As public sector modernization becomes a mandate, cities must evolve their core government processes to meet rising citizen expectations for digital service. The City of Mount Pearl successfully answered this call with Laserfiche, transforming the way it handles information and manages citizen services. By implementing digital forms, automating manual workflows, and migrating to Laserfiche Cloud, the city has achieved significant gains in efficiency, data accuracy, and the quality of services delivered to its community.

The city’s initial adoption of Laserfiche focused on fulfilling regulatory requirements by digitizing records and applying retention schedules in the Laserfiche repository. However, the true transformation began when the city embraced workflow automation to replace error-prone, manual processes.

“A lot of our legacy processes were manual, using spreadsheets, manually typing in information,” said Bill Peddle, records and information management officer at the City of Mount Pearl. “One of my goals when I develop a process is to remove as much manual data entry as possible, because anyone will tell you that manual data entry is your biggest avenue for error.”

This focus on automation and error reduction has been applied across multiple departments, including HR, Finance, and Permitting:

“The biggest thing is at the end of the day is, it’s not data stuck on someone’s shared drive,” Peddle said, highlighting the importance Laserfiche’s ability to capture information and enforce consistent naming and folder structure, maintaining data integrity.

A major part of the city’s digital transformation strategy involves replacing all old PDF forms with online Laserfiche Forms. One major transformation included combining six separate PDF forms into one permit application. The city also modernized their municipal elections nominations processes, as well as updating their traffic calming and inspection forms processes, among others. This shift has directly improved the speed and quality of services for residents.

Legacy forms required citizens to download, print, fill out, and then manually scan or drop off the PDF forms. Now, residents can fill out digital forms on the city website, and the system ensures they are correct and complete before submission. By making fields mandatory, the forms capture the data staff need to begin processing an application immediately. “This cuts down on that back and forth that the person who’s receiving the form has to do,” Peddle said. “They used to have to call the submitter and say, hey, you didn’t supply this or that — this just took extra time that we don’t have in city government.”

An added benefit of the new Laserfiche Forms: accessibility to a wider range of citizens. The city is incorporating Google Translate via an API into its public-facing forms, allowing residents whose first language is not English to translate the form within the application. “They’re not having to go to someone to try to figure out what the form says, which I thought was an amazing capability,” Peddle added.

The city’s goal is not just to optimize form submission, but to build end-to-end automated processes: “We’ll continue to improve and streamline,” Peddle said. “We aren’t stopping at form submissions; we’re going to be processing all of those applications with less manual error and faster speed.”

After more than 10 years using Laserfiche, the City of Mount Pearl recently had to choose between continuing to self-host or move to Laserfiche Cloud. The decision was ultimately made simple by the compelling benefits of a fully managed environment.

“The cost of a new subscription was very similar to our current subscription,” Peddle explained. “The key thing is that we don’t have to maintain all these local servers. And we don’t have to maintain all the storage, which adds up in costs.” The move allows the city to stay current on software and security updates.

According to Peddle, the benefits of migrating to Laserfiche Cloud included:

Staff adoption of the new environment has been overwhelmingly positive. The cloud interface is centralized and streamlined. “Before we had a repository shortcut; we had a Forms shortcut — now we just have Laserfiche Cloud and it has everything in one place,” said Peddle. “The pickup and the adoption of it by staff has been great.”

The successful roll-out of processes in various departments has created an internal appetite for further automation across the city. “Once you meet with the department and you provide them one process, and they see how well it runs, they’re immediately asking, ‘What can we do next?’” Peddle said.

Ultimately, the most rewarding aspect of the entire project for the Peddle is the positive impact on city employees and residents.

“My favorite thing about Laserfiche is not the software itself; it’s the feedback that I get when a process is built, and users saying, ‘This makes my work life so much easier,’” he added. “At the end of the day, that’s the ultimate goal.”