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Making a molehill out of a mountain

Global Municipal Exchange, June 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.

Undaunted by the scope of their plan, the city forged ahead, quickly but methodically. The city’s digital repository already manages over 2 million pages, and they’ve completed several integrations with other systems–all in less than a year. System Administrator Bob Weakley describes the how and why, and shares a glimpse of what’s next for his city.

Always seeking new ways to improve internal processes and the quality of public service, city leaders zeroed in on the proliferation of paper files. Tasks related to storing and protecting paper documents were expensive and complicated. Managing e-mail requests for public records added another layer of complexity.

A task force, spearheaded by City Secretary Patricia Hutson, Police Records Manager Dianne Eagleton and Court Administrator Debbie Durko, began investigating more efficient alternatives. Their research, including visits to cities with document management solutions in place, convinced them that going digital could be a high-impact initiative with benefits for the entire city.

The task force considered all the angles: systems integration, deployment speed, and the necessity of choosing a system that staff would actually like to use. After issuing an RFP and performing extensive reviews, the task force chose local authorized Laserfiche reseller DocuNav Solutions and got started.

The task force turned to the IS Department at implementation time. Director Kyle Spooner recruited Bob Weakley, an experienced IT staffer and GIS manager, to turn the task force’s plan into a practical solution.

“After meeting with each department, we decided to start in the City Secretary’s Office and follow that with the Police Department, Purchasing, the Municipal Court and Finance,” Weakley says. “We agreed that the City Secretary and Police Department had the greatest needs. In particular, they each needed better ways to respond to open-records requests.”

Hutson and her staff began scanning ordinances and other records into their document management repository. Among the first benefits they realized was the ability for authorized users to e-mail documents to other departments and citizens requesting information.

“During this phase, the City Secretary established a procedure for responding to open-government requests. It enables us to fulfill requests to the letter while maintaining complete control over documents, such as personnel files, that are not to be made public.”

The importance of usability became evident in this period, as the implementation moved into the Police Department. Veteran detectives, worried that the new system would force them to abandon familiar ways of working, weren’t shy about voicing their concerns. “We ran into a pretty good amount of resistance,” says Weakley, “but we stayed our course.”The new system soon proved its usefulness to the detectives’ satisfaction. “The breakthrough came when the detectives discovered that the new system would help them get going with their cases every day.”

The system was able to allay the investigators’ concerns largely due to the efforts of Eagleton, who quickly found ways to streamline management of case files, including those coming in overnight. She and her clerks now prepare those files before detectives arrive each morning. “Thanks to an integration with our Tiburon system, the Laserfiche file even includes digital copies of all case-intake screens,” Weakley adds.

The Municipal Court has also realized the benefits of interoperability. Integrated with their citation and handheld ticketing systems, Laserfiche extracts information from both sources and allows court staff to verify payments and balances instantly upon receiving requests.

The Finance Department is planning an integration with its HTE accounting package to deliver similar benefits to its clerks and managers. When that integration is complete, authorized Finance Department users will be able to review invoices and supporting material from a single, unified software interface.

Summing up the results of the city’s full-on approach to document management, Weakley says, “The people who have gone digital definitely take more pride in their work now. Momentum is another reason to move quickly. Everyone talks about it. Everyone who doesn’t have it yet is clamoring for it. We even have other municipalities contacting us. They want to know how they can get on our track.”