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Records Management Office Will County, IL - A county Records Management Office provides a service for all other county offices that directly serve citizens. The job of a Records Management Office is to take all paper documents that need to be preserved, from all county offices, and implement a strategy to preserve them.
For many years, the law mandated that all permanent records be preserved on microfilm. When the law changed on January 1, 2001 to allow digitally scanned copies to be legal documents (The Illinois Electronic Records Act), the challenge to find a preservation system that would be both efficient and cost effective increased dramatically.
No one knows more about this challenge than Lynn Behringer, Director of the Records Management Office in Will County, IL. Lynn spent 19 out of the last 20 years as the department’s Director, with the mission of controlling costs while improving service to the other county offices and to the citizens of Will County.
When Behringer became Director in 1984, the Records Management Office was called The Microfilm Copy Department. Until 2002, the department had two basic functions. It made copies of documents for other departments (functioning as a printshop service shop), and it microfilmed documents (functioning as a filming service bureau).
Behringer’s department microfilmed about two million pages per year. They microfilmed all documents (organized in files ranging in size from three to 1000 pages) that had to be retained “permanently or for a long period of time.” After filming, one copy of the microfilm roll was returned to the originating department and one copy was stored for safekeeping at a separate, secured location. When any department wanted a copy of a microfilmed file or document within a file, it had to find the document on the roll of film and print it using a microfilm reader/printer.
Inherent Problems
Until 2001, microfilming was the only legal way to store records. With that in mind, Behringer had coordinated the most efficient filming strategy possible. Still, the limitations of microfilm left vast room for improvement.
For example, for a file to be complete, it had to be microfilmed in its entirety and in the correct page order. Filming a partial file meant that any additional pages would have to be filmed later, then either spliced onto the original roll of film, or stored on an addendum roll. This made the entire process labor intensive and subject to error. In addition, because of the process, microfilming could be as much as a year or more behind, while filmers waited for files to be complete. What would departments do if they needed a copy of a document while it was waiting to be filmed?
One department that sent 250,000 pages per year for filming made three copies of every page before they sent the originals out for film. At a cost of $.22 per page, (takes into account all related costs – paper, toner, labor, filing space, etc.) this department spent $165,000 per year on necessary copies. Compare that to a digital solution where the cost per page is a more modest $.10. The same number of copies would have cost $75,000, a savings of over 50%.
The Law Changes to Permit Vision
In Will County, IL, Records Management is one of the departments reporting to Joseph L. Mikan, County Executive. Mikan is extremely supportive of exploring technology options to lead county document management toward a paperless process. When the law changed to permit scanning to digital as a legally acceptable means of storing and retrieving permanent records, Mikan and Behringer compared the $.22 per page cost for a paper copy with a $.10 per page cost for digital scanning, and Mikan enthusiastically supported the idea to find and implement a digital solution.
In 2001, Mikan and Behringer began discussing the vision of a county archive facility to encompass record storage, filming, printing and imaging of documents. In June 2002, the vision became a reality when the former Microfilm Copy department changed its name and location. It became the Records Management Department, housed in a separate location, functioning as a true archival facility.
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