Quicklinks

Empowering citizens with Web access to public records

Global Municipal Exchange, December 2006

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.

Employees expected to save time and improve efficiency in the city clerk’s office for Montana’s fifth largest city. But they got more than they bargained for when they found they could deliver an added benefit to residents. Not only can Bozeman’s citizens access public records over the Web, but the city’s most document-heavy department manages and publishes agendas and related documents online, making the process easy for staff and citizens alike. In this issue, City Clerk Brit Fontenot, Deputy City Clerk Stuart John Bernard and GIS Manager Jon Henderson give an inside view of the solution, its unexpected benefits and its future possibilities.

When citizens wanted to look at a deed or find out what the city commission would be discussing at its next meeting, they called the city clerk’s office. For years, staff had found the records in a file cabinet, copied them and either sent them to residents or had them pick them up. When requests began coming by e-mail, city employees still had to rely on paper and file cabinets.

E-mail created its own complications when city staff prepared agenda packets with materials from the planning department. With numerous e-mail exchanges concerning each agenda, employees found it difficult to track changes and ensure that the final agenda was the correct one.

Bozeman’s recently retired City Clerk, Robin Sullivan, had held the office for nearly thirty years. After so many years on the job, she had a wealth of information, with even the most peripheral facts at her fingertips. When Sullivan wasn’t around, staff sometimes found it difficult to rummage through paper files to find a requested record. Even when it was clear where to look, searching through paper files was time consuming.

Sullivan first heard about Laserfiche at the yearly Montana Clerk’s Institute in Billings, and she decided to look into electronic document management to ease records management and smooth processes within the clerk’s office. According to GIS Manager Jon Henderson, who was there for the installation, there was no need to test other products.

“It was clear from the beginning that Laserfiche was the leader in document management. We very quickly saw that it was the right solution for us,” says Henderson. The Laserfiche installation was simple. “It took less than an hour. And within a couple of days we had people trained and scanning in.”

Bozeman installed Laserfiche on a dedicated server with plenty of storage space to ensure room to grow. City offices have multiple scanning stations, using high-end, small-format scanners and a large-format scanner for the GIS department to scan in maps and drawings.

In the early stages of using Laserfiche, Bozeman configured the system to give access only to employees. But seeing the potential for citizen interaction, the city upgraded its system to include secure Web access for residents. More recently, Bozeman added Laserfiche Agenda Manager™ to speed and simplify preparation, submission, approval and publication of agenda items for city commission meetings.

Fontenot especially appreciates the acquisition of Laserfiche Agenda Manager. “We started with our largest department, the planning department, which is very document-intensive. They have not only Adobe^® PDF, Microsoft^® Word or Excel documents but also maps that come in from developers in all different formats. Now the planners are able to compile all the information and send it to the Agenda Manager, so that we receive it in a readable form.”

He also appreciates the increased accuracy and efficiency in the approval process. “Laserfiche routes the workflow very efficiently, and it allows the approval process to move forward without having to keep running up to see if planners are in their offices. It’s all automated—we save a lot of time, we don’t miss any documents and documents are updated more efficiently. Ultimately, we can meet our deadlines much more easily."

“We used to receive the documents through standard e-mail. Prior to our deadline, the planners could add to or remove the information for the packets. It became quite confusing because you might have six or seven e-mails with updated information, deleted information or reports that had been changed. Since we’re not experts in planning, it would be hard for us in the clerk’s office to review each change and know what was right. Agenda Manager allows the planners to upload the changes themselves, which means that when we get it, we’re assured that what we receive is the final product.”

On Thursdays, when the clerk’s office assembles agenda packets for the city commission meetings, Fontenot estimates that Laserfiche eliminates at least two hours worth of work for staff members. But that’s just in preparation.

“Not only does it save us time in compiling the agenda, it really saves us time when we put the agenda up on the Web. We don’t have to go through the old process of creating the PDF files and uploading them to the Web. It was a labor-intensive process because of our Web interface. But Laserfiche does all that for us. We just place it up there in a big digital packet and it’s done.”

Fontenot calculates that Agenda Manager saves at least three hours of work time per meeting, adding, “And that’s just in one department. Our strategy is to take one department at a time and get them fully functional with Agenda Manager. Once we get other departments on the system, we’re going to save a huge amount of time.”

Before being promoted to deputy clerk, Bernard was initially hired to scan documents into Laserfiche. He began with city ordinances and city commission charter resolutions dating back to the 1930s. In addition to commission meeting minutes, Bernard eventually scanned in agreements and calls for bids. After using Laserfiche for less than a year, the vast majority of city commission documents, over 92,000 images comprising more than 25,000 documents, are in the Laserfiche repository.

According to Bernard, residents most frequently want to access meeting minutes to find out how members of the commission voted. They also want to look at agendas, resolutions, ordinances and easements. People still call the clerk’s office for records but now staff can quickly search the repository for the requested record. “More importantly,” says Bernard, “they can very easily search online for anything they need. We get a lot of positive feedback about that.”

While mail or physical pickup are still options for delivering records to citizens, city employees usually take full advantage of the automation Laserfiche provides. Often staff can e-mail a copy of the document to the citizen. Occasionally, they copy files to CDs or flash drives the residents bring in.

“In the past people would come in and we would make copies for 25 cents a page,” says City Clerk Fontenot. “Now we put ten, hundreds and sometimes thousands of pages on a CD or e-mail PDF documents. It saves money, supplies and wear and tear on city equipment. If a citizen has the time I walk them through the search process over the Web link. Then the next time they can find it themselves. Give someone a fish and they eat for a day. Teach them to fish and they eat for life.”

However Fontenot and Bernard deliver the records, they can find them in seconds online. “I really saw how useful it was to search by keyword, especially after Robin left and we couldn’t just ask her what had happened fifteen years ago. And it makes it so much easier when someone comes in and asks what week we passed a resolution. I can just search the agendas and have an answer.”

Bernard notes that searching by index fields also brings quick results. That’s quite a contrast to the old days of paper files. Bernard recalls, “I’d have to get up from my desk, find the right file cabinet and pull the file. Or worse yet, the file might be stored in the jail at the other side of the parking lot. With Laserfiche I save at least five hours a week, just for the searches I do.” Of course, Bernard does fewer searches now that Bozeman residents can locate records over the Web.

The city remains committed to educating its citizens on how to access the records. Says Fontenot, “We want to train people to search and retrieve our records. It takes the mystery out of city records, lends a great deal to our transparency and, once people are comfortable with and trust the process, the staff is free to work on other tasks.”

GIS Manager Henderson agrees, noting the time saved daily since installing Laserfiche. Previously, GIS staff would have to ask the clerk’s office for records. Now he can direct both staff and residents to do their own research over the Web. “I like to say that we’re empowering the staff and the citizens to help themselves. It’s wonderful to take someone with very little computer experience, show them just a little bit and have them be able to take it from there. Then they can show someone else how to do it.”

Currently, the city clerk’s office, GIS department, and planning department use Laserfiche. But Henderson has more ambitious plans. He envisions a system where even a novice computer user can use a single search to click on a location and pull up a deed, easement or any related document. “I’d like to see the whole city using Laserfiche within a map interface. I’d like staff to be able to click on a map point and have the search bring up all the associated documents.”

To achieve that goal, Bozeman will have to do some reorganization of its filing system, which depends on records that are not consistent. Document naming conventions and formats for meeting minutes, for example, have changed over the decades. Currently the city is exploring new ways to make the system more intuitive for users. “At least in Laserfiche,” says Henderson, “we can shuffle documents around really easily and use more fields in the templates to help us reorganize.”

Henderson looks forward to getting all the city departments to adopt Laserfiche. Next in line is the fire department. Henderson plans to modify the system so that firefighters can bring up an address and see all the related documents to determine, for example, whether there has been a fire there before. He also sees the potential in being able to store audio and video files.

“If you ask any of us,” says Henderson,” we’ll tell you we’re saving staff time, we’re saving resources and we’re making things available to the public in a more efficient way than ever before. I see a huge future with Laserfiche for us and the community as a whole.”