When the County of Hawaii first purchased Laserfiche as its enterprise content management platform in 2007, it had some idea of the kind of improvements to business operations that could come from content management. Various departments had been using their own ECM systems since the late 1990s and the County of Hawaii’s Office of the Corporation Counsel had deployed its own Laserfiche system in 2005, with great success.
“Starting small with the Corporation Counsel Office showed us the software could do more than just scanning,” says former Systems Analyst Fatima Hicks. “It gave us an initial success that other departments could look to and start asking how they could use it.”
In 2007, Hicks’ team had initially focused on expanding Laserfiche to seven County departments: Public Works, Planning, Real Property Tax, County Clerk’s, Motor Vehicle Registration & Licensing, Corporation Counsel and Elections. Treasury was added in 2008 as a part of the Motor Vehicle repository.
When Systems Analyst Sheila Cadaoas became Laserfiche Project Manager in April 2009, she saw the potential – and value – of converting to enterprise content management named-user licensing as well as upgrading to version 8. “I felt strongly that we needed to make every feature of every ECM module equally available to every user,” Cadaoas says, noting that Rio licensing includes not just Snapshot and the E-mail Plug-In, but also Web Access, Workflow and Advanced Audit Trail. Because each Rio named user license is assigned to an individual staff member, they are always able to access their information, and when new users are added to the system, all components – including Workflow – are immediately available for their use.
A windsurfer off the coast of Hawaii.
“We also wanted to expand usage to wring every drop of productivity possible out of Laserfiche. Our mindset is still very focused on the departments and their respective business processes; Rio’s unlimited servers and repositories just make it even more adaptable to the needs of the business units,” she adds.
From an IT perspective, Cadaoas says, Rio made even more sense. “The Rio licensing has lower annual maintenance fees per user, plus it allows unlimited growth in the number of servers and number of repositories,” Cadaoas says. “With our old system, we were running up against issues of size and the speed of search responses. Having unlimited servers allows us to break our repositories up into smaller chunks.” For instance, she says, though the Treasury Division currently uses the Motor Vehicle repository, with added security to separate users, it will have its own repository by summer.
The Rio system has only been live since the end of January, but already the County has created three new repositories: one each for the Office of the Legislative Auditor, the Department of Liquor Control, and one for Data Systems called “Area 51.” Liquor Control has a room full of Licensed Liquor Establishment documents to manage, while the Legislative Auditor will use Laserfiche to organize the research and documentation produced with each audit. “Legislative Auditor and Liquor Control were both created and initial training given to end users in about two hours each,” she says. “These are the users that are going for it. We gave them Laserfiche and said, ‘You don’t have to wait for Data Systems. You can set up your folders, your own security and run with it.’”
County of Hawaii Systems Analyst Sheila Cadaoas
Cadaoas notes that the user-friendliness of Laserfiche is also IT-friendly: “When we can get people set up and using the system this fast, it leverages my time as well.”
The third repository – “Area51″ – is a proving ground for the Data Systems analysts. “We test workflows, Quick Fields sessions, and new ideas in general without having to interfere with our live repositories,” explains Cadaoas.
By the end of June, the county will add the Mayor’s Office, Research & Development and Human Resources to their Laserfiche system. As important as it is to expand Laserfiche to new departments, Cadaoas says, it’s equally important to manage the human side of change. “We’re setting up monthly ‘super user’ group meetings to share ideas and extend training,” she says. “Our first session will be at the end of March and our training topics are folder setup with security and template/metadata creation.”
Finally, Cadaoas says Rio’s multiple repositories will play a big role in simplifying and improving how content is published and accessed on the county’s Website through the expanded WebLink public portal the County purchased with its upgrade. “Currently we only have the County Clerk Legislative documents available via WebLink. With Rio we have the capability to create a WebLink public folder structure in each repository,” she says.
“Our current County Website is very labor intensive for both Data Systems and the other departments. With Rio, documents will now only exist once instead of twice because they’re being accessed right from the repository, and they’ll be public within seconds of the user moving them into the proper folder – we won’t have to convert it to publish it,” Cadaoas explains. “Plus, the public will be able to use the Laserfiche search capabilities. We’re looking forward to Laserfiche adding a ‘federated search’ capability that would allow the public to search multiple repositories – then our WebLink Public Portal will truly be a sight to behold!”
