CASE STUDY

Customer Since: Spring 1997

Canyon County, located in Southwest Idaho, was established March 7, 1891 with its county seat in Caldwell. Current sources attribute the name to the canyon of the Boise River near Caldwell. However, both John Rees and Vardis Fisher believed it was named for the Snake River canyon, which forms a natural boundary for the county. The Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Boise in 1834 near what is now Parma, but abandoned it in 1855. Immigrants traveled through Canyon County on the Oregon Trail.

Just minutes away from Boise, Canyon County is Idaho’s fastest growing area. Personal and real property market values are in excess of $5,200,000,000. Situated on 604 square miles of farmland and a population count of 110,000, this “small” county is getting bigger every day and with a variety of different departments in the Canyon County office, space is becoming a rare commodity!

Industry: County Government

Business Challenge:
Continued growth, and the insight of then County Clerk and Recorder Ned Kerr, and his Chief Deputy Clerk Chris Harris, teamed with the Information Technology Department, led the county to the implementation of an imaging system. The Recorder’s staff had been microfilming the recorded documents for years. They used a processor camera that required hours of labor to film, duplicate fiche for the title companies, and clean the microfilm equipment. As soon as legislation was passed allowing the use of imaging as originals, and after interviewing several vendors, Canyon County selected Integra Information Technologies and PaperClip Software for their solution.

The system was implemented in May of 1997 and within a month they were able to discontinue microfilming and now provide the images for the Title Companies on a zip disk. The volume of recorded documents has continued to increase from 47,000 in 1996 to an anticipated 50,000 in 2001.

The Recorders office, under the guidance of now County Clerk and Recorder G Noel Hales, has also started a back file conversion of instruments on microfiche. They contracted with Integra to digitize the documents, allowing the County to index and import them into the PaperClip system. Now, anyone from the public can walk up to the public use terminals in the recorders office and view a recorded document back to 1996. The county’s current goal is to go back to 1990 with the conversion process of microfiche to digital images.

The Recorder’s Office isn't the only office in Canyon County that has utilized the imaging system. Currently there are nine different scanners in the Courthouse for capturing information, and there are over 1.5 million pages already in the system. Other departments using the system include:

• Commissioner’s Office – Meeting packets and minutes
• Prosecuting Attorney’s Office – Case files
• Auditor’s Office – Payroll time sheets
• Assessor’s Office – Large back file of valuation files and personal property records
• Treasurer’s Office – Tax payment stubs and checks
• Sheriff’s Office – Incident and accident reports
• Information Technologies – Technical manuals and reference material
• Development Services

One specific success was a project for the Prosecuting Attorney’s office in the summer of 2000. Using four high school students on summer break, they were able to scan in excess of 8,000 pages per day and eliminate numerous file cabinets. All of this was accomplished with minimum training because the system is easy to use and efficient.

Why PaperClip?
PaperClip Software provides an easy to use, centralized access to any kind of information, including scanned images, word processing, spreadsheets, software files, Web documents, e-mail, faxed documents, and more through a Universal Desktop. PaperClip has the ability to standardize any organization on an integrated document management solution across departmental applications without programming. This powerful knowledge management features enterprise wide queries to streamline the process of finding and sharing information, no matter where it’s stored. After consultation and demonstration, Canyon County determined that PaperClip would provide an affordable solution. One that fit their organizational goals by allowing for flexibility in the amount of applications, and for expandability throughout a majority of the county offices.

Solution Highlights:
Using PaperClip, Canyon County has been able to increase productivity while reducing labor costs and increasing the amount of floor space within their offices. Marc Young, the county Application Services Manager reflected on the success of the system, “Over the past few years, we have gotten rid of so many filing cabinets (approximately 200 cabinets), and I have not had to track down a single document because the system has been so reliable.”

Lynne Jeppsen, Recording Clerk and Canyon County employee since 1998, comments about life since implementing the imaging system. “The system has become really easy to use, I like it because it is simple, adaptable and you’re not restricted to keyboard only functions.”

County officials have been able to boast to their peers and constitutes about the permanency of their documentation. With disaster-proof security, prevention of lost documents was a major influence to help convince other county offices of the benefits of PaperClip. When asked to comment on the system, Information Technologies Director Rodney Astleford commented, “It works! PaperClip had the flexibility that we were looking for.” Word began to spread from the recorders office to others about the successful implementation, and eventually led to an interagency integration of the system.