Municipal Government Archive

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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“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.

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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Paper-Trained

Laserfiche combines with online canine to take Lynwood, CA’s documents out of the doghouse

November 11th, 2008

Since its incorporation in 1921, the city of Lynwood, CA, has endeavored to build a safe, self-reliant and pride-filled community that welcomes citizens and businesses alike. But while this goal hasn’t changed much in the past 80-plus years, the demands of residents and city staff have. With a Laserfiche document management system at the heart of its technology strategy, however, Lynwood is positioned to meet the needs of its more than 73,000 residents, and to continue on its path of forward progress. Full story »

Putting Boulder City on Easy Street

Document management’s no crapshoot for Nevada’s biggest small town

November 4th, 2008 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

Compared to other cities in Nevada, Boulder City is something of an anomaly. Unlike nearby Las Vegas and the rest of Henderson County, BC is relatively quaint, with a population of just 15,000.

“We’re close to Las Vegas, we’re close to the Hoover Dam, but we’re surrounded by 200 miles of land. It’s like a buffer around us,” explains City Clerk Pamella Malmstrom. “Clark County has been one the fastest growing counties in the country. We’ve taken steps to not grow so rapidly.”

But even as modest Boulder City seems buffered from the noisy neon of its neighbors, it still faced the same information management concerns as every other city in the state. Especially since late 2007, when the state legislature passed a resolution mandating that all government agencies in Nevada be able to honor requests for public records within five working days. Full story »

The Wright Stuff

Wayne Wright, city historian of Glens Falls, NY, uses Laserfiche to manage valuable historical records – and increase efficiency city-wide

October 14th, 2008

Visionaries are not always thinking about the future as they leave the past behind. Sometimes, they are just looking to make a change.

That was Glens Falls Records Management Tech/City Historian Wayne Wright 11 years ago. When he thumbed through a Laserfiche brochure back then, he was thinking about the bulky bound volumes of birth, death and marriage certificates the City Clerk’s office staff wrestled with on top of the copier thirty to forty times each day. A decade later Laserfiche is helping most every aspect of Glens Falls government run more efficiently, largely through the single-minded effort of an administrator who just wanted to make a change.

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Badge to the Future

Elk River, MN’s hi-tech cop shop is tops for making greener traffic stops

October 10th, 2008 by Hobey EchlinHobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

“Police departments in general create a lot of paperwork and kill a lot of trees,” says Jeffrey Beahen, Chief of Police for Elk River, MN.

But Beahen’s department is saving trees and racking up awards—including one for Excellence in Innovation in Information Technology from the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) just this year.

jeff beahen“Our peers are John Hopkins University, the San Diego Police Department, the Canadian Research Center and the Dutch National Police,” Beahen notes proudly. “And little old Elk River is up on the porch with the big dogs.”

Elk Rapids, home to 24,000 and located on the outskirts of greater Minneapolis, got up on that porch thanks to Beahen’s vision of giving his officers every technological advantage available—with Laserfiche playing a vital role in both that vision and that advantage.

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Keen to Go Green

In Okotoks, AB, Laserfiche protects a historic past and provides for a sustainable future

October 7th, 2008 by Melissa HenleyMelissa Henley is a Laserfiche staff member

Okotoks logoNestled along the Sheep River Valley in the heart of the Alberta Foothills, the town of Okotoks, AB, is the second-fastest growing community in Canada, with a 46 percent growth rate since 2001.

According to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Okotoks “can fairly call itself the greenest community in Canada, maybe the world,” as it is one of the first municipalities to establish growth targets balancing infrastructure development and environmental conservation. And true to its motto of “Historic Past, Sustainable Future,” Okotoks has received national and international recognition for its environmental initiatives, so it’s no surprise they turned to Laserfiche to reduce paper consumption. Full story »

Paperless Meetings are the Wave of the Future

New Jersey communities are using Laserfiche to eliminate paper and put more information in the hands of decision makers at public government meetings

October 3rd, 2008

The versatility of Laserfiche’s electronic document technology has inspired creative applications that have taken the paper out of countless government agencies and operations over the past 20 years. Now it’s reaching outside the office into that bastion of paper rustling, public government meetings.

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Fire Department a Hot Spot for Document Management

In Westminster, MA, the fire department uses Laserfiche as the foundation for innovation

September 19th, 2008

Westminster, MA Fire DepartmentIn Westminster, MA, the fire department uses Laserfiche primarily to convert its retention of documents from paper to digital storage. For Fire Chief Brenton Macaloney, installing Laserfiche proved vital to saving time, money and headaches when the town suffered a total loss of electronic data.

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