Digital Initiatives Enable Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission to be More Effective
HARRISBURG, PA, FEBRUARY 28, 2005 -- Executive Director John Contino of the Pennsylvania State Ethics Commission (www.ethics.state.pa.us) first turned to document management to eliminate the need to bring in temporary help to number the pages of legal files for major court cases.
From that starting point, document management has become an integral part of Commission operations, adding significantly to its public education and information capabilities and becoming a valued productivity tool.
The Commission’s most prominent digital initiative is its e-Library, a searchable online repository of every Commission ruling dating back to 1979, and all of the financial disclosure statements required to be filed with the State Ethics Commission by public officials and public employees. The library gets an average of more than 2,500 visitors each month.
“The page numbering issue was just unacceptable,” says Contino, an attorney who has been executive director of the commission since 1987. “The last straw was what we had to do to fulfill the requirement that we provide the opposing attorneys in a big case with copies of all of our files.
“There were 20-25,000 pages of documents. It took a temporary employee more than two weeks just to hand number the pages. This was in addition to making copies. You couldn’t help thinking, ‘There has to be a better way.’”
By the time the next big case came along, the Commission had brought in a scalable document management system, powered by Laserfiche software. This time, the page numbering was accomplished electronically by a customized software module. Instead of sending a truckload of files to the opposing attorneys, the Commission was now able to hand them two CDs containing unalterable images of several thousand pages of files. The opposing attorneys were then able to find what they needed with ease since files were organized into folders with exhibits numbered just as they would be in hard copy format.
“Once we saw how well the new approach handled this task, we looked for other ways to use it,” Contino recalls. “One of my biggest goals since coming to the Commission in the mid-1980s was to make it easier for citizens to see and use our rulings.
“Using the Laserfiche Web publisher, we were able to put every ruling going back to 1979, plus all statements of financial interest filed with the Commission, directly online in searchable form. It was exactly what we wanted and turned out to be a far simpler matter than we had expected.”
“The e-Library is now a critical asset in fulfilling the educational portion of our mission which, in our view, is as important as our roles as investigators and as the compliance agency for financial disclosure information. Providing the public with ease of accessibility to public documents is an important aspect of the role of the State Ethics Commission.”
In addition to its external roles in dealing with outside attorneys and the e-Library, digital document management is now an integral part of the daily work of many of the Commission’s 21 employees, including Executive Director Contino. Every investigative file is now scanned and indexed in a secure Laserfiche database where they are available to authorized personnel. As a disaster recovery measure, all documents scanned and stored in the Laserfiche document management system are part of the Commission’s daily/nightly/weekly back-ups which are routinely taken off site. The Commission even has one key employee, an attorney who works with the investigative unit, who starts his work day in Laserfiche. From there, he is able to work with and share searchable copies of all his work, including emails.
“We are a small agency with a major mandate,” says Contino. “Digital archiving has enabled us to streamline a number of complex processes. People do not want to do business with hard copies any more so you can expect this trend to spread and become more the norm everywhere.”
The Commission’s Laserfiche database now includes more than 300,000 imaged pages of documents. According to IT Manager Sean Firestine, future plans for Laserfiche include broader usage in the Harrisburg office and deployment to a satellite office in Pittsburgh.
Engle Business Systems, a Laserfiche Value Added Reseller based in Elizabethtown, PA, assisted Firestine in designing and installing the initial Laserfiche solution and provides continuing strategy and technical support.
About Laserfiche
Based in Long Beach, CA, Laserfiche creates simple and elegant document management solutions that help organizations run smarter. Laserfiche solutions are used in 23,000 government and business offices worldwide.