As these seasonal influxes fueled Vail’s local economy and luxury real estate market, they also highlighted a need for the town to address the resulting challenges to its infrastructure. By 2007, town administrators looked for ways to lessen municipal government’s footprint on the mountain community. An idea from years prior had by now developed into a need: conducting government with less paper. “We were at the point where we had so much paper, it was either build a warehouse or go electronic,” Wolfe explains. “Vail real estate is so expensive; you really can’t build a warehouse in the valley.”

When Wolfe joined the town in April 2007, he was encouraged that its records manager position was an IT one. “Business technology and information management are enough of a priority that the Content Manager is part of the IT group. It seemed logical given our overall goals for greater reliance on automated tools and the establishment of an electronic records management system,” he explains. “So often, when IT takes on the task without adequate content management, the result is an electronic black hole that corresponds to the former paper black hole.”

With technical support for the idea, Wolfe began to develop staff support as well. “Each department had one or two people who dealt with records and were interested in making some changes. I worked with them to look at applications.” After a needs assessment and departmental demonstrations by Laserfiche reseller Jen Harris of Peak Performance Imaging Solutions, Wolfe and the record custodians chose Laserfiche.

In addition to the great support from Peak Performance, he cites both ease of use and flexibility of administration as deciding factors.

“Laserfiche is an application easily managed by someone in a non-IT position. The security and other administrative elements of the application are easy to administer,” Wolfe explains. “We could provide tight security to anything we didn’t want disclosed, such as social security numbers and other PII, as well as broad access to other town departments and eventually, to the public.”

In July 2007, implementation began with the scanning of clerk’s records and the conversion of Human Resources PDF images from a legacy imaging system to TIFF files, which Wolfe notes “made it a lot easier to search and a lot easier to add pages to later.”

With his strong background in nuclear and legal records management, Wolfe made it a point to establish quality guidelines and procedures for storing content in the new system. “In Colorado you can replace paper with electronic records if you follow certain guidelines. The Colorado Municipal Retention Schedules were developed for the paper environment, but they apply regardless of media. Vail had actually done a pretty good job of managing paper records in accordance with municipal retention schedules, so our job was really just taking the right next steps to better management in an electronic environment.”

Wolfe set up the Laserfiche Records Management Module using retention schedule numbers mirrored in the e-folder structure. “The records management structure reflects the retention requirements, while the document management side mirrors the Town’s organizational structure and the paper world,” he says. “So it’s easy to check the records management folders, click on the Record Series Properties and update retention information as the State schedules are updated.”

By April 2008, several other departments began their respective pushes to reduce paper volumes. The progress was steady and growing. “We have 105 users in about a dozen departments,” he says. Now, Human Resources and Risk Management are completely paperless, the Clerk’s office uses Laserfiche to publish municipal agendas and town council minutes, while Community Development, Legal, Public Works, Fleet Management, the Fire Department and Finance staff have all been accessing the system in various capacities.

The holiday season in Vail

“One of the future challenges is to change work processes, creating efficiencies with an increase in document sharing,” Wolfe says. “We’re doing a lot with paper we could be doing in Laserfiche. But we also know how important it is to build a comfort level with people and their ability to access records in Laserfiche. When they see how much time they can save, it builds confidence and they’re ready to make the next step.”

For their next step, departments are eyeing various ways to automate how information is gathered, updated and, most importantly, used. “We want to do more to save user time in Community Development. We use Accela’s Permits Plus, and we’d like to populate selected data into our Laserfiche ‘Building Activities’ template,” Wolfe says.

Other integrations in the planning stages include a link between Laserfiche and the Public Works fleet management application. “We are just beginning to examine the fleet management application and, if possible, would like to send reports directly to Laserfiche,” says Wolfe.

And, inspired by nearby Aspen, Community Development is also eyeing a GIS integration to, as Wolfe puts it, “drill down further” into their records. “Our GIS operator liked what Aspen is doing and would like to able to access Laserfiche documents in Community Development, the Town Clerk’s office, Public Works and other departments using GIS and parcel numbers,” he adds.

That’s not to say there hasn’t been some very real tangible progress already. “We’ve been trying to build up our volume of records to make the system more powerful and useful – like it is to HR already,” Wolfe says. “We have over 42,000 documents, which consist of 1.7 million TIFF files weighing in at 189 GB and 12,300 electronic documents which include PDFs and Microsoft Office documents totaling 114 GB in Laserfiche at this time,” he adds.

“From a paper management perspective, we’ve been able to destroy 664 boxes of records. We scanned 364 boxes of backfiles and got rid of 300 boxes of duplicates and records beyond retention. We even built out a couple of offices from the saved space,” he adds.

The real benefits of Laserfiche, he’s found, are the ongoing ones. “The most savings come from recovering staff time. For example, Open Records Requests that used to take two weeks and many photocopies to fill can now be addressed in minutes by looking up the information in Laserfiche and posting the response via WebLink or sending an e-mail.”

Scenic view of the Gore Range from Blue Sky Basin at dawn.

This has done more than make existing staff more efficient, Wolfe says, it’s actually lessened government’s footprint in the townspeople’s eyes.

“Laserfiche helps us create a situation where we’re not growing staff and, over time, the existing staff will be able to do more because they have better tools. You’re touching on goals the community has – even finding parking for municipal employees can become an issue.

“The broader community is very diversified with second home owners from all over the world, so that’s the next step. The longer term goal is to get information out there and available on the Town website for residents,” he adds.

But even now, the system serves the informational needs for life safety officers regarding locations and traffic re-direction during seasonal celebrations. “Our Special Events Coordinator can post event permits which include street closures and barricades on WebLink,” Wolfe explains. “Officers used to have to paw through files to get the right wad of paper. Now our naming convention is by day and event, so officers can just call up the information via the Town’s Wi-Fi network and review the actual permit right in their vehicle.”

Usefulness to law enforcement is also driving Vail’s next project: bringing the Eagle County Sheriff’s Office onboard to store case photos in Laserfiche with an integration into its Intergraph public safety system. “We just purchased an additional repository and the Laserfiche Software Development Kit (SDK),” Vail IT Director Ron Braden says. “Once we beta the Sheriff’s Office, we will bring all our law enforcement agencies on board.”

Faced with trying State v. Valentini, the largest gambling conspiracy case in Arizona history, criminal defense attorney Howard Snader knew his old paper-based system wouldn’t work any longer.

“I was retained in a criminal defense matter where the state’s discovery documents were provided in digital format,” Snader says. “Although I could read the documents, I couldn’t search them in any meaningful way.”

Snader found that opening every single page was cumbersome and completely ineffective. “I would have had to print each page as I read it, and with more than 30 defendants and an initial discovery of nearly 150,000 pages, that’s a significant amount of paper,” he explains. “I would have spent weeks reading and marking the necessary evidence, and I’d have to do it each time I needed to prepare another motion.”

“In Arizona, court systems are forcing attorneys to move into the 21st century, because many of them are now providing all evidentiary documents electronically,” says Greg Dutton, managing partner of ArcWare Solutions, the Laserfiche reseller that oversaw Snader’s Laserfiche implementation. “From our experience, law firms in Arizona are significantly behind the curve and need to catch up.”

Snader’s firm was a prime example of this. “I believed I had no need for document management, so I had no system in place,” he remembers. “After I saw what Laserfiche could do, I realized the need was there. Not only would I be able to deal with the ongoing discovery of police reports, medical records and financial statements, I’d also be able to securely archive files, destroy hard copies and save on storage fees.”

A practicing attorney since 1988 and a certified specialist in criminal law since 1995, Snader knew that minimizing time spent on discovery and money spent on storage was key to his firm’s success. When he found Laserfiche, he knew that its upfront cost would return enormous dividends. “I really looked at Laserfiche as an investment,” Snader says. “The ease of access, support and training, as well as the software’s capabilities, made this the best choice for my practice.”

Dutton believes that, like Snader, many attorneys underestimate the utility of a document management solution. “Case preparation software does only what it was designed to do. Laserfiche can provide case preparation functionality, as well as manage all of the documentation for the day-to-day business of your entire practice, including accounting, billing and HR records,” he says.

“When you consider that attorneys receive information in so many formats—including paper, PDFs and other types of electronic documents—a system that can manage all those disparate formats from a single screen ends up providing an incredible ROI,” Dutton adds. “In fact, Laserfiche could be a law firm’s single best software investment.”

Faced with the mountain of evidence in State v. Valentini, Snader wholeheartedly agreed. “With Laserfiche, it’s not just about saving time, money and providing a valuable resource for clients—which it certainly does. It’s also about competitive advantage. Laserfiche is a powerful tool that enables me to show prosecutors and clients the strength and weaknesses of a case by just pushing a few keys.”

In fact, with Laserfiche’s sophisticated search tools at his disposal, Snader was the first defense attorney in the case to submit a motion to remand for his client—and the only one to submit his motion by its original due date in June.

“I’m amazed how quickly and easily I can locate information,” he says. “I was able to show the prosecutor that he failed to provide any testimony on a key issue, simply because I could immediately find the information.

“That would have been incredibly time-consuming with boxes of documents or printed PDFs,” he adds.

Dutton agrees, “The way the county provided documents to Mr. Snader made discovery even more difficult—and Laserfiche even more important. Because each page was provided as a separate file, it was quite difficult to tell what pages belonged to what records.

“Worse yet,” he adds, “it was nearly impossible for someone without technical know-how to figure out. But by using Laserfiche, in just a matter of hours, I was able to reconstruct all the discovery documents, fully migrate them into Laserfiche, make every page full-text searchable and teach Snader to do it all himself.”

“It took less than four hours to get Laserfiche installed and for me to learn how to use it,” Snader says. “Laserfiche’s help tools are phenomenal, the tutorials are excellent and the software is very user-friendly. It has a learning curve like any other software, but the end result was much better than I expected. I’ve definitely saved more time than I thought was possible.”

Snader plans to complete the discovery issues in State v. Valentini and continue on to scanning and archiving all his closed files. In fact, Laserfiche has even helped him market himself, as he can handle larger cases with even larger volumes of discovery documents.

“Laserfiche is a perfect complement to my growing practice,” Snader says. “It’s an easy-to-use product that provides fantastic results and is a great value for the cost.

“Other products may be less expensive,” he adds, “but they certainly don’t provide the same quality or capability.”