Posts Tagged ‘State and Local Government’

“What Happened Next Was Nothing Short of Amazing”

How a plan to stop using Laserfiche instead inspires city-wide adoption in Albany, OR

May 5th, 2009 by Hobey Echlin Hobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

albany-orTo be honest, the City of Albany, OR, hadn’t really been maximizing Laserfiche when its new Finance Director wanted to do away with using it altogether five years ago.

The city had installed Laserfiche in its Finance Department in 1998 as a virtual file cabinet. “Between 1999-2003 we were only scanning a few thousand documents a month and it was limited to just the Finance department,” admits Network Administrator and Laserfiche Luminary Allen Pilgrim. By 2004, Laserfiche storage totaled just ten volumes of 4.6GB each. A significant number, but apparently not significant enough for one new city administrator.
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Integration Nation

Bakersfield, CA, uses Laserfiche to unite documents with business-critical applications

February 3rd, 2009 by Melissa Henley Melissa Henley is a Laserfiche staff member

100px-seal_of_bakersfield_californiaIn Bakersfield, CA, a town known for its agriculture, manufacturing and petroleum extraction and refining is now known for something different: its innovative technology.

As the fastest-growing city in the United States with a population of over 250,000, Bakersfield was experiencing an explosion of records. “We wanted a document management system to store public documents in a secure, easily searchable manner,” says IT Director Bob Trammell. “We chose Laserfiche because of its pricing and how easy it was to search for and retrieve documents.”

“I had already installed Laserfiche in a city where I was previously employed, so I was very familiar with it,” Trammell adds. “That was eleven years ago, and today all 19 departments in the city, as well as thousands of citizens, use Laserfiche.”
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Third Time’s the Charm

Mohave County, AZ, discovers experience is the ticket to success for enterprise record management

December 9th, 2008 by Hobey Echlin Hobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

Mohave County Seal
For Mohave County, AZ, the third time was the charm for the county’s Records Manager to successfully implement Laserfiche enterprise-wide.

The dry-witted comedian Steven Wright once joked, “I’m so far ahead of my time, nobody’s there yet.” Mohave County Records Manager Chuck Chlarson can relate. He saw his two predecessors try without much success to implement an enterprise-wide records management system—despite a state mandate to do so—because of a lack of technical support and user buy-in. But as Chlarson has found, in Mohave County, being the third Records Manager is the ticket to success.
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Putting Boulder City on Easy Street

Document management’s no crapshoot for Nevada’s biggest small town

November 4th, 2008 by Hobey Echlin Hobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

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 »

Badge to the Future

Elk River, MN’s hi-tech cop shop is tops for making greener traffic stops

October 10th, 2008 by Hobey Echlin Hobey Echlin is a Laserfiche staff member

“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.

jeff beahen“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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Paperless Meetings are the Wave of the Future

New Jersey communities are using Laserfiche to eliminate paper and put more information in the hands of decision makers at public government meetings

October 3rd, 2008

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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Dynamic Denton Lives the Legacy

Denton, Texas preserves its past, streamlines its present and frames its future

May 12th, 2007

With space a premium commodity, a storage room full of paper was a luxury the City of Denton, Texas couldn’t afford. But that’s what city staff was facing in late 1999. The city’s human resources department had 15 lateral 5-drawer file cabinets, filled to overflowing, crammed into 300 square feet of space. Even worse than sacrificing the storage space was trying to comb the files for information. Full story »

Ropin’ Runaway Records

Texas City Corralls a Century’s Worth of Paper Using Document Management

February 12th, 2007

Residents of the 186-year-old City of Bryan, Texas experience “The Good Life, Texas Style.” This trademarked motto motivates members of Bryan City Government to cultivate an active relationship with its 70,000 fellow citizens. To this end, Bryan kicked-off the new millennium with a groundbreaking document management solution that would eventually lead to the development of the first integration module to connect Laserfiche with its management software, SunGard® HTE. Full story »

Bozeman’s Chosen

Empowering citizens with Web access to public records

December 21st, 2006
Brit Fontenot

Brit Fontenot

A stunning view of the Rockies, a rich cultural life and a strong local economy led Bizjournals magazine to conclude that Bozeman, Montana offers the best quality of life of any small town in America. Excellent public service is one reason Bozeman calls itself “The Most Livable Place” for its 32,000 citizens. To maintain that high standard, the city clerk of commission’s office adopted an electronic document management solution for public records. Full story »

Thinking Up

Surrey, BC, prepares for population proliferation

August 13th, 2006

Already home to 400,000 residents, the City of Surrey is among Canada’s fastest-growing municipalities. At its current rate, Surrey will become the largest city in British Columbia in less than 10 years. Such dynamic growth means a great deal of work for the Planning and Development Department and the Information Technology Division. Full story »

The Secret of Getting Ahead is Getting Started

Monroe, NC reaches peak efficiency

July 13th, 2006

The City of Monroe, North Carolina, takes pride in providing excellent quality of life for its residents. Citizens enjoy many services—such as the Monroe Aquatics and Fitness Center—that are rare in cities of similar size.

Providing top-tier amenities depends on reaching ever-higher levels of efficiency. That’s where Monroe’s document management projects come in. Below, City Clerk Jeanne Deese and Systems Administrator Bruce Bounds describe how digital agenda packets, systems integration and other initiatives are helping Monroe get ahead in the race to maintain a city where residents love to live. Full story »

Making a molehill out of a mountain

June 14th, 2006

The City of North Richland Hills, Texas, strives to be the city of choice in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. Recognizing that success depends on providing great service while conquering costs and complexity, officials came together to launch a citywide document management project to support their mission. Full story »

A Paperless Paper Trail For Alaska Billions

October 24th, 2005

When you have a state where:

  • More than $20 billion is invested, half in blue-chip stocks, the rest in government and corporate bonds and real estate;
  • It’s expected to produce $1.5 billion a year, including a dividend for every man, woman and child who’s a legal resident of your state – making yours the only one of the 50 United States to give money to its residents instead of collecting money from them;
  • and because we live in a litigious age, when stockholder lawsuits are as commonplace and familiar as the mailman,

It was just common sense for The Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation to install an electronic watchdog, Laserfiche, to keep an eye on its portfolio of stocks in thousands of corporations, domestic and foreign.
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