“We’re delighted that Laserfiche has opened an office nearby,” said Esther Grace, Records Management Officer for Albemarle County, VA. “We have a great local VAR, and with the additional support from the local Laserfiche office, we feel very well taken of.”

The Washington, DC, office bolsters Laserfiche’s strong global presence, including corporate headquarters in Long Beach, California; global headquarters in Hong Kong; international offices in Shanghai, China and Ottawa, Canada; and a robust reseller network across the United States, the Middle East, Mexico, Latin America, the UK and Canada.

Laserfiche currently sets the standard for information management for the United States government market, with hundreds of federal government customers including all five branches of the U.S. military, the CIA, FBI, and the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, along with more than 5,000 municipal customers and a third of the county market.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

Laserfiche distributes its software through a worldwide network of value-added resellers (VARs), who tailor solutions to clients’ individual needs. The Laserfiche VAR program has received the Five-Star Rating from Computer Reseller News/VARBusiness magazine.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“In today’s mobile world, being able to access information anywhere is critical, but federal agencies can’t afford to compromise security,” said Brian LaPointe, Vice President of Strategic Solutions at Laserfiche. “With Laserfiche Mobile, IT has the protection of a complete end-to-end solution that extends DoD 5015.2-certified records management all the way to mobile devices—while staff have the flexibility they want.”

At FOSE, Laserfiche will demonstrate how Laserfiche Mobile maintains governance, risk and compliance (GRC) standards for the mobile government workforce by:

• Managing records captured and accessed through Laserfiche Mobile with DoD 5015.2-certified records management functionality.
• Distributing capture while maintaining control over naming and filing conventions.
• Maintaining auditability over all system interactions, even if they take place on a mobile device.

With Laserfiche Mobile, users can:

• Create and upload new content with the iPhone camera.
• Automatically crop, straighten and enhance captured information, with full text recognition.
• Copy, move, rename, download, e-mail, print or delete content.
• Browse for documents in a folder structure or search the entire repository.
• Participate in workflow automation processes by accessing metadata fields.

Laserfiche Mobile, which includes a built-in demonstration, is available for free download from the Apple App Store. In order to accept connections from Laserfiche Mobile, Laserfiche Avante and Laserfiche Rio users with Web Access can download the free Laserfiche Mobile Add-On from the Laserfiche Support Site.

Laserfiche will be on hand at booth #1021 during the conference to demonstrate Laserfiche Mobile. During the show, orders placed for Laserfiche Avante systems of five users or more will receive free Laserfiche Web Access for the entire system, which includes Laserfiche Mobile and the Laserfiche Mobile Add-On.

About Laserfiche
Since 1987, Laserfiche® has used its Run Smarter® philosophy to create simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions. More than 30,000 organizations worldwide use Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche ECM system is designed to give IT managers central control over their information infrastructure while still offering business units the flexibility to react quickly to changing conditions. The Laserfiche product suite is built on top of Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports the Microsoft SQL platform and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche®, Run Smarter® and Compulink® are registered trademarks of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

“With today’s superabundance of information, government organizations need a simple and effective way to control unstructured content,” said Brian LaPointe, vice president of strategic solutions at Laserfiche. “Laserfiche sets the standard for information management within all five branches of the U.S. military, CIA, FBI and the Departments of State, Justice and Homeland Security, along with thousands of cities and counties nationwide.”

An agile ECM system is one that balances the need for central control and departmental flexibility. Agile ECM brings a new level of scalability and supportability to existing IT infrastructures, allowing governments to eliminate data silos and manual data entry, automate core business processes and minimize ongoing maintenance demands for IT personnel.

The framework for agile ECM consists of:

• DoD 5015.2-STD-certified records management
• Business process management (workflow)
• Electronic form—or e-form—functionality
• Integration with SharePoint
• Transactional content management
• Information lifecycle management
• Public portal functionality

“Laserfiche offers a complete agile ECM solution for government entities of all sizes,” said LaPointe. “At FOSE, we look forward to meeting many new customers, partners, integrators and consultants.”

About Laserfiche
Laserfiche® creates simple and elegant enterprise content management (ECM) solutions that help organizations run smarter. Since 1987, more than 28,000 organizations worldwide—including federal, state and local government agencies and Fortune 1000 companies—have used Laserfiche software to streamline document, records and business process management.

The Laserfiche® product suite is built upon Microsoft® technologies to simplify system administration, supports Microsoft SQL and Oracle® platforms and features a seamless integration with Microsoft Office® applications and a two-way integration with SharePoint®.

Laserfiche is a registered trademark of Compulink Management Center, Inc.

Nick Van Valkenburgh, information management analyst for CHPMO, is charged with maintaining order amongst the CHPMO’s files. It’s not enough to simply archive these documents, however. The US Army must comply not only with National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) regulations, but also with guidelines issued by the Army Records and Information Management System (ARIMS). But Van Valkenburgh doesn’t play the part of the put-upon records manager, for he has a powerful tool in his arsenal: a Laserfiche® digital document management system.

CHPMO’s journey to digital document management began rather unusually, and had nothing to do with increasing efficiency, streamlining workflow or complying with NARA, ARIMS or any other acronymic regulations. As Van Valkenburgh recalls, “It was what I call a ‘drive-by tasking.’ My boss walked by my desk one day and said, ‘Nick, buy a computer and a scanner and get rid of that paper. The fire marshal just cited us for having our filing cabinets blocking the aisles.’”

That simple directive kick-started a much bigger project than anyone could have imagined. These code-violating cabinets contained almost four million pages, and, because the Army is a federal agency, it had to implement a system with Joint Interoperability Test Command (JITC) certification. In addition, NARA recommends Department of Defense (DoD) 5015.2-certified solutions for all federal agencies.

“We looked at 40 systems initially,” Van Valkenburgh says, “but we whittled it down to 10 based on which systems had JITC and DoD certifications and met our basic infrastructure compatibility requirements.” Laserfiche Records Management Edition™ (RME) not only met those two requirements, but also had the sophistication and security features needed to manage the myriad records series in Van Valkenburgh’s division. “We don’t destroy some records related to an aircraft until ten years after it stops flying,” he says. “RME was ideally suited to handle that kind of long-term records management.”

As powerful as RME is, it was its ease of use that really won Van Valkenburgh over. JITC reports include a complexity index, a count of mouse clicks and pop-up screens required to perform a number of standard functions. Laserfiche had the lowest number of clicks and screens by far, so CHPMO ordered a five-week pilot program. Laserfiche’s ease of installation was equally impressive. Notes Van Valkenburgh, “It took only 30 minutes to install all the servers. We thought we had done something wrong, so we uninstalled it. The second time, it only took 20 minutes. Everything worked right out of the box. It was really amazing.”

During the pilot deployment, Van Valkenburgh saw the project grow in scope to include electronic records, as well as scanned paper records. This new undertaking added another wrinkle to the system requirements. Any system he implemented had to serve the needs of the entire enterprise, not just his project office. What began as a 400-user implementation instantly ballooned to a potential of 4,000.

Owing to its non-mainframe, SQL-based architecture, Laserfiche integrated easily into CHPMO’s network environment. And its open architecture meant it would scale easily to accommodate the tenfold increase in staff. The simplicity and strength of the core Laserfiche platform were very important, but so was its modular construction. “We needed an all-in-one solution,” Van Valkenburgh says, ”not a bunch of software systems mashed together. And we wanted the capability to add workflow and Web-based components, even though we couldn’t implement these right away.”

Gradually, staff are scanning in the contents of CHPMO’s 150 filing cabinets. Laserfiche’s flexible search capabilities have made indexing the four million pages easier than anticipated. “Given Laserfiche’s searching power, there was no need to create a complex folder structure,” Van Valkenburgh says. “We don’t have to navigate through a document tree to get what we need. That’s really helped us streamline records management.”

Van Valkenburgh has many insights to share following such an involved installation. First, he stresses the importance of thorough planning. “Preparation can, and should, take more time than scanning,” he says. Likewise, quality control is absolutely critical. “If you don’t have any quality control measures, your repository has no credibility. We tried bringing in some electronic documents from our existing system, but it turned out that the original files were corrupted before they were transferred. Obstacles like that really illustrate the need for quality control.”

Having received excellent technical support, both from Laserfiche and from CHPMO’s reseller, Van Valkenburgh also believes that support should be a major criterion when evaluating document management solutions. “You’re going to have a lifetime relationship with these folks,” he says, “so make sure that you look carefully at the level of support you’ll be getting.” Having spoken at the Laserfiche Institute Conference, Van Valkenburgh wholeheartedly recommends that Laserfiche users continue their education by attending. “It’s absolutely priceless,” he says.

Of course, Laserfiche isn’t the sole focus at CHPMO. As Van Valkenburgh puts it, “CHPMO’s top priority is supporting our troops.” Thus, he currently has few resources at his disposal for in-house efficiency upgrades. But that doesn’t mean he’s scrapped his plans for expanding the Laserfiche system. He looks forward to implementing Workflow™, as well as integrating Laserfiche with other line-of-business applications.

Despite some initial skepticism over adopting a digital business model, Van Valkenburgh has noticed his staff becoming increasingly appreciative of the benefits Laserfiche has brought. And the word is spreading—staff from other divisions are asking him how they can implement Laserfiche, too. “I’ll tell you this much,” he says. “No one who’s made the switch to Laserfiche has had any regrets.”

And IT investments are critical to the ministry, whose current mission is to overcome the legacy of mistrust and hostility directed at Iraq. “We are rehabilitating the infrastructure of the entire ministry and its embassies worldwide after the collapse of Saddam’s rule,”Attia explains. “These investments should facilitate the process of the ministry’s daily work.”

The ministry has thus far spent $3 million on IT, according to Attia. One new application he is deploying is a document management system from U.S. software vendor Laserfiche. The system will store the ministry’s official documents in digital format so that its employees around the world can retrieve them via a secure Web connection. The system will also back up these documents in case of disaster. Among the records stored and exchanged on the system will be meeting minutes, general correspondence, visa applications for foreign visitors, and information about Iraqi students, ambassadors and diplomats living abroad. The system appealed to Attia because the U.S. Department of Defense has certified its capability to keep documents secure, and because he found it easy to deploy and to use.

Attia purchased the document management system from Laserfiche distributor BMB, based in Beirut. Because travel to Iraq is too dangerous, BMB employees set up the system in Beirut, and 25 ministry employees traveled there for training. Then the Laserfiche servers were shipped to Iraq. Attia’s next step will be to deploy the document management system and other applications at Iraq’s foreign embassies, many of which closed after the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s rule and are being reopened by the new government.

Iraq Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari is focused on four goals: debt relief, ending punitive damages for Iraq’s role in the Gulf War, soliciting foreign investment and repairing relations with the Arab world. How effective those efforts will be remains to be seen. “[The ministry] initially had some success,” Cole says. “But with the increased violence it’s been a harder and harder sell.”

Still, Attia remains focused on building an IT backbone that could support the ministry in the best-case scenario. Though he has no fixed budget, Attia anticipates more money will be invested in IT in the future. “We have an opportunity to build a strong foundation for the future of Iraq,” he says. “Cutting-edge technology will help us rebuild Iraq by connecting one of our most important government agencies with the rest of the world.”

Boats can be replaced. Lose your permit, and you lose fishing rights that can date back generations.

So, when the federal agency that issues those permits, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), needed a computer system to safely store them, it turned to the only company with the software to do the job, Laserfiche.

Not just any software. NMFS needed Laserfiche’s Records Management Edition, specially designed to keep those all-important permits current.

Federal commercial fishing permits can be worth millions of dollars each, depending on where the permit allows a fisherman to fish—some fishing spots are a lot better than others. If a permit expires and is not renewed on time, the rights to work those spots are opened up to a long line of fishermen itching to get their hands on them.

Legal battles over those jealously guarded permits have generated mountains of paperwork that date back to the 1800s. Keeping those records straight and up-to-date is top job at NMFS.

“Many government agencies have mandates for keeping their records up to date. RME is there to ease the compliance with those mandates.” said Laserfiche software engineer Andrew Schoonmaker. “It’s sort of an add-in for the Laserfiche server, but a very important add-in for many government agencies with document retention schedules.”

There are 1.5 million commercial fishing vessel permits —worth several billion dollars— that are on such schedules in NMFS offices across the country, according to John Montel, director of document management at General Dynamics Information Technologies in McLean, VA. A Laserfiche server armed with RME lets the authorized NMFS staffers know when a permit is up for renewal as reliably as an alarm clock.

But the folks over at the Southeast Regional Office of the NMFS, St. Petersburg, FL,where Montel installed Laserfiche with RME, had a more pressing concern: hurricanes. After Hurricane Katrina, they realized their offices would be underwater should such a storm visit them and that would create a tidal wave of problems.

General Dynamics installed Laserfiche with RME and the agency soon was scanning its permits into an electronic database hardwired to computers throughout the Southeast Region’s offices. Now staffers can instantly retrieve documents without leaving their desks.

“Katrina showed them that they had no real data recovery system in place and, with the value of these permits, there could have been a tremendous amount of litigation if those permits ended up underwater,” Montel said. “Now, with Laserfiche installed, everything they do is double-redundant. They can’t lose their records.”

This is a system the Southeast Regional Office of NMFS has searched long and hard for. Since 1996, the agency’s office has spent millions of dollars trying to install a records management system. First they tried Filenet, then Docushare, but neither system seemed to do the job, Montel said. After Katrina, those folks knew it was time to look elsewhere and fast.

General Dynamics was tapped for the job and in a week’s time a Laserfiche server with RME software was on the job. Scanning is now going full tilt and Laserfiche is working so well, there’s talk at the Southeast Regional Office of installing the system in NMFS regional offices nationwide, Montel said. Permits at the NMFS Southeast Regional Offices are now always up-to-date and instantly available for all authorized staff working right from their desktops.

“The staff doesn’t have to leave their desks to get these documents and they can respond quicker and handle more work at the same time,” Montel said. “Laserfiche is saving them a tremendous amount of time and agency response time for John Q. Public is much quicker, especially in relation to litigation cases.”

And the attorneys have taken note. General Dynamics is now at work installing Laserfiche for the lawyers at the NMFS Southeast offices. They, too, need instant access to the legal papers, charts and open-ocean surveys that fill the files of so many of the vessel permits NMFS holds and they can’t wait to get a Laserfiche system of their own, Montel said. And that will mean fishermen will be able to spend less time worrying about their permits and more time on their boats.

“A lot of people around NMFS see what we are doing and they are very interested,” Montel said. “It’s nice to see that after struggling for so long, NMFS sees that this technology can work and they don’t have to spend $10 million to make work. For me, it’s kind of nice to be able to say: ‘I told you so’.”

One of the U.S. Military’s leading weapons and munitions facilities, the Crane Center is currently providing extensive support to U.S. military operations in Afghanistan. Originally limited to support of the Navy, the Crane Division now provides weapons development, testing and manufacturing for the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, as well as the Navy.

Under exacting new requirements specified by the Pentagon’s NMCI (Navy Marine Corps Intranet), all legacy technology applications in military installations must be certified to assure they function well in simulated “real world” conditions. Recently completed tests showed Laserfiche Document Imaging passed all of the NMCI “PoP in the Box” requirements.

The base, which dates back to December 1941, was recently named the top facility in the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) competition, which measured overall efficiency and quality of performance. It now will go on to compete with other top Navy bases worldwide for international honors.

John Montel of Virginia-based General Dynamics Information Technology, a Laserfiche Reseller, manages support for the Laserfiche installation at the base. Montel and General Dynamics have provided Laserfiche solutions to all branches of the military. Montel participated in the recently mandated “PoP in the Box” certification process.

“It’s all getting started in our one small work group, which happens to be focused on international trade,” explains Ken Forsythe, an agricultural economist. “We draw on enormous amounts of information from all over the world in order to develop current analyses of conditions and trends. Our analyses then become part of the decision-making process that leads to planning agendas, policy changes and budgets.

“Currently, I often have more than a hundred different files piled up in my office when working on a single analysis. As we start using Laserfiche and WebLink, it’s going to be much easier to find what I need quickly. It will also be much easier to share our research with colleagues here, with colleagues in other USDA offices and, at times, with external associates such as university-based researchers and economists.”

“We are very definitely a pilot project that our managers plan to extend to other departments. Our long-term goal is to get rid of the paper and the filing cabinets.”

John Harris, the computer specialist in Forsythe’s group, says that reasons for choosing Laserfiche WebLink for the project include its strong price/performance ratings and the ease with which it can be integrated with other operating systems.

Steve Menscher of Secure Files, Inc., an Aspen, CO-based Laserfiche reseller, is providing advisory and installation services.

When historians and staff needed to look at the papers that recorded these and other events, members of the RNC became concerned. Many of the records were over 100 years old. Handling them and even exposing them to light could damage the priceless documents. They needed the help of Laserfiche.

“When our staff and authorized historians need to access Republican Party archives, electronic files are an ideal medium,” says Melissa Price, special projects coordinator at the RNC. “Digital archives allow users to conduct searches for specific information and enable us to study our records without handling documents that become increasingly fragile as they age.”

The RNC asked John Montel of General Dynamics Information Technology, a Virginia-based Laserfiche Reseller, to help. Montel set up the system to allow the RNC to scan, store and retrieve all their important documents.

The first records the RNC scanned electronically and preserved as digital images were from the 1856 convention, at which John Fremont was nominated for the presidency. Just four years later, the records chronicle the nomination of Abraham Lincoln, who went on to lead the Union through the Civil War.

Included in the RNC’s Laserfiche files are the records of each Republican convention and twice-yearly party meetings.

Price says the document archives are currently accessible over the Internet to Republican Party staff members and authorized scholars. Party records and historic documents, protected by security codes, are searchable remotely with Laserfiche WebLink. WebLink makes documents available on the Web without HTML coding.

Price says she is honored to be involved in their preservation at the Party headquarters, noting that they will be precious assets to future generations.

“Currently, I often have more than a hundred different files piled up in my office when working on a single analysis. As we start using Laserfiche and WebLink, it’s going to be much easier to find what I need quickly. It will also be much easier to share our research with colleagues here, with colleagues in other USDA offices and, at times, with external associates such as university-based researchers and economists.”

“We are definitely a pilot project that our managers plan to extend to other departments. Our long-term goal is to get rid of the paper and the filing cabinets.”

The PRC has been using Laserfiche since 1997 to scan and index files. Since August of 2000, they have been using Laserfiche WebLink and, according to Margaret Crenshaw, Chief Administrative Officer for the PRC, it has made a world of difference.

“It’s been outstanding and unbelievable,” Crenshaw says. Laserfiche “solves a huge problem.” Those wishing to retrieve documents pertaining to PRC court cases, mail classification rulings and post office closing decisions can now access the information from the PRC’s Website. Because of this technology, Crenshaw feels that the PRC is “light-years ahead of other government agencies.”

“The system is phenomenal and our people are absolutely thrilled.” Crenshaw adds.

“Engineers change jobs, and get new assignments, just as everyone else does,” David C. Kennedy, P.E., an electronics engineer there, said recently. “When an engineer leaves, nobody knows what was kept in his personal files. Office file space is limited, both for classified and non-classified material. Decisions have to be made, on what to keep and what to discard.

“Sometimes it is just impossible to recover all the data obtained in a test or study done in years past. We have to do it over. And a fully-instrumented flight test can cost about a quarter-million dollars.”

That’s the way things used to be at Redstone, until Mr. Kennedy came up with the idea for a CD-ROM database system four years ago. “I thought it was wasteful for us not to capture data and retain it,” he said.

The system, as he envisioned it, had to include high-speed color scanning, filing and encryption of classified documents. This had never before been done in a one-operator, one-operation PC controlled desktop system.

Several years went by in software tests. They tried and rejected various systems, before they settled on Laserfiche Document Imaging. Now, test data, reports, studies, engineering notes, briefing minutes-everything that documents the activity of the office-is run through a scanner, at about one second per page. The software burns the incoming data into a compact disk, available for later retrieval by anyone-with the proper decryption key-who types in a word or phrase from the original document. A few more keyboard taps, and it is printed out on paper-an exact duplicate of the original.

Most important, the system also protects classified data, with National Security Agency encryption hardware. Processed through the NSA encryptor, the data is burned into the CD as unclassified material. The disk can then be stored, unguarded, in a box near a work station. If an unauthorized person were to try to run it on a computer, all he/she would see would be gibberish. The NSA encryptor/decryptor key, needed to make sense of it, is locked away in a safe.

All over North America, military engineers and the civilian contractors that serve them are dealing with a paper avalanche. Many factors contribute to this, in addition to the growing sophistication of military research and development: growing public awareness of environmental problems, the federal budget pinch, the increasingly litigious atmosphere of our times, to name a few. More and still more records must be kept, in greater detail than ever before; and they must be clear, accurate and instantly accessible. A whole new concept has developed to answer this need-the paperless office.

At the Army Chemical Warfare Service installation at Aberdeen, Proving Ground, in Maryland the need for cataloguing hazardous chemicals-and instructions how to treat anyone exposed to them in an emergency-created a record-keeping problem. At the John J. McMullen Associates, Inc. naval shipyards in Pascagoula, Mississippi and Bath, Maine, the need was for safe storage and quick, easy retrieval and distribution of specifications and change orders: all this to coordinate the efforts of the the teams building a new fleet of DDG-51 guided-missile destroyers . At Scott Air Force Base, near the southern tip of Illinois, the problem was storage and retrieval of administrative records: vouchers for jet engine fuel and other supplies; purchase orders; timesheets for contractor personnel, and policy directives from the Pentagon.

To solve these and other problems, military information managers have turned to the paperless office, combining document scanning, digital storage on inexpensive, high capacity media like the CD-ROM disk, and LAN/WAN, local- and wide-area networking to link two or many desktop computers, in the same office or thousands of miles apart.

In all these applications, the objectives are basically the same: (1) to save office space that otherwise would be occupied by a steady proliferation of file cabinets (2) to preserve records against accidental loss, damage or atmospheric deterioration caused by sunlight, heat or dry air and (3) to conserve staff time spent searching archives-frequently hours or days.

Laserfiche pioneered the concept of imaging and electronic retrieval in 1982, but several years were to pass before the development of inexpensive high-capacity storage hardware made the Laserfiche concept economically feasible. The standard system is designed for standard-sized office stationery–8 x 11 -inch business letters or 8 x14-inch or longer legal documents. But with extra-large engineering scanners and printers, the system can handle anything up to a 4 x5-foot schematic drawing.

In many locations, especially government offices, space saving is the most important benefit of the paperless office. More than 80 federal, state, county and municipal agencies now use Laserfiche. The Fresno school district -second largest in California -condensed an estimated 1.5 million pages of employee records into the system and what had filled 75 four-drawer filing cabinets became a two-foot shelf of CD’s.

One of the largest engineering firms in North America has found a unique application for the technology. OAO Corporation, of Greenbelt, MD, an aerospace-oriented firm with locations across the United States and in Canada, uses it to store job-applicant resumes. Then, if the company suddenly needs someone with special qualifications -say, an engineer who (1) has experience in certain kinds of computer programming , (2) lives near Colorado Springs, (3) has a top secret security clearance and (4) speaks fluent French -candidates pop out of the computer’s data bank with a few key strokes.

The company started with a stand-alone system in the summer of 1994, and a year later had five stations linked by a wide area network, , enabling personnel managers in various parts of the continent to read the data simultaneously. More than 1,000 resumes are now on file in the system.

In all these applications and many more, those involved in engineering and construction enterprises are discovering that the problem is paper, and that document imaging is the solution. As one manager at McMullen Shipyard told me: “There’s only one problem left, and it’s the same thing that occurs whenever there’s a basic change in management techniques. What do you do with the fellow who can’t believe he’s working if he doesn’t have a piece of paper in his hand? We’re just chipping away at that.”