Clerks Lead the Way With a Big Vision for Their Communities

When does a solution that transforms the agenda process, change your entire village? When you combine an agenda solution built on content services with a big vision for making your town better.

The Village of DeForest has a little over 9,000 residents and about 50 employees. Thanks to a good start in the clerk’s office, every employee uses OnBase to drive efficiency for the whole Village.

The Vision: Starting with an Agenda Solution

Many clerks have embraced paperless agenda and minutes solutions. They help manage the workload of their legislative process and provide better constituent service. Also, these solutions reclaim time, make records secure, and offer online/mobile access to meeting packets, minutes, and video. This is an excellent achievement for any clerk.

So, why broaden the vision to include a solution usable by the entire local government?

The benefits the Village of DeForest realized by broadening their vision:

• Reduced need for outside contractors and extra staff
  Using the content services as the core of their agenda solution, the Village can avoid adding more staff or outside contractors, saving budget resources.
• A configurable solution
  For a small town without a lot of IT help, choosing an expandable agenda solution that can be configured without custom code was essential. It would allow them to expand the value of their investment within budget. With training available and configuration that non-IT staff can do, the Village keeps growing the value of their investment that started with an agenda solution need.
• Automation for every department
  A substantial impact of their investment was process automation. Being able to configure workflows without custom code, gave every department the chance to become more efficient. Perhaps even more importantly, automation allows employees to focus on essential tasks.

The Village of DeForest has every staff person using OnBase. They accomplished this feat within a year. Now, all of their documents and content are being stored securely in a central location. Their current project is converting all paper forms into electronic forms to eliminate paper. Then facilitate the routing of documents across departments which will further speed up their processes.

And what about that agenda management process?

Turns out that’s working well too.

According to LuAnn Leggett, Deputy Administrator Clerk, “The agenda creation and management process in OnBase is much more streamlined…it’s windows-based, so you just click to see where you are within the agenda process and make the effective changes. It’s much more user-friendly.”

What started as a solution for the clerk, content services has improved the office and every department within the local government. Clerks are the hub of government. They record the decisions that define their communities. But, it isn’t just the meetings, the agendas, and the minutes. It’s also leading the way. They can use their experience to expand the paperless efficiency they have implemented to benefit core processes for their town.

In conclusion, the Village of DeForest did not let their small size change their vision of how they wanted to function. With that vision, they picked an agenda solution that could be expanded affordably and efficiently. Now, all village employees use the solution and are delivering more value to their residents.

Hear directly from LuAnn, the Village Clerk, about why OnBase was a great decision!