When Pensacola City Hall moved into its current location overlooking Pensacola Bay, City Clerk Shirley White became concerned about the preservation of the city’s official records. The building is somewhat vulnerable to storms and hurricanes because its location is so close to the water. Coupled with the growing volume of records, White decided it was time to look at electronic document management solutions.

“The City of Pensacola is quite old,” said White. “We have official records going back to the 1800s, and many of them have to be preserved indefinitely by law. We were increasingly worried they might be destroyed by natural disaster. The old process of safeguarding them was so cumbersome. Every time there was a storm, my staff and I literally would pull our cars up to the building and load the city’s records into our trunks.”

In addition to the challenge of keeping the documents in a secure location, White’s office had to access

the records upon public request. If someone wanted to look at minutes from a city council meeting, city ordinances, contracts, or old deeds, those records had to be located, pulled from their storage place and passed along to the requestor. Not only was it an extremely labor-intensive process, but there was the risk of very old documents being mishandled or misplaced.

The City of Pensacola implemented Westbrook’s Fortis document management software in 1997 and now manages more than 750,000 documents and city records digitally.

Not only is the information more accessible than ever before for government employees, but official records now are available to the public through the city’s web site. Today, anyone needing information from the Pensacola City Clerk’s office simply can go online. The electronic imaging and filing system has reduced the behind-the-scenes manual labor for city employees, and it is significantly more customer-friendly.

“We looked at a number of programs, but what Westbrook brought to the table has worked extremely well for us. The programs are so simple to use, even though going back and scanning all the old records has been labor intensive. And, we are getting such positive feedback from the public now that they can access city records so easily,” White continued.

Then in summer of 2004, Florida was hit by a series of hurricanes within weeks of each other. Past weather concerns came to fruition and White’s pre-planning proved to be the savior. Many buildings were destroyed by the biggest hurricane – Hurricane Ivan, and City Hall was severely damaged and has not been reoccupied even today. Fortunately, all documents had been safely backed up via Fortis.

“It’s difficult to measure the magnitude of the loss if we hadn’t had our documents stored electronically in Fortis, but it would’ve been severe. Thanks to Fortis, all important documents and files from every city office are safe and business can proceed as usual for us. The city would not have been able to operate properly if thousands and thousands of documents were destroyed in the hurricanes,” White added.

Although pioneered by the clerk’s office, other city entities are utilizing the process to better manage administrative tasks. Legal Services, Financial Services, Employee Services, Risk Management, Housing, Park Services, Utilities, Airport Administration and the Pensacola Police Department are some of the other divisions finding success with Fortis.

(Parts of story reprinted from NW Florida Business Climate magazine)