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Sunday, April 20, 2008

Ind. Gov't. - "Some county departments have cut paperwork"

The South Bend Tribune's Nancy J. Sulok writes today:

A couple of county councilmen are studying ways to cut the amount of paperwork they encounter. Heath Weaver, D-District H, and Mark Catanzarite, D-District G, traveled to LaPorte County earlier this month to observe the paperless trends there.

But some county government departments here in St. Joseph County already have grasped the digital concept.

Bill Bruinsma, director of the Thomas N. Frederick Juvenile Justice Center, said the JJC started moving toward a paperless operation in 1997, and "it's one of the most difficult things I've ever done."

"We're pretty much trying not to use paper as much as possible," said Jerry L. Johnson, chief probation officer for the county. His department's move away from paper started in 2000.

They are just two of the government departments moving away from paper.

Every department within the JJC is on a computer program known as Quest, Bruinsma said. Not much paper is kept, he said. The biggest bulk of paperwork is from documents coming into the JJC from outside, he said. But even that is scanned into the system and kept electronically.

"The filing cabinet has gone away,'' Bruinsma said.

It's gone away in the Adult Probation Department, too, Johnson said.

His department uses a program called DocuWare to keep records of everyone sentenced in the county. Records are kept from the time of sentencing until seven years after a person is discharged from the system. For a criminal who receives a long sentence, that could mean keeping records for 30 or 40 years, Johnson said.

In 2000, he said, he was looking at the potential need for dozens, if not hundreds, of file cabinets to store the 2 million documents he has on file. Storage was consuming too much office space.

Now, Johnson said, records are stored electronically and hard copies are destroyed. Out of that, he continued, came the use of e-mail to replace faxes, saving not only paper but also time and money.

Johnson said he is looking at a time when he could be totally paperless, but until the courts and the clerk's office join the effort, "we're stuck dealing with paper.''

Going paperless does not necessarily save a lot of money, Johnson said. Instead of buying file cabinets, he's buying computers, software and related items.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on April 20, 2008 12:23 PM
Posted to Indiana Government