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Mesa County, CO Increases Productivity County-Wide with SIRE
Challenge
Mesa County began looking for ways to improve its work processes in early 1994. The goal was to consolidate efforts that duplicated work and information while reducing physical storage space. To reach this goal, the County knew it would need to purchase an electronic document management system or EDMS. In addition to helping the County achieve its goal, the EDMS would need to:
- Make sharing information among personnel and departments easier and faster
- Allow document images to be e-mailed
- View and print large format documents
- Be accessible from the Internet
- Enhance document security
- Be expandable across all county offices
Solution
The County decided to set up a pilot installation before implementing an EDMS county-wide. Out of 20 vendors, AlphaCorp and its SIRE software were chosen. If successful, SIRE would be rolled out into other departments.
The purpose of the pilot installation was to measure the effectiveness of an EDMS in the County. Bert Raley, Clerk to the Board, said, “I had the pilot project for Mesa County. By imaging the contracts and resolutions and having them available on the County network, there has been a tremendous reduction of research that I and fellow employees have to do.”
In addition to installing a value-added product, AlphaCorp showed itself to be a reliable, expert, and professional solution provider during the pilot installation. The next step was to install SIRE in the Sheriff’s office.
In the following months, SIRE became an integral part of the Sheriff’s office daily operations. Case and other documents could now be stored and indexed in SIRE. Officers, investigators, and records personnel could access these documents simultaneously at their respective work stations.
Of course, all data is secure, so only authorized personnel could view information. Physical filing, storage, off-site archiving, searching, and retrieval were eliminated.
A highlight of the Sheriff’s office installation was a custom interface built by AlphaCorp. The interface is between SIRE and the Sheriff office’s public safety software by Spillman Data Systems. Personnel using the public safety software can click a button to access all related documents available in SIRE. This interface increases the efficiency of case and records management.
Since the pilot and Sheriff’s office installation, SIRE has become a resource in a total of 13 departments within Mesa County. More departments will be added in the future. Those currently using SIRE are:
- Assessor
- Clerk and Recorder
- District Attorney
- Environmental Health
- Finance
- Geographic Information System (GIS)
- Human Services
- Information Management
- Motor Vehicle
- Planning & Development
- Sheriff
- Surveyor
- Treasurer
Several of these departments, such as the Assessor and Treasurer, use SIRE COLD/ERM™. This application allows the departments to capture data from a mainframe or software application and store it electronically. The data can then be retrieved and placed on an electronic version of its original format, such as an invoice, statement, or report. The departments can use the electronic version as they would any online document.
Results and Benefits
Mesa County achieved its goal of consolidating efforts and reducing physical storage. Those departments using SIRE have virtually eliminated duplicate work and information. Since documents are stored electronically, paper records can be stored off-site—if kept at all—thus freeing up space for more productive uses.
SIRE brought several additional benefits to County leaders and personnel including the ability to:
- Search text across documents using full-text retrieval
- View all documents regardless of source, location, or time of day
- Enhance document security by controlling access by user or group
- Secure county records in a stable, long-term environment
- Save valuable budget dollars and employee time
The accumulative benefit of SIRE as the County’s EDMS solution is increased productivity. Workload has been reduced by approximately 30 percent while County employees take advantage of streamlined processes and efficient data retrieval.
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