Each year, the Center for Digital Government (CDG) partners with the League of National Cities (NLC) to conduct the annual Digital Cities Survey. Since the inception of the Top Digital Cities program, municipalities from across the nation have sought the title of “Top Digital City” by completing a comprehensive application to showcase how they are using technology to improve public service. The CDG reviews hundreds of applications each year, and ranks the top 10 survey respondents among five population cohorts, and awards them with the honor of “Top Digital City.”

The annual Digital Cities Survey ranks municipal performance across a number of technology categories:

1.       Open: Open Government/Transparency/Open Data

2.       Mobile: Mobility/Mobile Applications

3.       Engaged: Social Media/Portal/Citizen Engagement

4.       Collaborative: Shared Services/Collaboration Initiatives

5.       Secure: Cybersecurity Measures/Initiatives

6.       Staffed/Supported: Hiring and Retaining Competent IT Personnel

7.       Connected: Broadband/Wireless Infrastructure

8.       Efficient: Budget/Cost Control/Performance Measures

9.       Resilient: Disaster Recovery/Continuity of Operations

10.   Innovative/Best Practices: Initiatives

The CDG released the results from the 15^th Annual Digital Cities Survey, and we are excited to announce that 26 of this year’s winners choose Laserfiche! Here are a few examples of how cities are innovating and going digital using Laserfiche ECM:

CITY OF ITHACA, NY

Nestled in central New York and new to the list of Top Digital City winners is the City of Ithaca. The City of Ithaca is home to 30,000 residents, 20,000 students from Cornell University, and over 100,000 people in the greater metropolitan area. With a highly engaged population, the city was experiencing a large volume of information requests from the public. In order to comply with state-mandated Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request timelines, the City of Ithaca implemented an electronic request form on its website and automated the staff review and fulfillment process. Eliminating the time-intensive processing of paper forms resulted in a 35 percent reduction in the time it takes to fulfill a request. Now, the public has around-the-clock access to request information through the city’s website, eliminating the need to travel to City Hall. In addition, the city uses archived data to track frequent document requests and make this information available on-demand to the public via a public document portal.

“Laserfiche allows us to take the burden and responsibility for compliance off individual employees, and moves it to a centralized and defined system,” says Julie Holcomb, City Clerk. “We can ensure documents are stored as long as they are required, and the documents are now also safe from accidental loss or tampering, and easily available.”

Click here to learn more about how the City of Ithaca automated its public records request process!

 

CITY OF WESTMINSTER, CO

The City of Westminster, CO, has been named a Top Digital City for the sixth year in a row. Prior to using Laserfiche, the city was receiving between 60 and 70 business and liquor license applications each month. Business licenses have as many as 10 separate pages while each liquor license package contains up to 200 pages, which quickly amounted to significant time and resources spent processing applications. Using an automated forms and workflow process, the City of Westminster has been able to reduce data entry errors and make sure that all application information is consistently entered in its database. As a result, the city has processed business and liquor licenses 57 percent faster than before, resulting in a savings of $4,371 a year in salary costs.

Find out how the City of Westminster streamlined its business and liquor license application process here!

CITY OF LONG BEACH, CA

For the sixth year in a row, the City of Long Beach, CA, has been named a Top Digital City! Located in Los Angeles County, Long Beach is the seventh largest city in California and home to 469,000 citizens. As a rapidly growing municipality, Long Beach embraced technology by using Laserfiche software to give police officers instant access to the information and images they need to prevent gang crime—right from officers’ patrol cars. By improving access to information, the City of Long Beach was able to boost gang arrests by 650 percent in one year and reduce violent crime in the community.

Learn more about Long Beach’s gang injunction program by reading our white paper here!

LASERFICHE TOP DIGITAL CITIES

List of winning Laserfiche customers from the 15^th annual Digital Cities Survey:

o   500,000 or more:

§  City of Los Angeles, CA

§  City & County of San Francisco, CA

o   250,000 to 499,999:

§  City of Virginia Beach, VA

§  City of Riverside, CA

§  City of Long Beach, CA

§  City of Sacramento, CA

§  City of Henderson, NV

o   125,000 to 249,999:

§  City of Alexandria, VA

§  City of Hampton, VA

§  City of Winston-Salem, NC

§  City of Denton, TX

§  City of Modesto, CA

§  City of Rancho Cucamonga, CA

§  City of Norfolk, VA

§  City of Augusta, GA

o   75,000 to 124,999:

§  City of Roanoke, VA

§  City of Lynchburg, VA

§  City of Boulder, CO

§  City of Westminster, CO

§  City of Newport Beach, CA

§  City of San Leandro, CA

o   Up to 75,000:

§  Village of Schaumburg, IL

§  City of DeSoto, TX

§  Town of Marana, AZ

§  City of Ithaca, NY

§  City of Hudson, OH

Get the new and exclusive Center for Digital Government research report, “Automating the Business of Government: Could Document Management be a Game-Changer?” and learn why state and local governments are turning to document management to address today’s pain points.