Municipal Gov’t Expanding Scope of Imaging Apps

The evolution of departmental document management into enterprise content management (ECM) has trickled down to the local government level. This is according to John Devine, director of government programs at LaserFiche. Since it was founded in 1987, one of LaserFiche’s specialties has been converting local governments from microfilm to digital imaging systems. LaserFiche boasts a total of 1,300 municipal government customers.

Devine joined LaserFiche more than four years ago following a stint as executive director of the International Institute of Municipal Clerks. “The local government market has matured, even in the short time I’ve been at LaserFiche,” Devine told DIR. “When I started, most municipalities were looking for departmental solutions. Now most are looking for something scalable that will integrate with other systems.

“Not only are municipal clerks interested in imaging to organize public access documents, the police want it for their records—and want it integrated with their GIS (geographic information systems) applications. Municipal accounting offices want the same imaging system integrated with their software. Local governments are taking a more holistic view of records management and document imaging.

“Five years ago, you may have been able to sell an imaging system by meeting only with the head of a certain department. Today, it’s important to include IT in the process, because they want an application that can run across departments.”
Despite this vision of enterprise apps, Devine admitted that most municipal government applications still start out in a singe department. Toward this end, LaserFiche recently introduced Agenda Manager, a pre-packaged application to facilitate digital distribution of the agendas for municipal council meetings. Typically, municipal clerks are in charge of assembling these agenda packages, which can be a labor- and paper- intensive process.

Devine credited municipal clerks as often serving as the catalyst for document imaging applications. “LaserFiche recently presented Technology Leadership Awards to three municipal clerks who acted as liaisons for government-wide installations of our software,” said Devine. “In Farmington Hills, MI, for example, in addition to the clerk’s department, our software will be used by the police, public works, and planning and engineering departments.”

LaserFiche, focuses on municipalities with a population range of 10,000-250,000. “There are only 200 municipalities in the United States with populations greater than 200,000,” Divine told DIR. “We estimate our target market to be about 6,800 municipalities.”

For more information go to http://www.laserfiche.com/products/agendamanager.html