Contributed by: Kathy Jenisch, Records Manager, Kentucky Sanitation District #1

As the second largest public sewer utility in Kentucky, Sanitation District #1 (SD1) deals with a lot of records. Laserfiche Records Management Edition helped SD1 streamline records management while maintaining compliance with the State of Kentucky’s Local Government Retention Schedule and House Bill 26 – a recently passed law which mandates that every public agency must provide public access to records relating to its expenditures and maintain these records on its website for three years. Here is what the transparent records management implementation at SD1 looks like.

All of SD1’s records are stored in one of many records series in the Laserfiche repository.

Each records series has different retention applied to it and to all of the entries contained within it. For example, all files that are displayed to the public through Laserfiche WebLink are stored in the “House Bill 26” records series and have the following general retention schedule applied to them.

The actual destruction date for each individual record stored within this records series varies since it is dependent on the day that the document has become a record.

Workflows are the backbone of records management at SD1. Different workflows route files to the records series and copy shortcuts to regular work folders so that employees can work within the folder structure they are comfortable with, while the records automatically have retention applied from the very beginning.

For example, one workflow is responsible for routing documents related to capital improvement projects. This workflow first looks up information in an external database based on the document type, and then uses this information to populate metadata and create the path for routing the document. The original document is moved to a records series for storage, and a shortcut is created in the working folder for employees to use.

The following screenshot shows the working folder.

Below is a screenshot of the capital improvement project workflow.

Recently, Kentucky passed House Bill 26, which mandates that every public agency must provide public access to records relating to its expenditures on its website for three years. In order to comply with this mandate, SD1 implemented the Laserfiche WebLink public portal.

Below is a screenshot of the workflow that routes documents that will appear in Laserfiche WebLink. This workflow first routes the file to the “00 House Bill 26” records series and then creates a shortcut in the “WebLink” folder.

Anyone with internet access can access these documents on the SD1 website.

Since the records are all stored in a records series that has a three-year retention period applied to it, after three years, the records manager simply destroys them.

Implementing transparent records management with Laserfiche has resulted in the following benefits for SD1:

Learn how to automate records management in your organization by downloading the free, complete guide to records management.