City of Lake Elsinore
Automating Public Records Requests, a time savings for all!
View a presentation and demonstration of the City of Lake Elsinore’s Public Records Request here.
Nestled in Riverside County lies a beautiful lake fed by the San Jacinto River. The City of Lake Elsinore and its namesake lake boast a population of over 65,000, with just 131 city employees across six departments. With numbers like these, the public records request process could be a grueling marathon, but, thanks to Laserfiche, the process is a breeze.
In order to see the true scale of the transformation that was made, let’s first take a step back into 2008.
Picture this: As you found yourself singing along to Katy Perry from your desk in the City Clerk’s office, a new public records request was received through the mail. You put it at the bottom of the large pile on your desk, hoping to be able to get to it later that week.
A few days pass and you find the same request finally made it to the top of your pile. You read the request to learn that someone is looking for a contract from 3 years prior. You head over to the filing cabinet where the file should be, but, to your surprise, the drawer that’s supposed to have contracts from March-May 2005 is empty. You begin to ask your coworkers if they know who might have the missing records, but are unsuccessful in your search. Since you needed more time to search through the “voluminous records” in the Clerk’s Office, you requested a two-week extension, which seemed to be common practice. Two weeks later, you randomly find that contract in a box under an unused desk and you’re (thankfully) able to respond to the request, three weeks after the request was received.
Fourteen years ago, it was standard that a records request would take 12 days to fulfill. Now, fast forward to today, and the whole process – from submission to retrieval to delivery – takes only 4.5 days!
Thanks to the Laserfiche Forms system, citizens can now request records electronically, and 9-14 hours per week are saved in search and retrieval. The Laserfiche system and ECS Imaging have been able to save the City of Lake Elsinore countless dollars and an invaluable amount of time since its inception 14 years ago.
Currently, Laserfiche is used in the City Clerk’s Office and Community Development Department to store records, but the City has plans to expand to the remaining 4 departments. The increase in productivity is just one part of the ROI Lake Elsinore sees. They’ve also seen a decrease in annual spending on offsite storage, servers, backup and disaster recovery planning, the costs of all personnel associated with information management, including IT, records management, and City Attorney fees, the cost of eDiscovery and regulatory response.
“The City of Lake Elsinore chose Laserfiche because it was in need of a comprehensive records management system that is able to grow along with ever-evolving technology… There is so much that Laserfiche can improve for you and your agency, and ECS Imaging’s staff is always ready and willing to help you find a solution to any problem you may have,” says Candice Alvarez, City Clerk.
Whatever information management needs your city has, ECS Imaging can help. Contact us today to learn about all of the ways that Laserfiche can help increase your productivity, cut costs, and offer more efficient business processes.
