaud and Saco’s IT staff looked into document management three years ago, they didn’t have a problem, they had a plan.
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Yes We Can!

A small population and a smaller budget doesn’t stop Leoti, KS, from delivering superior municipal service.

June 3rd, 2009

Does a municipality have to be large to realize the benefits of sophisticated software like geographical information systems (GIS) and digital document management?

“The answer in our case is absolutely not,” says Renee Geyer, City Clerk of this farming community in Western Kansas with a population of 1,700. “These tools enable us to serve our constituents much more effectively.” Full story »

“What Happened Next Was Nothing Short of Amazing”

How a plan to stop using Laserfiche instead inspires city-wide adoption in Albany, OR

May 5th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

albany-orTo be honest, the City of Albany, OR, hadn’t really been maximizing Laserfiche when its new Finance Director wanted to do away with using it altogether five years ago.

The city had installed Laserfiche in its Finance Department in 1998 as a virtual file cabinet. “Between 1999-2003 we were only scanning a few thousand documents a month and it was limited to just the Finance department,” admits Network Administrator and Laserfiche Luminary Allen Pilgrim. By 2004, Laserfiche storage totaled just ten volumes of 4.6GB each. A significant number, but apparently not significant enough for one new city administrator.
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Unlimited Potential

The Eastleigh Council Revenue and Benefits Department secures the present and plans for the future with Laserfiche

March 25th, 2009 by Melissa HenleyMelissa Henley is a Laserfiche staff member

The Challenge

The Eastleigh Council Revenue and Benefits Department faced a considerable challenge: increasing operational efficiency while transitioning from their rapidly-declining Document and Image Processing System (DIPS). Their current DIPS was slowing down information access and hampering staff productivity, due to an aging, ineffective query function. Whatever system the department chose, however, had to eventually integrate with the council’s planned enterprise-wide customer relationship management (CRM) system.

Lesley Cox, Local Taxation Manager, knew that the revenue and benefits department was working with a limited budget and had to procure the best-quality system available. By implementing a Laserfiche® digital document management solution, she was able to centralise the department’s records in a single repository, saving her staff time and aggravation while simplifying future integration with the council-wide CRM system.
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Little Enterprise on the Prairie

Laserfiche forms the foundation of an enterprise system that unites Marshall, MN, with Lyon County

March 3rd, 2009

Marshall, MNWin-win situations are not good enough for information technology staff in Marshall, part of Minnesota’s Lyon County. They’ve got to have win-win, win-win.

That’s because the Marshall school district, its city hall, municipal utility department and the Lyon County government all have built their IT infrastructures around Laserfiche. So when one part of the quartet undertakes improvements to Laserfiche, everybody benefits—and it seems that the improvements aren’t stopping any time soon.

“That’s the thing about Laserfiche,” says Todd Pickthorn, an IT expert with the Marshall School District. “Once you’ve completed one project with Laserfiche, your eyes open up to the new projects that are possible. That’s been the case with all the agencies we’re working with. When one makes an improvement, everybody reaps the rewards.”
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Integration Nation

Bakersfield, CA, uses Laserfiche to unite documents with business-critical applications

February 3rd, 2009 by Melissa HenleyMelissa Henley is a Laserfiche staff member

100px-seal_of_bakersfield_californiaIn Bakersfield, CA, a town known for its agriculture, manufacturing and petroleum extraction and refining is now known for something different: its innovative technology.

As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of over 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. “We wanted a document management system to store public documents in a secure, easily searchable manner,” says IT Director Bob Trammell. “We chose Laserfiche because of its pricing and how easy it was to search for and retrieve documents.”

“I had already installed Laserfiche in a city where I was previously employed, so I was very familiar with it,” Trammell adds. “That was eleven years ago, and today all 19 departments in the city, as well as thousands of citizens, use Laserfiche.”
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Shining Example

Laserfiche helps Charlottesville, VA, see the light at the end of the inbox

January 9th, 2009 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

Charlottesville, VA sealCharlottesville, VA is consistently voted one of America’s best cities to live, marked as it is by its deep history (birthplace of three U.S. presidents) and its college-town charm (home to the University of Virginia). But when it came to records management, Charlottesville’s paper history held little charm for the city staff left dealing with its outdated and overgrown filing system.

“Life before Laserfiche was full of frustration,” remembers Rosalind Collins, Deputy Commissioner of the Revenue and Laserfiche Administrator for the City of Charlottesville.
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Community Organizer

Laserfiche administrator Rosalind Collins of Charlottesville, VA, starts a regional user group and winds up solving problems back home

December 16th, 2008
Rosalind Collins is the Laserfiche Administrator for the City of Charlottesville.

Rosalind Collins is the Laserfiche Administrator for the City of Charlottesville.

The problem Rosalind Collins faced as Charlottesville, VA’s Laserfiche Administrator was not unique.

As Deputy Commissioner of the Revenue, she championed the need for a document management solution that brought Laserfiche to Charlottesville in 2000. But after years of successfully streamlining business practices in her own office and others, she was frustrated more of the city departments weren’t realizing the cost and time savings she and her staff enjoyed. Collins faced a dilemma: did she throw up her hands in frustration or would she roll up her sleeves and do something about it?

The way she tells it, she did a little bit of both: She started her own regional Laserfiche User Group.
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Maximizing Minimal Resources

Upper Deerfield, NJ, is using Laserfiche to streamline operations and maximize limited resources

December 5th, 2008

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.
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