Offering Laserfiche records management as a shared service increased efficiency and enhanced countywide collaboration.
Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Julie Holcomb, City Clerk and Alan Karasin, Senior Network Administrator, City of Ithaca, NY
Located in central New York, the city of Ithaca is the county seat of Tompkins County and home to 30,000 residents. Each fall, nearly 30,000 students make their way to Ithaca’s Cornell University, Ithaca College and Tompkins-Cortland Community College.
The city used to process marriage licenses using a proprietary software system that worked well for them at the time, but there was growing concerns regarding the future of software maintenance. As the system was reaching its end-of-life, the city decided to re-evaluate the process and use Laserfiche to streamline it with development assistance from their solution provider, General Code.
The new process starts when the couple applying for a marriage license arrives at the license office with their official documents. The customer service representative fills out a marriage license application form in Laserfiche Forms using the information provided by the couple. Once that form is filled out and submitted, Laserfiche Workflow creates a formatted PDF document with the information. The customer service rep prints out this document onto a paper form provided by the state. The couple reviews the printed form to make sure that all the information in it is correct. If any information is incorrect, the rep updates it in Forms and prints out another form. Once all the information is finalized, the rep approves it and the printed form is signed by everyone.
The submitted form is placed in a queue awaiting information from the actual marriage ceremony. The couple has 60 days to get married from the date that they pick up the marriage license. Once the couple is married, they bring or mail the form back into the office. The rep enters the marriage information into Laserfiche Forms.
Once that information is filled out and the form submitted, Workflow generates the marriage certificate which the rep prints out and mails to the couple. The rep then scans the original, signed marriage license form into the couple’s folder in Laserfiche.
If 90 days pass and the couple doesn’t return the certificate with the marriage information, the license expires and all documents are moved to the Expired folder in Laserfiche.
Many citizens come to the marriage licensing office to retrieve a certified copy of their marriage records. Since all marriage certification information is stored in Laserfiche, the customer service rep simply performs a field search using some of the person’s information to find the appropriate folder. The folder either contains the original certificate information, and a scanned copy of the original marriage license, or, for all older licenses, an empty document with just the metadata that contains the appropriate information.
Older records may require the rep to enter additional information from historical marriage books into the metadata fields to complete the record but once this is done initially, the task never needs to be repeated. If there is no actual certificate available, the rep launches a workflow that generates the certified transcript of the marriage record. The rep then prints this certificate on the appropriate form. This whole process takes just a few minutes.
Streamlining the marriage license process with Laserfiche has resulted in many benefits for the city of Ithaca. Unlike the old process, the new process can be launched from any computer with an internet connection, making it possible for people who are homebound or incarcerated to be able to apply for a marriage license. Marriage license transcripts are also much easier to retrieve since they are all stored in a central location and can be easily searched for vs. flipping through pages of older handwritten books.
Town and City Clerks in New York State now have an additional product they can consider when evaluating their licensing needs. As with many Laserfiche projects, these benefits are the “gift that keep on giving.” Future generations of municipal workers will become much more efficient and effective as they will no longer need to sort through old records in questionable condition and stored in less than optimal locations.
Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: Jeannine Stickle, Records Manager Clerk and Linda Manning, City Clerk, City of Aspen, CO
The City of Aspen, CO has roughly 6,200 registered voters. Regular elections are held every two years, and the voter turnout is usually about 40%, which equates to between 2,200-2,500 voters. The city has up to three vote centers that support six precincts. Voters can submit ballots in five different ways: by mail, drop-off at a vote center, by email, early or in-person.
Before implementing Laserfiche, the city faced many challenges in managing the voting process. For in-person voting, election judges had to search through printed registration lists to determine if a voter was at a correct vote center. New voters who registered at the county clerk’s office had to take a printed certificate to the vote center. Judges needed to call the county clerk to confirm that the voter was actually registered before letting him or her vote.
If a voter moved to a different precinct or changed his or her name, the election judge had to also call the county clerk to confirm these changes. The election judge had to verify the signatures on mail-in or drop-off ballots against a printed list.
According to Colorado state law, a voter can submit up to three ballots. Each successive ballot voids the previous one. Everything was kept track of in a hand-written poll book. In total, there were 12 hand-written logs used for various ballot processes. These logs were then re-entered into the master polling spreadsheet.
The whole process had a high potential for errors because paper was not able to display real-time updates to voter information. Since Aspen is a resort town with high residential turnover (20%+ annually and large number of second homeowners), the city experiences many changes to the voter lists.
All of these challenges led the city of Aspen to try to find an easier way to manage the elections. Laserfiche was the solution.
“There is a lack of software out there that does what we are doing with Laserfiche (for elections.)” – says Linda Manning, City Clerk.
Before any election, the county clerk sends images of voter signatures to the city clerk. The city clerk uploads these signatures into the Laserfiche repository and names each one according to the voter ID number, which is the unique identifier for every voter. Each signature image in the repository has a Voter Information template attached to it.
A list of all registered voters and their associated information is stored in an Excel spreadsheet by voter ID number. The city clerk runs a Laserfiche workflow that parses the spreadsheet, finds the associated signature image in the repository and updates its metadata with information from the spreadsheet.
If Workflow cannot find the appropriate signature image because the voter is new, it creates a placeholder document to which it adds the appropriate metadata. When the county clerk sends the appropriate signature image, the city clerk overwrites the placeholder image.
The image below shows the diagram of the workflow which parses the voter spreadsheet, finds the signature image and updates the image’s metadata with information from the spreadsheet.
Processing Mail-in BallotsIn Colorado, a voter has three chances to vote. To keep track of the number of times that each voter has voted, the city added fields into the Voter Information metadata template that correspond to three different ballots. Since every voter initially receives a ballot by mail, the city clerk does a mass update to the Ballot 1 Type and Issue Date fields to reflect the issuance of the ballot to the voters in the database at the time the first ballots are mailed.
Each mailed out ballot is identified by a unique barcode, which contains the voter ID number. The city clerk scans the barcode of any ballot that is returned and enters the ballot return method, date and ballot batch ID into a spreadsheet. A workflow parses this spreadsheet, finds the associated signature image in the repository and updates the appropriate metadata fields with information from the spreadsheet.
Election judges check the signature on the ballot against the stored signature image in the database. If the signatures don’t match up, the election judge moves the image to the For Review folder. The city clerk contacts each person in this folder and asks them to prove their identity in a different way.
In Colorado, new voters can register all the way up to and including on election day. New registered voters receive a certificate of registration, which they show to one of the election judges at the vote center. In order to record this voter’s information in Laserfiche, the election judge fills out the electronic Voter Registration form with information from the registration certificate. Some information, such as the city, is pre-populated to simplify filling out the form. Once the election judge submits the form, a copy is saved in a New Registrations folder in the repository.
When a person arrives at the vote center to vote, the election judge checks-in him or her by finding the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche.
The judge can quickly see if this person has already voted in this election by looking to see if Ballot 1, Ballot 2 and Ballot 3 fields have values in them.
The judge clicks on the button in the toolbar corresponding to the correct ballot number. If no ballot has been submitted so far, the judge clicks on Ballot 1. If there are values for Ballot 1 in the metadata already, the judge clicks on Ballot 2, etc. Clicking the button launches the corresponding Laserfiche form. For example, if the Ballot 2 button is clicked, the Ballot 2 Submission form is opened.
The judge fills out the voter ID number and all other information regarding this ballot. If the judge selects Polling as the ballot return method, the rest of the form fields are populated with the correct information.
Once the form is submitted, Laserfiche Workflow finds the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche and updates the metadata with ballot information. If the form submitted is for Ballot 2 or 3, Workflow invalidates the other ballots.
The image below shows the workflow that updates the voter’s signature image in Laserfiche with the appropriate ballot information.
Benefits of LaserficheLaserfiche has made the elections process at the city of Aspen much more streamlined and efficient.
“Since we have implemented the new system, we have become very efficient. Election judges take less time to process ballots, since the ballots are ready for processing much earlier,” says Linda.
Since all voter data is available in Laserfiche, the election judges don’t need to enter everything on a paper log, and then re-enter into the computer. Checking in voters at vote centers is much more efficient, since election judges don’t need to read through printed lists and make phone calls to other vote centers.
Auditing has also been streamlined since reconciling the number of ballots with the number of voters is easy and the data is accurate. The city does not have to fear that inconsistencies are discovered in the event of an external audit.
Watch the “Modernizing Vital Election Processes in the Digital Age” to learn how two forward-thinking government organizations are successfully leveraging technology to streamline the voter registration and election judge hiring process
Laserfiche Solution Contributed By: JR Walters, IT Director, Samish Indian Nation
Headquartered in the Pacific Northwest, the Samish Indian Nation is governed by a seven member Tribal Council elected to oversee the tribe’s welfare and resources. Members are offered a wide variety of opportunities including housing assistance, elders’ services, healthcare and wellness, and cultural enrichment.
In order to help manage the various programs offered to the tribal members, the nation works with state and federal agencies to implement many grant funded activities. In addition to maintaining the economic welfare of the tribe, these grant deliverables help to protect the environment, and preserve natural and cultural resources.
Before Laserfiche, approving grant applications was a time-consuming, manual process. The tribe’s departments are distributed between five sites and sending paper grant application packets through interoffice mail for internal review and approval was inefficient and costly. Occasionally, grant submission deadlines were barely met because paperwork got lost between sites, sat too long for approval, or was difficult to find and assemble into the grant application packet.
Laserfiche has completely digitized the grant approval process. New grants are submitted through Laserfiche Forms and managers are able to view and approve them from their mobile devices.
With Laserfiche, the time to process a grant has been reduced from one week to just one day.
“I’m absolutely in love with Forms and process automation. I see so much potential in how other departments could utilize it,” says JR Walters, IT Director.
The process starts when an employee applying for a grant, fills out the grant application approval request form in Laserfiche Forms.
Once submitted, the grant application is routed to the department supervisor for approval. If the department supervisor approves it, the application is routed to the general manager, compliance officer and controller, for simultaneous review. Once approved by everyone, the grant application is put in front of the seven member tribal council for approval. Each of the approvers is notified of grants requiring their approval through email.
If any of the approvers reject the grant, the process ends and the submitter is notified by email. He or she then has the option of submitting a new application form.
Throughout the process, timers are attached to each approval task. In this way, if the form isn’t approved in a timely matter, the approver receives a follow up email reminder.
Submitted grant application review forms and supplemental information are stored in folders in the Laserfiche repository specific to the grant.
In order to simplify designing of this process, the tribal nation took advantage of the Business Process Library (BPL). The nation downloaded the Legal Document Review Forms template and modified it to suit the specific needs of the grant approval process. Some of these modifications included:
“Before starting to design a process from scratch, I look to see if it has already been done in the Business Process Library. Since it is already done once, it is easy to duplicate. The BPL is a great resource,” says Walters.
Processing Grant Applications Now Takes One Day Instead of One Week
The Los Angeles County Development Authority (LACDA) digitally transformed its records management program, incorporating Laserfiche to digitize, centralize and manage the lifecycle of records. Since deploying Laserfiche, the agency has reclaimed significant time for its case workers while boosting its ranking with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the designation of “high performer”—an improvement that helps secure funding and enables the LACDA to provide more services and programs to more people.
The LACDA is a public agency responsible for providing LA County residents essential programs related to subsidized housing, community development, and affordable housing development and preservation. Serving the most populous county in the United States requires the LACDA to house decades’ worth of records related to hundreds of thousands of cases. These span a wide range, from groups applying for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) that provide resources to underserved areas, to people in need of Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers and residents of all ages applying for education and training in an effort to build better lives and better neighborhoods.
The LACDA previously stored records in filing cabinets and across various servers and systems. As the number of records grew, the agency identified the need to digitize and centralize them using a Laserfiche electronic records management solution. Laserfiche was also integrated with the LACDA’s property management software, Yardi, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, PeopleSoft, to eliminate the risk of duplicating information or work.
“Case managers don’t need to switch between applications to look up or copy information, they can view all the documents in one place,” says Rosa Chevarin, supervisor for Yardi/Laserfiche support. “They like the one-stop shop feel, and everything is streamlined in their natural workflow.”
Through this digital transformation, the agency made information more available, accessible and usable to authorized users.
“In an agency that manages more than 3,000 public and affordable housing units and assists more than 24,000 residents through a housing choice voucher program within the county, being able to pull up submitted information at a moment’s notice is vital,” says Doug Van Gelder, Manager of Information Technology at the LACDA.
This also enables the agency to:
The LACDA’s new solution exceeds the basic expectations of records management and incorporates automation. Laserfiche automatically files documents with standardized naming and folder structure. Additionally, when a record’s retention period has ended, relevant employees are notified to handle disposition.
“The need for services is always going to be great, and everyone is always going to be busy doing their jobs,” Van Gelder says. “Finding and pulling documents, and making sure records are taken care of in accordance to regulations is time consuming. The new system takes that tedious work away from the case managers, so they can focus on the people they serve.”
Since transforming its records management, the LACDA has gained the ability to automate additional business processes. Agency staff has automated the new employee onboarding process, which previously required a new associate to spend about half of their first day on the job filling out paperwork. The new Laserfiche solution enables the agency to send the new employee a link to all the necessary forms that can be completed before their start date.
“I want to be as digital as possible,” says Van Gelder, adding that there are also plans to rebuild the LACDA’s housing portal to allow people to apply for programs online. The workflow for processing those applications would also be automated using Laserfiche to facilitate quicker response times, better transparency into the process for both the staff and applicant, and less risk for error.
The agency’s newfound efficiencies have proven essential in a time when the LACDA’s programs and services are needed more than ever. The waiting list to receive Section 8 Housing Choice vouchers has about 44,000 people on it, while the agency’s staff is down to about half of what it was a decade ago due to the economic downturn and attrition. “The only way we’ve been able to provide the same level of service with half the staffing is through technology,” Van Gelder explains.
Additionally, over 70 percent of the LACDA’s funding comes from HUD, which regularly audits housing authorities to ensure funding is going toward serving people who need these critical programs and services.
“If a housing authority does not rank well, HUD could potentially take funding back and give it to another housing authority that proves it is helping more people and running more efficiently,” Van Gelder says.
Since the LACDA deployed its Laserfiche records management initiative, it has boosted its ranking and maintained its status as a high performer.
“The need is always going to be greater than the funding, but IT is one of the units within the organization that has the ability to provide productivity enhancements while bringing cost down,” Van Gelder says. “We’ve been able to serve more people with quality services and programming with half the staffing we used to have through these technology solutions.”
Leading public sector organizations use an electronic records management solution to increase efficiency and improve citizen services. To learn more, download the free white paper: “Streamlining the Business of Government.”
As one of the most populous cities in New York state (after New York City and Buffalo), the City of Rochester relies on its IT department to increase efficiency between city departments and enable more effective public services. Servicing over 14 departments including Public Safety, Police and Fire, the city’s IT teams need systems that can power the city’s many interconnected processes.
After a thorough study of how to redesign and modernize multiple city processes together, the city saw Laserfiche’s strength in business process automation, workflow and document retention and management as an opportunity to use one platform to improve many functional areas.
The city’s initial improvements came from using Laserfiche to build a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) portal that enables citizens to submit public records requests online.
Previously, it would take staff up to five days to start processing new records requests using paper request forms. With the new portal, citizens can now file new requests via a simple online form and inquiries are immediately sent to the relevant city department for review and approval. Throughout the process, citizens can check the status of their request at any time in the FOIL portal.
An internal Laserfiche progress dashboard also shows department managers the status of open requests and how long it takes each staff member to fulfill them, providing critical data about the city’s efficiency.
“We have gotten really positive feedback from users about the system,” says Harriet Fisher, Senior Business Analyst at the City of Rochester. “One user, in particular, said, ‘This is the best thing since sliced bread!’”
In addition to reducing processing time for FOIL requests, the city’s police department is currently using Laserfiche for five internal processes, and the accounting department relies on Laserfiche as the backbone of invoice processing. Laserfiche’s user-friendly interface ultimately allows the city to see a quick return on its investment for automation projects and open new avenues for shared services across departments.
“It allows us to easily manage the creation of forms, the development of workflow and security in a way that you do not need to be an application developer,” says Greg Luna, Enterprise Process and Systems Manager at the City of Rochester. “It really is a nice departure from the in-house developed applications—to think out of the box about how we can re-engineer processes, and Laserfiche makes it easy for us to do that.”
SITUATION
• Citizens making public record requests encountered red tape and long wait times
• The county was at capacity for paper records and preparing to construct a new building to store them
RESULTS
• $5.5 million saved from not having to build a new records facility
• Transparent and easy to use records request solution increased efficiency in the process by over 100%
• Strengthened information governance, data security and disaster recovery
Tompkins County, NY, is a leader in the government shared services space, with a county-wide task force dedicated to strengthening and sharing local government practices.
“My top priorities are to establish relationships with other governments and to spread Laserfiche and our user group among them,” says Maureen Reynolds, Tompkins County Clerk. Reynolds notes that the county’s primary goal is to help constituents easily access public records without encountering red tape and long waiting times.
“Our demographic expects Amazon-type service,” she adds. “They want it right there, immediately, 24/7.”
Although the county was committed to improving its records management practices, it had been using an old building to store millions of archived records and was set construct a new building to the tune of $5.5 million—until it discovered Laserfiche’s records management and digital workflow capabilities.
“The Tompkins County team saw an opportunity to modernize the way it manages information while creating cost- savings and new efficiencies,” said Sandy Hess, sales operations manager at ICC Community Development Solutions, a Laserfiche solution provider. “Laserfiche’s intuitive interface and powerful compliance tools made it an ideal fit.”
The county began its Laserfiche implementation by digitizing documents in the county seat of Ithaca, and then quickly brought the county other municipalities on the system. The county created public records portals for each town, enabling citizens to submit records requests forms online, 24/7 without having to travel to their city hall or to Ithaca. Laserfiche’s workflow system automates the intake of requests and routes them to the appropriate clerk or department for processing.
“Any truly public record is there and accessible for people to find themselves,” says Reynolds, adding that having one records system that can be used as a shared service across the county is crucial for quick user adoption and building more transparent governance standards.
“The feedback has been great,” she says. “We go out to the smaller municipalities and they’ve never seen software like this. We’re not here to take over; we’re here to show them what’s possible.”
Benefits:
Laserfiche’s flexible automation platform makes it a valuable long-term solution for Tompkins County and other governments that need to respond quickly to changing public demands.
“You get a customizable solution with off-the-shelf software, which is very unique in the software world,” says Alan Karasin, Senior Network Administrator. “We can design exactly what we need, but we have full supportability and are not redesigning the wheel every time we want to do something. We can change our processes up and change them over time as we find what our results are.”
The Town of Okotoks is the largest town in Alberta, Canada, and provides services to over 30,000 residents. The city operates 20 different business centers that are each responsible for their own document filing. Prior to using a document management system, the city battled isolated information gathering and collaboration, leading to delays in public service delivery and data entry errors.
“The town was looking for a more streamlined solution with a central filing location, easier searching capabilities for the employees and everybody on a broad spectrum,” says Sheila Andrew, HR/Corporate and Strategic Administrator for the Town of Okotoks.
Using Laserfiche’s combined electronic forms, workflow and records management capabilities, the city jump-started an enterprise-wide digital records initiative. One central document repository provided a single point of access for information across the city and standardized each department’s disparate document filing and archiving methods.
The system quickly evolved from just a document storage system. It’s now the town’s primary tool for improving future and ongoing operations. Using Laserfiche Forms, the municipality implemented over 150 forms-based processes for numerous activities, including:
Using metadata, federated search and digital document access, employees across city departments can instantly find and collaborate on the information they need to deliver faster public services.
“We’ve gotten great feedback about how quickly approvals are happening now and the ease of access to forms,” says Andrew. “We only have one location to find forms, instead of lots of different places where people were saving PDFs or filing them.”
Staff collaborates more quickly and in a more transparent manner on documents and requests.
As part of Costa Rica’s Ministry of Labor and Social Security, DESAF finances and oversees a broad range of social services across the nation. The agency is responsible for administering the Fund for Social Development and Family Allowances, which allocates budget to 28 different institutions for education, poverty, housing and other programs.
In 2010, new federal regulations required DESAF to modernize its internal processes, and make its legal operations and administrative processes more accessible to its citizens and clients. DESAF, which relied on large physical facilities to store documents and cumbersome manual document searches, implemented Laserfiche to streamline operations and improve client response time.
The agency began using the Laserfiche system to digitize over 32,000 employer files within its Department of Collection Management. With direct access to client files, staff can streamline funding allocation and track employment needs across each agency.
“Initially, the only expectation that we had was digitalizing all of the documents,” says Robert Delgado Castro, Debt Control Analyst for DESAF. “When we began to use the application and all the tools, we found out that we could obtain a lot of complementary usage of the platform.”
By eliminating physical paperwork and manual processes across the agency, staff members can conduct more productive meetings with employers or clients without worrying about missing documents or delaying service.
“In the past, meetings lasted hours and required the review of physical documents,” Castro says. “Now, a meeting is conducted in a digital way without any risk of losing information. What took hours before, now takes just 10 minutes using Laserfiche.”
Streamlining document access ultimately allows the agency to more quickly allocate the right amount of funding to the right organizations, respond to inquiries from each agency and analyze the efficiency of its social programs across the board.
“I’m sure the relationship between DESAF and Laserfiche will last for many years in the future in order to accomplish our objective, to fight against poverty in a very efficient way,” says Castro.
Click here to learn more about streamlining records management using Laserfiche.
