Better, Faster Public Service

Jun 2008 , Sponsored by OnBase - Hyland Software, Inc.

Social services work has always been a very manual process, with mountains of paper being handled by case workers. Citizens seeking assistance must fill out applications and also provide documents regarding housing, income, expenses, need - the list goes on and on.

Case workers have traditionally spent much time filling out, copying, mailing, and waiting for a huge variety of documents. With so much paper involved, the social services environment is the perfect place to streamline processes with enterprise content management (ECM).

ECM software combines the integrated electronic management of content, business processes and historical records in a single application for an entire enterprise. Once documents are scanned or entered into the ECM system, they can be viewed and shared quickly and easily, with no need for printing, copying or waiting.

Lucas County, Ohio, put a lot of effort into finding its ECM solution and decided on OnBase, a Hyland Software solution. OnBase provides numerous features Lucas County was seeking: enterprise-wide capabilities, open architecture, Web-based capacity, strong security, out-of-the-box opportunities, and the ability for employees to use the same applications they've always used instead of needing to learn new software.

With OnBase, Lucas County improved its systems for social services work and numerous departments. The county is using OnBase in 18 of its 38 departments, with plans to expand it into others. It's also sharing OnBase with the city of Toledo and Toledo Public Schools.

Streamlined Processes
Two of the county's biggest users work within social services: the Clerk of Courts and the Department of Job and Family Services ( JFS). Huge amounts of paperwork come into those departments.

Now documents are scanned into the system as soon as people walk into the lobby. By the time an applicant sits down with a case worker, that worker usually has everything he or she needs, and can quickly retrieve any additional documents if necessary.

For applicants who self-register at a kiosk in the lobby when they arrive for an appointment, the process is even more streamlined. That's because the county integrated OnBase with Compass Software, from Northwoods Consulting Partners in Dublin, Ohio. Compass assists in the client flow process for human services, automatically managing appointments and even balancing the assignment of appointments among case workers.

When an applicant self-registers at the kiosk, Compass notifies the case worker and prints a receipt for the applicant's records. All this occurs while the applicant normally would have been waiting in line. Case workers can then provide better and faster service to applicants during their visits.

"The implementation of an agency-wide document imaging solution along with standardized OnBase workflow processes has transformed the human service environment by leaps and bounds," said Mario J. Faz, information services director of JFS. "In the past, large case loads for eligibility caseworkers have always been problematic and hard to manage. This translates to increased paperwork flowing throughout the agency. Employees were swimming in paper. We now have a solution that can manage 400,000 pieces of paper per month being scanned and indexed. All this data is now at the fingertips of the employee. It's amazing to see the positive change this system has had for the agency."

Better Service and Lower Costs Give Citizens More
Waiting times for the public have dropped from 40-60 minutes to 10-15 minutes, thanks to documents moving through the system electronically instead of manually. And when it comes to helping applicants for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, for example, case workers can find needed documents instantly instead of waiting one or two days for a file to arrive from the central storage facility.