Kofax and its Partner AccuImage Ease Paper Burden for State of Utah

By Michael Truncale

The City of Brentwood is located in Williamson County, adjacent to the southern boundary of Metropolitan Nashville and Davidson County. Incorporated in 1969, with a population of 3,378 in 1970, Brentwood is now home to more than 30,000 Tennesseans within its 41 square miles.

Established in 1971, the Brentwood Police Department currently has an authorized staffing level of 56 sworn certified officers and 14 civilian personnel. According to Capt. Jeff Hughes, head of the Administrative/Technical Services Division, the Brentwood Police Department is “one of the most forward-thinking police departments in the country.” Hughes, who has been in law enforcement for over 20 years, was instrumental in the implementation of a document scanning solution to serve the police department and the citizens of Brentwood. The paperwork he filled out on a daily basis as a detective for ten years and a patrolman for four years gave him the insight to know where technology could prove beneficial in decreasing the paperwork burden for the Brentwood Police Department, while making police records easily accessible for department staff, and therefore, for its citizens and the courts.

The records function of the police department is staffed by two civilian personnel who are designated as records clerks and are under Hughes’ direct supervision. The records clerks are responsible for the data entry and maintenance of all police reports, citations and criminal history information. They are responsible for processing requests for copies of police and motor vehicle crash reports and, being designated as the municipal court clerks, they are also responsible for processing payments for traffic fines and court costs.

Challenge

The City of Brentwood is mired in paperwork – primarily forms generated in response to calls made to police dispatch. In 2005, the department received approximately 27,000 calls, up from 25,000 calls in 2004. Using the month of December 2005 as an example, 2,068 calls were received, although not all calls require a written report. During that month, the Brentwood Police Department generated 400 tickets, responded to 181 motor vehicle thefts and 251 non-vehicle thefts, and was involved in 233 court cases.

Many calls result in the generation of an incident report by a police officer, including each of the reported thefts. Common paperwork generated by the department is in the form of traffic tickets, arrest reports, accident reports and incident reports. Each type of form carries a different records management retention schedule. For example, by law, arrest reports must be kept for one hundred years, or they can be disposed of upon the death of the violator. At the other end of the retention schedule, tickets must be retained for a period of only three years. Accident reports do not require retention in their original paper form; however, they must be easily accessible to accommodate frequent requests by insurance companies, citizens and other walk-up traffic. The department’s archives date back to 1971.

"For every report we generate, more than one person wants [or needs] a copy,” said Hughes. Using the old manual system of filing and manual processes, “upon request, a staff member would have to get up from his or her desk and go to the file cabinet to pull the requested document(s). That person would then photocopy the document(s) and hand it, in the case of a walk-up request, or mail it, to the person who requested it. This was a time-consuming task that made our staff’s productivity suffer, and oftentimes made our citizens wait an excessive amount of time."

Solution

AccuImage, LLC, an information management systems integrator located in Nashville, designed and implemented an advanced document imaging and content management system for the City of Brentwood Police Department.

For the solution, AccuImage seamlessly integrated a high-volume Böwe Bell+Howell scanner with EMC Documentum ApplicationXtender. AccuImage engineers also developed multiple applications in which the variety of documents could be stored and managed. AccuImage has also assisted in converting a considerable paper backlog into digital images in their document imaging service bureau located in Nashville.

Reports are filled out and brought to supervisors. Upon supervisory review and approval, most reports – including accident reports, incident reports and arrest reports – are scanned by the department’s records clerks. Data entry and document indexing are done at this time, ensuring proper storage within the system and ease of future retrieval. Most documents are scanned and available in the system the same day, or within 24 hours.

Documents can be retrieved by a variety of criteria, which serve as index fields. Some of these fields include case number, incident number, driver name and date. The Brentwood Police Department receives a lot of walk-up traffic – individuals requesting copies of public records, such as accident and incident reports. Using the new system, staff can simply pull up a document in real time, print on demand, and hand over a copy to the requester. Similarly, documentation requested by insurance companies can be accessed while the staff member is on the phone with the requester, print the documents, and then mail or fax them the same day.

The City of Brentwood is able to run activity reports on the documents scanned into the system, based on a variety of search parameters or wild card searches. The number of accidents, property damage and personal injury claims, and other statistics, are easy to tally and analyze. This information is regularly shared with management internally as well as with external audiences. For example, a significant number of traffic accidents at a specific intersection may signal to the city’s engineer or public works department that additional road work or traffic signs are needed.

The document image repository and content database, both kept onsite at the City of Brentwood, are backed up regularly to DVD, providing a means for disaster recovery.

Results

The system AccuImage put in place at the City of Brentwood Police Department has produced a significant increase in staff productivity, primarily because of the staff’s ability to provide what Hughes calls “instant answers.”

"I don’t think you can put a value on how much time we’ve saved,” said Hughes. “The new system has made us much more efficient with our records. Rather than getting up and going to the file cabinets, records are easier to pull up – instantly – on the computer. This proves beneficial on a daily basis.”

The electronic filing of documents and forms has also freed up space within the department, space that was previously reserved exclusively for filing cabinets.

“The team at AccuImage has been great to work with, and the local support is invaluable,” said Hughes. “They know me by my first name. Most support is done the same day, and though they’re just down the street, they can usually help us over the phone.”

Michael Troncale is Director of Corporat Communications at Kofax. he can be reached at 949--727-1722 or michael_troncale@kofax.com.

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