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.

“Our objective is ‘Online, not in-line,’” says Michaud. “We had a vision of public documents available 24/7 without ever having to wait in line again.” Now all they needed was a way to implement it.

In 2006, General Code Solutions Consultant Herb Myers demonstrated Laserfiche for city staff, prompting Saco’s IT Department to choose Laserfiche. Ease of use, scalability, “going green,” and establishing a portal for improved public service all factored into the decision. Myers, for one, was impressed. “I was amazed at how forward-thinking they were,” he says. “They wound up teaching me as much as I taught them.”

With the foresight and commitment of both IT and Michaud that, as Myers puts it, “’green’ starts with technology,” Myers and IT mapped out an implementation strategy in meticulously planned phases (see sidebar).

Saco’s initial roll-out called for multi-departmental implementation almost immediately, which prompted the appointment of Laserfiche Luminary Fran Beaulieu as the in-house Laserfiche Administrator. Beaulieu underwent what Myers and the City refer to as “’train the trainer’ training.”

Beaulieu admits progress was slow, owing to the need to assess each department’s willingness, as she puts it, “to let go of the paper.” Key to ensuring user buy-in, she says, was not so much dictating a way of doing things, but establishing a standard by “planning with each department’s staff, hearing their needs and wants, and helping lead the way.” This included weekly meetings, discussions of how to avoid duplicating files and coming up with a consensus of what would be the “logical place” to centralize information. “Some visualized immediate benefits, others required a bit more help in the vision,” she says.

This help began with all Administrative Assistants—Beaulieu dubbed them “power users”—training on the Laserfiche client for importing and scanning documents. Department Heads learned how to use the system via Web Access. “I sat down with them one-on-one and made sure they felt comfortable with what I was showing them before I left.”

Beaulieu also worked with the Assessing Department, one of the City’s biggest paper users, to import deeds into Laserfiche. “Once they were able to see the speed of a search and ease of use, they became my highest achievers,” she adds. “The Assessor’s Department has almost completely added a deed for every parcel within the city for constituents to view and access.”

Beaulieu used this experience to identify and standardize procedures and file structure in creating the City’s all-important Document Management Manual (DMM). Beaulieu’s committee determined that the addition of folders, renaming of documents and deletion of documents would be done only by Laserfiche Administrators.

Trainings were limited to certain shift times, so, inspired by General Code’s own training Webinars, staff created a short “how-to” video for Web Access users along with a simple guide—customized using the file structure created by the City—available internally.

By April 2008, expanded training and more departmental buy-in paved the way for enterprise adoption and Phase 3 public access. Saco’s Department of Public Works and Wastewater were by now online via Web Access. And implementing Quick Fields enabled the Assessor’s Department to automatically scan and index Property Tax Cards where OCR had been formerly problematic and manually typing the information was, as Beaulieu puts it, “not an option.”

How effectively? “The process used to require approximately 2 to 2 1/2 days of printing time for one person to accomplish and used about a whole toner cartridge and 20 reams of copy paper,” Beaulieu says. “Now the cards will be downloaded into Laserfiche in a matter of minutes. This process will save time and money.”

The final frontier was to break down the fourth wall of government and push it out to the community. WebLink would allow public access to city documents through the “Find-A-Doc” interface, with a how-to video and on-line instructions leading the way. Roll-out took some time due to customization, but General Code’s Brian Hoody set-up quick search links to bring users directly to a specified folder, even getting audio files to work for the City’s Planning Department via the “Find-A-Doc” portal.

Saco's "Find-a-Doc" Public Web Portal

Though just a few months old, “Find-A-Doc” is already resonating with staff and citizens alike. Maggie Edwards, an Administrative Assistant in the Planning Department, admits to being “a little intimidated at first” by the Laserfiche system, but now shares in Saco’s vision of a successful portal strategy. “If there’s a subdivision or site plan you want to know about, you can view the entire files online. If you wish to hear an audio of the minutes from the Planning Board meetings, you may do so,” she says. “Laserfiche has made it very easy to maneuver.”

Saco’s savings so far total over $10,000 a year, but as Beaulieu points out, “We also look at the value of the system for not departments, but individual value to users. Service to constituents is a big factor.”

• Planning and Engineering saves $7,580 a year by scanning large format maps.
• Inspection Reports saves $1,780 and 1,335 sheets of paper a year.
• The Assessor’s Office saves over $1,600 a year.

And now with the economy forcing municipalities to do more with less, neighboring Scarborough has requested a look at Saco’s Document Management Manual while other budget-strapped cities are investigating sharing services to access various documents and parcel information. Saco is also looking into integrating Laserfiche with its GIS application. “We’re already sharing some personnel so the idea of shared services and ‘umbrella IT’ makes sense,” Beaulieu says.

“The lines are so blurred in areas like road repair that regional administration makes the most sense,” she adds. “When you can see what documents are attached to parcels, that saves you phone calls and extra trips and that makes their life easier as well as ours.”