According to its Web site, Westminster, Maryland, is a city "...steeped in tradition and history but progressive when it comes to technology and business development." As the county seat for Carroll County, and close to both Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington DC, it is critical that the City make information easily accessible to its 17,000 residents. By the end of 2001, the City had decided that an electronic document management system could help accomplish this goal.

Clerk Laurell Taylor came to Westminster in February 2002 from the Carroll County Attorney's office to take over for John Dudderar when he retired from office after almost 30 years. While at Carroll County, she had been researching document management and was already familiar with Laserfiche® and its capabilities. Laurell was thrilled when she started at Westminster and learned that they were already discussing implementing a system provided by General Code. "It has so many different uses. With the press of a couple of buttons, you can process a request that might otherwise take a couple of hours," says Laurell. Since the system was installed, Laurell has been focusing on scanning in past City Council meeting minutes. "We had four packed filing cabinets with nothing but old minutes," she states. "And getting information out of those was not an easy task." Laurell is not the only person at Westminster to benefit from the system. Both the Mayor's office and the Zoning office also have full user installations allowing them to scan and import their documents into the system as well. Additionally, the City set up a retrieval-only public kiosk. Security is set to allow access only to certain folders and documents yet allows the public to research information on their own, freeing City employees to concentrate on their other duties.

For the future, Laurell would like to continue to put as many records as possible into the system. By having a text searchable database of information, the City will not only be able to serve its citizens better, but also research problems of the past to see how they were handled. One example that Laurell mentioned was last year's drought. The City had to implement policies to conserve water, and she feels that it was handled really well. In the future, when drought hits again, City officials will be able to easily research past records for ideas on handling the problem.

What else lies in store for Westminster's Laserfiche system? Back-file scanning and expansion, for starters. Laurell would like to see public works agreements, building permits and historical records added in. For example, Westminster and the surrounding areas have a lot of history pertaining to the Civil War. Many soldiers moved through the area and Westminster has numerous activity records that should be protected. In addition, because a number of buildings were constructed in the town before incorporation in the mid-19th century, the City gets frequent non-conforming uses questions. Having these documents in the system puts the necessary information at the user's fingertips without risk of damaging or losing important historical documents.

By providing access to the records and history of the buildings, the land and the people of the area, the City of Westminster, through its Laserfiche system from General Code, is using its technology to protect its past while improving services for citizens today - and for many years to come.

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