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Home My WebLink AboutNYCOM Alternative Records Solutions and Shared Services Opportunities Ithaca is Gorges •Ithaca Ranked in Top 10 Best Places to Live •America’s Most Enlightened City •Best College Town •Smartest City in America •America’s Foodiest Towns •100 waterfalls Best College Town – Cornell & IC Background: County Clerk EDMS Success The County Clerk’s Office has indexed and digitized 198 years of records, deployed a web portal service for secure, remote access to these records, achieved a local partnership with NYS Office of Court Administration focused on electronic access to Court records and improved processes by judges and support staff (paperless processing), and implemented e-recording. NYS Archives Grant Support •2000 - consultant to conduct County Clerk BPA for EDMS ($15,000) •2001 – County Clerk EDMS implementation ($50,000) •2002 to 2010 – annual grants for backfile and indexing of documents into EDMS ($376,734) – completed by Challenge Industries •2007 – Board of Elections imaging software ($74,370) •2008 – records space study - $17,500 •2009 – Legislature (MinuteTraq) – $64,000 •2010 – Mental Health electronic medical records - $50,847 •2011 - $75,000 for scanning at Records Center by Challenge for DA files •2012 –$143,307 shared services grant with 6 towns •2013 - $150,000 to include the remaining 3 towns and the City of Ithaca •2014 – $150,000 to include the 6 villages and TCSWSD We have received over 1.4 million dollars in grant funding! Local Driving Forces •Sustainability Program •Smart Office Initiative •Workplace Flexibility •Work from job site/field – highway, facilities, judges, ADAs, … •Disaster recovery concerns – recent flooding in 2011 and 2012 in NYS •Transparency of Public Records/Open Government •Neglected Records Center Building Former Records Center The County Records Center Problem •9,000 boxes •Antiquated tracking database •No additional staff •Neglected records program •No increase in departmental budget •Did not want to be in the business of box/file retrieval and tracking Software (Laserfiche) Imaging Vendor (Challenge Industries/NYSID) County Clerk’s Office Hardware (County IT) What we did Current Digital Records Center We have created a digital countywide Records Center by scanning the 9,000 boxes and thereby eliminated the need for a new large building to house a Records Center. All paper records previously stored in the old building have been scanned, shredded or stored, and incorporated into Laserfiche. And in today’s fiscal climate, constructing a records storage building was just not feasible. Our software solution was recently highlighted at Laserfiche.com, highlighted in the keynote address at the Laserfiche International Conference in California January 2012 & presented in January 2014 for shared services projects, and the above Laserfiche ad was in the January 2012 issue of The Economist with our industry solution! The Result! Records Vision •To dramatically reduce the creation and flow of paper records. Records are digitally produced, printed on paper, put in a box and then stored in a decrepit building. We want to bring greater efficiency and major cost-savings to the county by implementing, maintaining and instructing all county departments on the best practices of using a digital records center enterprise system Records Management Projects 1.Legislature - annual book of proceedings (1865 to 2007); 2.County Administration - contracts, insurance certificates, insurance policies and budgets; 3.DA - case files at the Records Center; 4.Highway and Facilities - all maps and plans; 5.GIS - historic tax maps (1966 to present); 6.Assessment - tax rolls and office files; 7.Finance - payroll records; 8.Health Dept – birth & death certificates and environmental health maps ; Records Management Projects 9. Purchasing - bids, capital projects and maps; 10. Personnel - civil service history, payroll cards, & inactive files; 11. County Clerk – criminal files; 12. Records Dept – 9,000 boxes at the Records Center; 13. Mental Health – closed client inactive case histories; 14. Airport – maps, plans and office files; 15.Sheriff – arrest reports, closed civil records and old jail records; 16.Office for the Aging – departmental records; Records Management Projects 17. Solid Waste- office files; 18. Assigned Counsel – case files; 19. County Attorney – case files; 20. IT Department – office files; 21.Board of Elections– older files. Departments not yet incorporated: DSS, Probation, Youth Services, E911, Planning and Human Rights Trust me, you will love it! -Once we scan files, we never return the paper -No complaints! -We mimic the folder structure in either their paper or electronic files -End user is comfortable with Laserfiche folder structure -Single software application across departments -Integration capabilities with other systems Records Management Concerns •Aging workforce •Institutional knowledge •Out-dated databases •Security of records •Too many employees to educate on retention schedules •Move to cloud-hosted County applications Partners with Challenge Industries Challenge Industries is a supportive employment agency and NYSID vendor 2009 Business Partners of the Year Laserfiche •Laserfiche is a Windows-based document imaging system that allows us to file, catalog and retrieve documents. •Allows us to OCR images – text searchable. •Has modules for automating workflows, auto-indexing of documents,e-forms, web access, and the assigning of CO-2 codes. •It also allows users to highlight, redact, and add stamps and notes to the document image, just as with paper versions – but these are added as a layer on top of the electronic image so they do not permanently change the document. Enterprise Vision •Single software application for use across all departments. •Potential for shared services with other municipalities. •Dept of Defense certified audit trail. •User based security. •Ease of use for end user. •Public access to public records thru web portals. Vision & Benefits •Green initiative •Lean office •Remote access for employees (at the job site or work from home) and the public •Transparent records management •Audit trails •Ease of retrieval •Freeing up valuable office space •OCR capabilities •Systemically incorporate CO-2 codes Smart Office Initiative ‣Partner with Tompkins Cortland Community College ‣Required for all new or major Tompkins County IT initiatives ‣Identification of new processes leading to storage of final records in Laserfiche Records Management folder Transparent RM In Action RM vs User: Insurance Certificates need to be maintained legally for 6 years. The department only wanted to keep them one year. Transparent RM In Action Entry level staff scan the new hire documents. They do not need to know the retention schedule for each document. We assign it in the drop down selection in the template. Tompkins Shared Services Electronics Records Repository Shared Services Grant Since we have seen the success of our records program and achieved major cost savings, the next sensible step was to offer the clouding solution of our digital records repository, to our local city, town and village governments. We have invested in our network, Laserfiche software, disaster recovery solutions and have an established partnership with our imaging vendor. Tompkins Shared Services Electronics Records Repository We met with our town/city/village governments and shared this opportunity with them. Our clerks realized they had the same records problems that we had been dealing with: public access to public records, time spent searching and retrieving records, storage of records, disaster recovery, security, damage and loss of paper records. The County hosted “clouding” of our records solution just made sense. TSSERR User Group Each government has complete control over its own content within the system with various levels of security, as required by the government. They have their own dedicated repository and access to a robust enterprise document management system that they can then tailor to their own needs. TSSERR We currently have all of our towns(9), villages(6), TCSWCD and the City of Ithaca utilizing our county- hosted digital archiving solution. We have established a user group, by-laws, a governance structure and are establishing policy and procedures. The entire project has been covered by grant funds. Our user group has also worked on eliminating redundancies between the local governments. www.tompkinscountyny.gov/tsserr Why did it work? •Not the “Big Bad County” •Partners still make all records decisions •Start with willing partners - build on your success •Think big, start small •Go to them •Food! TSSERR Further Grant Exploration •Expand grant possibilities by applying for a Local Government Efficiency Grant –Assistance to develop plans for implementation and/or to implement projects such as: consolidation or dissolution, functional consolidation, city or county charter revision that includes functional consolidation, shared or cooperative services, and regionalized delivery of services. •Explore additional NYS Archives Shared Services Grants - $150,000 and/or new category Demonstration Grant – $500,000 34 The County has leased an underground storage bunker at the Seneca Army Depot for our permanent archival paper, data backup and microfilm storage. The bunker is temperature and humidity controlled (and can take a direct hit from a missile launcher – as it was used in the past to store nuclear warheads!). Additionally, there is a direct fiber optics connection between our data centers and this storage facility. Where to Store Records Now? Former Seneca Army Depot Bunkers Questions? Maureen Reynolds Deputy County Clerk Mreynolds@tompkins-co.org