The 2015 Digital County Survey results are in, and 22 Laserfiche customers made the list of winners!

The annual Digital Counties Survey examines the overall technology programs and plans of participating counties and recognizes those that use technology to improve citizen service and boost efficiencies.

In the announcement, The Center for Digital Government noted that several technology trends are evident in the surveyed counties’ technology plans, including:

• Shared services
• Transparency and open data
• Public portals and e-government

Here is how three winning counties are using Laserfiche to address these trends.

ECM as a Shared Service: Tompkins County, NY

Named a Top Digital County for the second year in a row, Tompkins County continues to innovate and expand its technology portfolio. Tompkins County first started using Laserfiche to convert over 100 years of public records to digital files.

In addition, the county also established the shared services initiative with its municipalities. Rather than having its member municipalities own and support their own ECM systems, each municipality uses the Laserfiche system managed by the County Clerk’s Office. This shared service approach reduces support maintenance costs and allows participating municipalities to focus their resources elsewhere.

Today, Tompkins County uses Laserfiche in all 29 of its departments and 18 of its municipalities to:

• Expedite public information requests by maintaining documents in searchable, indexed repositories
• Protect confidential medical information in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) through file-, folder- and user-based security
• Mitigate the risks of disasters and business disruptions through the use of geographically dispersed backup servers

Read the Tompkins County case study to learn more.

Transparency: Skagit County, WA

Skagit County, WA, was recognized for their leadership in transparency initiatives. For example, they developed a GPS location-based mapping application that allows citizens to look up property costs, tax values, photos and permits recorded against the property.

The application—which gets more than 7,000 hits a day—is used by real estate agents, banks and even pizza delivery services.

“Transparency is extremely important in public service,” said Michael Almvig, Manager of Information Services at Skagit County. “We use technology to deliver increasing levels of transparency, public safety and reliability, while also ensuring the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of the information we’re entrusted to protect.”

Read this article to learn more.

E-Government: Oneida County, NY

One of the first New York counties to go paperless, Oneida County completely modernized how legal assistants and attorneys access legal case information.

As part of e-discovery, the District Attorney’s office tags documents that need to be shared with the attorneys. When the District Attorney’s office is ready to provide attorneys with relevant documents, a workflow automatically routes tagged documents into a folder that can be accessed through a web portal.

This allows key documents to be accessed through mobile devices and eliminates the need to lug heavy boxes of documents to court.

Read this article to learn more.

Other Winners

There are a total of 22 Laserfiche customers who earned the Top Digital County distinction with at least four in each population category:

500,000 or more:

• Fairfax County, VA
• County of San Bernadino, CA
• Hennepin County, MN
• County of Ventura, CA

250,000 – 499,999

• Chesterfield County, VA
• Jefferson Parish, LA
• Loudoun County, VA
• Leon County, FL
• Durham County, NC

150,000 – 249,999

• Catawba County, NC
• Tammany Parish, LA
• Charles County, MD
• Oneida County, NY
• Cabarrus County, NC
• Davidson County, NC
• Mohave County, AZ

Up to 150,000

• Nevada County, CA
• Roanoke County, CA
• Skagit County, WA
• Gloucester County, VA
• Albemarle County, VA
• Tompkins County, NY

Download the Center for Digital Government trend paper, Streamlining the Business of Government, to learn how enterprise content management (ECM) software can be used to streamline business processes and deliver higher value to citizens.