Mackenzie District Council is one of New Zealand’s 53 district councils, responsible for providing services and managing issues ranging from local infrastructure and building consents to emergency services and food safety. With this broad range of duties, the district council relies on a core group of systems to enable its staff to deliver services efficiently, while keeping data secure and addressing recordkeeping requirements.

“We’ve got a handful of core systems that sit at the heart of our ecosystem,” said Chris Clarke, general manager of Information, Engagement and Community at Mackenize District Council. “One of those is our ERP and of course there’s Office 365, and I would put Laserfiche right up there with those systems. We deal with a lot of confidential information and we have complex recordkeeping requirements, and now it is becoming our workflow orchestration engine. It’s one of the essential tools that all of us use on a daily basis and could not function without.” 

When Clarke assumed oversight of the district council’s IT department, the organization performed an assessment of its existing tech stack, revealing significant opportunity for improvement. “Internally, at the time, Laserfiche was perceived as an electronic filing cabinet,” Clarke explained. “But we realized that there was untapped potential for process automation and automated workflows.” 

“When we first rolled it out, people were skeptical of whether it actually worked, because it seemed too easy,” Clarke added. “All they had to do was two clicks, and they couldn’t believe that was the case.”

IT has now set its sights on transforming the rest of the organization’s workflows, taking a thoughtful approach to change management and prioritization. 

“What we’re trying to do is change the perception that Laserfiche is another piece of business software that you just need to use because of recordkeeping requirements,” Clarke said. “It’s about winning hearts and minds, and getting things done. People are starting to think about Laserfiche now as a tool that helps with work, as opposed to yet another system to be wrestled with.” 

Clarke and his team have set their sights on systematically transforming the way the district council manages its records, with the goal of leveraging Laserfiche to automate the records management lifecycle, including retention schedules and disposition. 

“We’re doing a taxonomy review to assess our existing recordkeeping, and working through licensing, security, roles, etc.,” said Zane Woodfield, ICT manager at Mackenzie District Council. “One of the things that I like about Laserfiche is that we are creating a technology demarcation point-slash-security boundary from all other stuff that’s in the cloud. Now that we have set up Microsoft Entra SSO authentication and some of the foundational pieces with Laserfiche, we feel secure and safe enough to do more.” 

Laserfiche’s robust security and compliance tools also support the Mackenzie IT team’s mission to innovate while addressing data safeguards and critical recordkeeping needs.

“Having the right local support in place has also been a critical part of our success,” added Clarke. “Laserfiche is a very capable and flexible product, but that can bring with it some complexity to ensure the system is configured to meet our specific business needs. Our local partner, ifTHEN, has taken the time to understand our business and our process requirements, and as a result has been able to assist us to configure Laserfiche in a way that delivers the optimum solution to our needs. Without their experience and insight, we would not have been able to effectively utilise many of the more advanced features which are now adding value to both our staff and customers on a daily basis.” 

Mackenzie District Council’s IT department has laid a strong foundation for transformative change, and team members are excited to realize the potential for Laserfiche across the organization. Along with their Laserfiche solution provider, ifTHEN Limited, the team feels confident that their Laserfiche initiatives will be a gamechanger for all departments and those they serve. 

“We’re just about to embark on a project where we go out to the business and get everyone’s wish list,” Clarke said. “We know that list will be large, but we are hyper focused on the things that really make a difference and give us the biggest bang for our investment, as we’re dealing with public funds.” 

One significant project on the horizon is implementing a public portal to make it easier for the public to interface with the district council. Currently, the council’s website hosts downloadable forms that must be scanned or reuploaded for processing, but the IT team hopes to replace those “dumb forms” with Laserfiche Forms. “We’re working through public iterations of forms that will truly transform the customer experience,” Clarke said. “We’re really excited about that.” 

“We’ve done the foundational work, so we feel we’re at the beginning of our journey in terms of leveraging the benefits,” Clarke said. “Who knows where it will take us? One of the things that I see which is encouraging is that Laserfiche continues to evolve. We don’t know what the future holds, but I’m confident that Laserfiche will be on that journey with us.” 

Spanning facilities across the state, the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) represents nine prisons, five community re-entry centers, and seven district probation and parole offices. Its mission is to “create a model correctional system that provides equitable access to programming and opportunities that reflect a community experience, foster connection and restore victims of crime.”

With a litany of documents, different business systems and overall legality playing major roles at the Department of Correction, IDOC needed a “system of systems” to support its complex information management needs. 

Laserfiche fulfilled many of IDOC’s initial requirements, and today the organization continues to work with Laserfiche and solution provider MCCi to leverage its integration, forms and automation capabilities to streamline information flow and improve workflows while finding new ways to better serve its thousands of staff and the people in their care.

IDOC also oversees approximately 24,000 individuals on probation/parole, and supervises those living in the state’s communities, offering education, treatment and re-entry services to assist in lowering relapse behavior.

IDOC’s complex operations require the organization to house information in multiple Laserfiche repositories, the main ones being human resource files, investigation files, policies and SOPs (standard operating procedures) that are public and available to staff.  

To facilitate the efficient flow of information throughout the organization as well as with external providers, IDOC has built a solution that leverages a Laserfiche API integration with its internal client management system (CMS). Because the CMS is only available to staff on the internal network, IDOC uses the API to enable external providers to submit data through Laserfiche Forms, which then get reviewed by our providers internally.

The approach to continuous improvement has also led IDOC to digitize its medical records for management within Laserfiche repositories. “We are working with multiple departments to make sure documents are imported correctly and have the correct metadata attached to them, so that when they get filed into the client and resident management files, they are easily relocatable by OCR text or the metadata associated with those files,” said Lint. 

The benefits IDOC has experienced have been immediate. “We no longer have to pay for physical storage, shipping of the files between facility locations, documents getting lost or even misfiled — even digitally,” she added. “OCR enables us to search on text recognition. If a document is misfiled, we can still locate it and re-file it. In physical files, if something is in the wrong folder, we may never find that information.”

Digitizing medical records in Laserfiche also eases the process when clients move to different facilities, which previously required the transport of boxes to different locations, which introduced additional cost and the risk of misplaced or unauthorized access to information. 

“Laserfiche enables us to restrict portions of client files to only those who have the appropriate permissions to access,” Lint said. “We utilize forms for access requests and integrate with our IT support system to create tickets as needed once access requests have been approved.”  

As IDOC looks ahead, there are numerous plans for broadening Laserfiche’s use. The first will be implementing records management with IDOC’s documentary repository systems. IDOC is currently in the discovery phase of determining the record custodians and retention requirements to better manage document lifecycles. 

“It’s important to not host information and documentation that is out of date,” Lint said. “Not only is that documentation no longer valid or useful, but it could also be returned for a subpoena or e-discovery or a public records request. It could increase risk of litigation or misunderstandings, or discovery of information that is no longer pertinent to the client or resident.

Laserfiche will help IDOC to automate the processes around records management lifecycles, which are dictated by federal, state and local government recordkeeping requirements.”

IDOC continues to look for new ways to innovate processes and information management. As part of its 2024-2027 Strategic Plan, it aims to leverage technology to reduce manual data collection burden on staff and increase time savings. 

Lint explained that she sees opportunity in potentially working with local counties to integrate their Laserfiche environments with IDOC’s, enabling better communication and minimizing duplicate data entry, or the need to fax or email documentation.

Additionally, IDOC has plans to replace an in-house built web application — that requires a special database — with Laserfiche, creating even more efficiencies and cost savings. “We can take advantage of the API integration with our client management system, and reduce the amount of support and technical requirements that the in-house web application needed,” Lint said.

Ultimately, Lint sees in Laserfiche a system that takes care of the many manual and granular tasks that IDOC employees should not have to spend time on — instead, they should be focused on the mission of creating safer communities and increasing the success of the individuals under IDOC’s jurisdiction. 

Samish Indian Nation is headquartered in Anacortes, Washington, but its members are spread throughout the world, from the U.S. to New Zealand. Diverse as its membership are its programs and services, which range from education assistance and cultural enrichment to natural resource management and infrastructure maintenance.

Historically, Samish heavily relied on legacy manual processes to deliver these services. In recent years, however, Samish’s leadership and IT department began seeking ways to modernize and create more sustainable, scalable ways to achieve its vision: to ensure the health, wealth, education and security of tribal citizens.

Laserfiche has become the go-to tool for automated solutions, enabling the Tribal Council to optimize long-standing processes — such as resolution approvals and grant applications — to streamline the experience for employees and council members, resulting in time and cost savings. Meanwhile, Laserfiche has strengthened organizational resilience, enabling Samish to quickly respond to changing member and council needs.

When JR Walters started as the IT director for Samish Indian Nation 10 years ago, the team immediately identified the need for a digital document management solution. Laserfiche provided this and more. Laserfiche’s records management capabilities and security tools supported the organization’s requirements. E-forms, workflow automation and integration capabilities opened up new possibilities for optimization.

The organization worked with Laserfiche solution provider CDI to implement a solution that would meet Samish’s needs — the first of which was a  repository for resolutions. The formal channel for expressing tribal consensus on legislation or policy, resolutions are governing documents for Samish. Prior to Laserfiche, people could look up resolutions in a printed index, which didn’t give visibility into the resolution’s full content, resolutions that had been superseded by another one, or related or supporting documents.

“Before starting to design a process from scratch, I look to see if it has already been done in the Laserfiche Solution Marketplace,” Walters said. “It’s easy to duplicate. The Solution Marketplace is a great resource.”   

While the legacy manual process took a week or longer, the new solution made it possible for Samish to process grant applications in a single day. Managers can review content from mobile devices, further accelerating approvals. Most importantly, the accelerated application process opens up more opportunity for grants to go toward maintaining the economic welfare of Samish as well as the protection of the environment, and preservation of natural and cultural resources.

The success of the solution created buzz around the organization for Laserfiche, leading to more optimization initiatives. Today, Laserfiche is synonymous with automated solutions.

“Laserfiche is our go-to system for solving problems,” said Walters.

Samish’s digital efforts have also strengthened organizational resilience and agility, which were put to the test during the COVID-19 pandemic. Laserfiche proved critical when Samish needed a way to distribute financial assistance to members affected by the pandemic.

“Finance had a terrible time keeping track of the first relief payments that they sent out when COVID-19 started,” Walters said. “It was just night and day comparing it to how it went using Laserfiche.”

The team built a Laserfiche form that enabled members to register for assistance online. A Javascript integration with Smarty, an address validation tool, automatically completes address information for members. On the backend, an integration with MicroBilt validates ACH routing payment information.

Similarly, a vaccine registration program was rolled out quickly using Laserfiche, which allowed Samish to partner with a nearby tribe so that the organizations could share resources.

“We don’t have the necessary support staff to administer all of those vaccinations,” Walters said. “That process would have been a nightmare to handle on paper; Samish health didn’t even try it. They came right to us, which was great.”

Walters estimates that each person’s registration would have taken about a half hour of staff time, plus additional time to reschedule when necessary, which was all but eliminated with the automated Laserfiche process. The workflow also auto-prioritized those who needed to be vaccinated more quickly and automatically waitlisted some applicants, which also saved countless hours of staff time.

Also born of the pandemic was a new system to support online attendance for the Tribe’s annual general council meeting, enabling registration and tracking attendance, which is necessary to establish a quorum. Today, it endures as a way to facilitate hybrid in-person and online participation, better serving Samish’s many geographically dispersed members.

“The solution is built on integrations between four different applications: Laserfiche, Microsoft Teams, our enrollment database and Sitefinity.” Because Samish hosts meetings that are for members only, Walters explained, “We needed a solution that was open but secure.”

His team created a registration portal that allows members to register, which also verifies that the person was a confirmed tribal member against an enrollment database. Laserfiche Workflow conveniently emails the member a calendar object. People who are registered also receive another Laserfiche form to verify that they are who they claim to be; the member then receives instructions on how to set their computer up to be ready for the meeting.

“I don’t think we’ll ever go back to not having virtual events,” Walters said. “Those who couldn’t participate before — members in New Zealand, England, etc. — now have access. They might have to get up a little earlier or stay up later, but they can view the events on demand as well.”

Samish Indian Nation continues to expand on the digital innovations built on Laserfiche over the past decade. Samish has built e-forms and automated workflows for everything from simple staff ID badge and business card creation to more complex solutions for addressing the need for substitute approvers for processes when staff members are out of office.

“People go on vacation; people get sick; they take leaves of absence, things like that — and when they’re gone, other people will take over their responsibilities,” Walters explained. “This process enables users to assign those other people to processes, so that they can complete tasks during those absences.”

“The big thing that addressed was the lack of record when people reach out to IT about assigning other people tasks,” Shinn said. “Now, there’s a document that gets generated and stored in the repository from the user, saying that they designated a specific person to do certain tasks for a specific time period. It’s all automated so we don’t have to worry about anyone forgetting to communicate it to us.”

Laserfiche has become so embedded in staff workdays that the IT team has also created a Laserfiche Forms process to handle changes to Laserfiche processes. If a user needs changes to a business process, they can fill out a form that collects all the details needed to make that happen. “We’ll know exactly what process needs to change and what exactly needs to be done,” Shinn said. “The form gives convenient access for users. The process uses query parameters to populate the change request form, effectively creating templates for change requests.”

Continued optimization and more solutions are in the works, including a contract workflow, which will leverage an integration with DocuSign.