Document Imaging for Efficiency and Transparency in Agenda Management

Never before have local governments been under such scrutiny to ensure transparency of documents and records. Juxtapose such expectations with residents’ desire for on-demand, easy access to local government news and information using various digital devices, and clerks today face a unique challenge: How to make all necessary public records easily accessible and consumable from any device at any time. In the quest for streamlined transparency and agenda management, document imaging is critical. There is little value to residents for public records to be available online if viewing them reveals they are poor quality, illegible, not searchable, and not easily downloaded or printed. To provide your residents with the most stress-free access to digital files and records, understand the value of effective document imaging to your administration and residents, and then review our best practices checklist.

The Benefits of Quality Document Imaging for Clerks

Providing high-quality scans of your public records is not just a nice-to-have component of your agenda and meeting management software. Consider the following resident engagement benefits:

Cost-Savings

The use of manual, paper-based processes costs the federal government $38.7 billion annually due to information capture and processing bottlenecks, according to a U.S. Chamber of Commerce report. Compared to the cost to maintain paper records, which requires document imaging hardware, storage space (both onsite and redundant offsite storage), and paid staff time, entities can significantly shrink their bottom line by moving to a primarily digital records management system.

Data Security

If you envision the cloud as an intangible, non-secure digital myth, know that your agendas, minutes of meetings, forms, budgets, and financial documents are safer in a redundant digital storage repository than they are in a physical storage facility that is at risk of fire, natural disaster, or human error.

Digital Data Storage Enables Analysis and Resident Behavior Learning

How many residents downloaded a copy of your fiscal year budget? How many requested absentee ballots? How many request agendas compared to the meeting minutes? Tracking such data manually in the shrinking staff and budgets era is nearly impossible. With an agenda and meeting management solution, however, such insightful analytics are only a click away — helping you better meet the needs of engaged residents.

Agenda Management and Other Transparency Requirements

Depending on the laws of your state, your local government may be required to meet specific document transparency accessibility rules. Without a digital solution, meeting a transparency request means a staff member (likely you) must answer a phone call or walk-in request by searching filing cabinets for the requested document. As minutes tick by, you lose valuable time in your workday, and your resident feels the frustration of an inefficient system funded by taxpayer dollars. Document management systems that allow residents to search from a home computer or mobile device for the document of their interest at any time of the day or night ensure your administration meets transparency requirements without consuming valuable time in your workday.

Best Practices: Checklist for High-Quality Data Imaging

Your document management strategy should enable residents to learn about issues and topics that impact your community — and their lives, helping them remain informed, engaged voters. To ensure your documents are accessible, readable, and easily consumable, follow these document imaging best practices.

Make Sure You Have the Right Hardware

If you are about to convert stacks of paper to digital files using a document scanning strategy, ensure you have access to a quality scanner that produces high-resolution files compatible with your computer system.

Make Sure You Have the Right Agenda Management Software

Once you have scanned your documents, you need a place to store them where they will be easily accessible by internal staff and your residents. Ensure you have invested in agenda and meeting management software that allows you to save and store files by type (e.g., agendas versus minutes of meetings) and that enables document searching using keywords for convenient and secure location.

Consider Access Restrictions

Before posting all documents, from agendas to financial records to personnel files within your local government website’s content management system (CMS), consider what documents need restricted access. Choose a document management system that allows for setting tiered access to file types. Remember, transparency is necessary, but some records are not meant for public consumption and may be protected by other regulations.

Save Effort by not Converting Outdated Files

Before converting any forms to online versions or saving electronic copies of past agendas, meeting minutes, support documents, or budgets, collaborate with internal teams to ensure they are relevant, in use, and must be accessed by today’s residents. Depending on your community’s regulations, you may only need to make ten years of financial records accessible to residents. Do not waste time scanning or converting any files that are outdated or do not need to be available online. If required by law, continue to save them in hard copy only.

Create an Intuitive Naming and Filing System

When determining your file naming structure, consider gaining input from other departments as well, as what may seem logical to you may not reflect how other staff members will be searching for documents. Once you have a naming convention and filing system in place, never waver from it. Consistency will enable you, your coworkers, and your residents to quickly find files in the future.

Follow Document Type Best Practices

For consistency and greatest usability and accessibility, store all electronic files in archive-quality portable document format (PDF/A). Most word processing software and scanning tools should allow you to save files in this format so that they are readily accessible using any desktop or mobile device. Note: work to keep file sizes as minimal as possible without sacrificing document quality. This best practice may be challenging if you create 200-page agenda support packets, but you may consider a free PDF file size-minimizing tool to prevent files from being too large for users to email, save, or print.

Immediately Save New Files in their Proper Location

Messy electronic files are just as problematic as messy filing cabinets. When you create a new document, save it (using the proper naming convention) and place the final version in its appropriate digital location. Records are not transparent if they only reside on your desktop or are only migrated to your document management system when someone specifically asks for them.

Scan for High Quality

When scanning paper files, set your scanner for the ideal resolution: 300 dpi (dots per inch). Depending on the file type, scan documents in black and white (rather than grayscale) for best readability and only scan in color when necessary (e.g., maps). If an original report includes pencil or blue ink, you may need to darken the lines using black ink before scanning for the best results. Try to ensure all original signatures that will eventually be scanned are executed using black pen ink for the best digital output as well.

The Final Step: Create an Information Governance Plan

After successfully transforming your outdated, paper-based processes into a modern digital transparency system, your next step should be to create a document governance plan. Share your final governance plan with all staff in all departments who will be accessing, building, and sharing files. The more departments that follow the same document management conventions, the better organized your administration will be, and the better you will be at meeting resident transparency expectations.

Let CivicPlus® Agenda and Meeting Management software be the foundation of your public records governance plan. Learn how our CivicPlus Agenda and Meeting Management software can help you organize your public records and make them easily accessible to your residents.