Not surprisingly, against this backdrop of budgetary efficiency, Neumann and his team have initiated several infrastructural enhancements to the city’s technology wheelhouse that have resulted most recently in a redesign of the city’s website. Completed in May 2010, the redesign is the culmination of an e-Government Web strategy used by virtually all of Oshkosh’s departments to provide automated information and services to citizens. Helping to drive these services, Neumann says, is Oshkosh’s use of the Laserfiche WebLink 8 public portal, a key component of Laserfiche’s enterprise content management (ECM) suite.

Finding an ECM System and Standardizing for the Future

One of the first things Neumann did when he came to Oshkosh a decade ago was to implement a proper ECM solution in the City Clerk’s Office. Paper storage in the already packed offices, he remembers, “was like trying to stuff ten pounds into a five-pound bag.” What’s more, the legacy document indexing system, MuniMetrix, was proprietary, “which to me was just scary,” he adds.

On September 11, 2001, Gary Eide of Laserfiche reseller Computer Technologies Access showed Neumann how a Laserfiche system could help not just the Clerk’s Office, but also just about every other city department. “I liked the fact that [Laserfiche] was non-proprietary and SQL-based. Plus, the way the system extracted text from documents [via OCR] seemed very forward-thinking, and we like to think of Oshkosh as a forward-thinking city,” Neumann says.

Neumann had cut his teeth on mainframe systems in the military, so Laserfiche appealed to his service-oriented architecture (SOA) sensibilities. “When I look at a product, I look at any use different business units have even remotely in common,” he says. “Laserfiche is an application that crosses many boundaries—it’s one product that literally touches every department.”

Neumann seized the opportunity to adopt a single, unified standard for the city’s metadata. “Standardization was one of the initial core changes that would move Oshkosh forward,” he says. And it would do so by providing a common model for content storage, making it easier to find, link and retrieve: “We saw the potential for the cross-utilization and system interoperability that would allow for distribution and cross-interaction. Plus we’d minimize compatibility issues and allow for future expansion and technology migration over time.”

In February 2002, Computer Technologies Access installed and configured the new Laserfiche system in less than a week, and the impact on the Clerk’s Office and the Inspections Division was immediate:

• Storage space was converted back to office space.
• Internally, staff no longer needed to print documents to image them; they could be imported directly using Laserfiche Snapshot.
• Departmental employees were given their own access to the Laserfiche repository.

Implementing Laserfiche WebLink, Neumann says, sparked what he calls “an evolution” of Oshkosh’s e-Government strategy. Procedurally, because departmental staff could now make public information available themselves, Neumann’s department was no longer inundated with requests to publish cumbersome PDFs or send out mass e-mails to citizens. “Wisconsin has a pretty comprehensive open records law, so pretty much everything had to be made available,” Neumann explains. “WebLink basically extended public information services right to people’s living rooms.

“Customer satisfaction went through the roof—we started getting complimentary phone calls instead of derogatory ones,” he laughs.

Evolving a Successful e-Government Strategy

Establishing formal ROI statistics when your IT department is spending 33% less than it did ten years ago seems redundant, but Neumann happily details the self-sufficiency of Oshkosh’s IT department. “I like to brag that we don’t contract anything out —not even wiring. Everything is done in-house, including our network architecture, design and management,” he explains. “In that sense, I’d say Laserfiche fits us because it’s very self-driven and intuitive to get around. The biggest thing I’ve enjoyed is the ease of upgrades. We do them all ourselves, without a single hitch.”

He adds, “The Knowledge Base on the [Laserfiche Support Site] is also very beneficial —we really haven’t had to contact our reseller for support issues.”

At the same time, he says, using Laserfiche has gone a long way in supporting the evolution of Oshkosh’s e-Government strategy, which now includes 12 departments using WebLink to push out information through seven municipal Websites. “Every electronic document we create can be managed departmentally,” Neumann explains. “We just have to set up security within Laserfiche, and as soon as a document is in the system, it can be made available for public view.”

In Neumann’s view, making information more available isn’t just about transparency, but also the government’s responsibility for the decisions it makes. “When we talk about WebLink we’re really talking about transparency and accountability—they go hand in hand,” he says. “We have our resolutions and ordinances posted online dating back to 1990, and residents love that they can research an issue or an address going back 20 years.” Online inspection reports, for instance, are used by both potential homebuyers and realtors, while contractors can see a virtual history of work done on a property.

And insurance companies and attorneys access accident reports through WebLink—a process that accounts for 350 visits to Oshkosh’s Website each day. “Because accident reports are public records, they are uploaded when the patrol car gets back to the station, so they’re available online in real time,” Neumann explains.

It isn’t just citizens who benefit from the efficiency, as Oshkosh administrators also recognize the value of Laserfiche. “Our municipality is driven by our city manager and city council, and using Laserfiche to automatically publish the agendas and minutes from our boards and commissions really illustrates how effective it is,” Neumann says.

According to Neumann, the recently re-launched city Website was the culmination of five years of adding interaction based on citizens’ input, plus some inspiration, he says, from the best practices of the Center for Digital Government and Government Technology’s Best of the Web winners (“They won those awards for a reason,” Neumann comments). But final buy-in and approval came as a result of an internal assessment by the Oshkosh City Manager and Media Services Department. “We sat down with them and went over their likes and dislikes,” Neumann explains.

Next, Neumann’s looking at integrating Laserfiche with the city’s internal Munis systems. “If you’ve got the framework, you want to utilize it the best you can. I’d like to get to a full ERP integration where we’re bringing a number of departments through a single, shared application. If we can do it ourselves, and I think we can, we’ll do it,” he says.”I take it as a challenge to use little or no capital, because with Laserfiche, we’ve been able to do that the whole time. We’ve achieved all our goals annually.”

“Choosing Laserfiche as our ECM system was definitely an investment, not a purchase,” he adds. “It’s gone a long way toward keeping my budget the way it is and it’s allowed our departments to be a lot more self-sufficient in terms of managing their own content and making it available to the public.”

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.”