County Government Finds Timeless Solutions for Document Management

Lawrence County, South Dakota

Print Friendly Version (pdf)

Lawrence County Courthouse Deadwood, South Dakota

Since the 19th century, county offices throughout South Dakota have been the management and storage repositories for vital records.   Traditional record keeping processes recorded and archived documents in filing cabinets, storage boxes and binders wherever space could be found.  Over time, even the smallest counties have discovered that providing the necessary space for storage, the manpower to file and retrieve records, the efforts to prevent lose of documents and nature’s deteriorating effects on paper have created an ever mounting challenge in managing county documents.

Lawrence County, located in the northern Black Hills of South Dakota, began overcoming those challenges when it put its first document imaging system in

Gregory Dias Computer Systems Director Lawrence County

the Register of Deeds Office in 1997.  “Our microfilm machine was having problems and needed to be replaced,” said Gregory Dias, County Computer Systems Director.  “We decided at that time that we should pursue an imaging system.”  Active Data Systems provided Lawrence County with their first document imaging system.

Protecting and Preserving Documents of the Past

Lawrence County was officially organized in April, 1877.  Deadwood, home of such historical notables as “Wild Bill” Hickock and Calamity Jane, was eventually named the county seat.  Vital county documents, such as deeds, births, deaths, burials, and marriages of infamous and ordinary, dating back over 100 years, require protection and preservation from age related decay, loss, misfiling and natural disaster.  “A few years ago a forest fire came within blocks of the court house,” said Dias. The county regularly backs up their system and keeps backup copies in a safe offsite location. “Fortunately, it never reached us, but even if the courthouse had burned to the ground our documents would be safe and our history preserved.”

Lawrence County has installed three public access terminals.  Anyone can come in and access county documents that are public information through the terminals and print out high quality copies. Once a document has been scanned it always retains the original quality. “Once people are allowed to handle original documents most anything can happen,” said Dias, “This system provides the public easy access and at the same time secures the documents from loss or misplacement.”

Creating Efficiencies for Current Operations

By 1998, the county had upgraded it document imaging and management system to the network level.  “This allowed all Register of Deed’s staff access to the system and files simultaneously,” says Mark McClung, President of Active Data Systems. He added, “It wasn’t long until other offices started to come on board.” Soon to follow were the State’s Attorney’s Office, the Auditor’s Office, the Office of Equalization and the Sheriff’s Department.

Some examples of efficiencies gained by the county document imaging and management:

County Vouchers:  County vouchers are handled by the Auditor’s Office. By law vouchers must be retained for 4 years requiring a significant storage space.  The county is currently scanning their backlog and have completed years 2000 and 2001.  Once all backlogged vouchers have been scanned the county will begin scanning current vouchers as they are approved and signed off (at the county commission meetings) and then can be destroyed eliminating the need for storage space.

The time and effort needed to retrieve vouchers has been greatly reduced since documents are nearly instantly available at Auditor staff’s fingertips through their computer network.

Dias also added that overall automation of the Auditor’s office in the last 20 years has allowed them to handle an increased workload while reducing its full-time staff

Tammy Ehnes scans county assistance records for Auditor's Office

requirements from ten to four.  “The digital handling of documents has certainly been a contributing factor.”

Criminal Information Jackets At one time the Sheriff’s Department had 40 four-drawer filing cabinets to store their criminal jackets.  The Sheriff’s Department undertook a massive imaging program and converted nearly 700,000 documents to digital images eliminating the need for the filing cabinets.

A four-drawer filing cabinet occupies approximately 10 square foot of space.  The conversion to imaging made available another 400 square feet of valuable office space and eliminated the need the need for additional space in the future. Though they can vary in price, office quality filing cabinets may cost between $400 - $500.

Dias added, “You can only imagine the time now saved by our law enforcement people not having to search through those filing cabinets to find one piece of vital records.”

Preparing for the Document Management System of the Future

The ability to have documents in a digital format that can be migrated to the next generation of management tools is critical to the long term solution of the management of county documents.  This was a critical concern of Dias when the county was considering converting to from Optika to ScanFile (a more economical, full featured document management system).  “We didn’t want to lose one document or one piece of indexing information in the migration process,” said Dias.  “We had ADS provide the migration conversion process for us.  The process went well and considering what was done, ADS was very reasonable.”

The Sheriff’s Department decided to install an integrated information management system that combines data from multiple sources; computer data bases, audio and video, photography, along with the criminal jacket documents that were being stored in ScanFile.  “An individual’s criminal jacket could contain anywhere from a few to several hundred documents, they needed to seamlessly export the data from ScanFile in a manner that it would successfully integrate with their new system,” said McClung.  He added, "Fortunately ScanFile has excellent export functionality built into it and Lawrence County was able to perform the task quite effectively."

Over time data management systems will obsolescence and new applications, processes and systems will come along. “Our biggest concern is that we maintain the integrity of the data,” said Dias, “Once a document has been converted from paper to digital data the carrying forward of that information to future management systems is quite practically assured.”

Over 2 million documents have been scanned and stored in the Lawrence County System. Dias summed up the County’s Document Imaging system, “The bottom line is the taxpayer benefits greatly from this system in terms of access, cost, the protection of public records and positioning the county for any changes that will come in the future.”