Win-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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Charlottesville, 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came to records management, Charlottesville’s paper history held little charm for the city staff left dealing with its outdated and overgrown filing system.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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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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We’re proud to announce the eight organizations who will be receiving Run Smarter Awards at the 2009 Laserfiche Institute Conference.

Please join us as we congratulate this year’s winners: the City of Lynwood, CA; Thurston County, WA; the City of Okotoks, AB; BC Biomedical; Berger Financial Group; Texas A&M University; Jamestown, NY, Public Schools; and the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

We’d like to thank everyone who submitted nominations for this year’s award—and we’d like to invite you to join us at the Conference January 12-14 in Los Angeles to congratulate this year’s winners.
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Running smarter sometimes means pacing yourself.

That’s the lesson from 2008 Run Smarter Award winner Thurston County, WA. Until implementing Laserfiche in 2007, the rustic county, peppered as it is with forests and Puget Sound waters, was beset with what could best be described as information management logjams.

But in less than two years, Thurston County has evolved its use of Laserfiche from a pilot project handling backlog conversion to the backbone of a department-by-department phenomenon. In short, Thurston County has realized the very essence of what it means to Run Smarter.
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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 »

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 »

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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“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.

“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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Nestled 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 »

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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In 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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Palm tree-shaped islands. The world’s tallest building. An indoor ski resort. In the past 30 years, Dubai, United Arab Emirates, has quickly blossomed from a regional business center to a global destination. But with 30 years of development comes 30 years of paperwork to manage—which is why Dubai chose a scalable, easy-to-implement Laserfiche solution to convert all of the city’s paper into digital format. Now, an extensive back-file conversion project is under way, with Laserfiche poised to take over day-forward scanning as well. Full story »

In many cities, staff have to impose on the city clerk’s office whenever they need to consult a report, contract or other municipal document. But thanks to Laserfiche, staff throughout the City of Goodyear, AZ, can instantly access these items online, which helps them work more efficiently—and frees staff in the clerk’s office to spend more time helping the public.

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With over 300,000 residents, Riverside, CA, is already one of California’s largest cities, and with each new tally on the census taker’s clipboard comes more information for city staff to manage. So it’s only logical that Riverside is expanding its Laserfiche enterprise content management system to keep pace. Thanks to the drive of the city clerk, what began as a means for one department to find information more quickly has now become the technology platform for citywide business process improvements, cost savings and better public service. Full story »