Dalton Considers Digitization of Records
DALTON, Mass. — The town is exploring digitizing its records to improve documents organization and accessibility, while reducing the need for physical storage space.
Digitization and storage is an issue that the town encounters, more often than they would like, and has become increasingly apparent through the ongoing work of the Stormwater Management Commission, Chair Thomas Irwin told the Select Board in April.
"[The commission has] repeatedly struggled to determine what documents exist, access past commission records, and identify a secure searchable location for records we continue to generate," he said.
Currently, the town's Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) documents are primarily stored on a Google documents account managed on a Berkshire Regional Planning Commission computer and, to a lesser extent, the stormwater management webpage, Irwin said.
"For obvious reasons, this is concerning. As Dalton moves toward full MS4 compliance, both the number and the size of these records will increase," he said.
He estimated that the stormwater commission alone will initially store at least 50 documents, but the issue extends farther than this department.
"Recently, the Planning Board spent many hours searching for the east of the pond drawing and the 1992 land court decision related to Crane and Company, Petricca Industries Inc., and the Town of Dalton," Irwin said.
"Despite these efforts, they were unable to additionally locate the Canon report, which contained the conditions cited in the court's decision."
It is estimated that, with a cloud-based system, the Planning Board would likely store over a thousand documents, he said.
"Other departments and committees would definitely benefit from a secure, searchable storage system as well," Irwin said, listing off examples including the Walker Brook study, prior versions of bylaws, the climate action plan, the 2019 municipal vulnerability plans, and many other documents.
The Department of Public Works sanitary sewer asphalt drawings "that have since disappeared" would have benefited from a system such as this, Irwin said.
The historical commission plans on addressing their large volume storage needs through the Boston Public Library digital commonwealth program, so the town’s focus should solely center on how to manage everything else, he said.
Select Board member Antonio "Tony" Pagliarulo said he has also been considering this and recommended the town reach out to other communities to see what they are doing, as to not "reinvent the wheel."
The Select Board directed Eric Anderson to establish an ad hoc committee to determine a system that best meets the needs of the town.
There are high quality systems available that would do an excellent job of managing and searching these records. However, many carry annual costs of $30,000 or more, making them impractical for Dalton’s needs," Irwin said.
"Fortunately, there are lower cost alternatives that would still meet our needs."
Irwin listed key features the town would like in its cost-accessible storage system including:
- sufficient storage capacity
- access control for uploading and deleting documents,
- a structure that supports efficient search–with metadata being the preferred methodology,
- integration with the town website and potentially supporting searches from the website,
- ease of use for staff
- a robust disaster backup approach, and
- security support with audit trail and chain of custody reports.
He presented three cost-effective systems that address the town's primary needs, including Laserfiche, PubDocs, and CatalogIt. Irwin noted that each option has trade-offs.
The town’s lack of in-house experience in this area makes it challenging to differentiate between these options, so it may be practical to choose the lowest risk solution, Irwin said.
Laserfiche is the "best-in-class benchmark." It is a "comprehensive system meeting strict federal government standards for disaster recovery and reps a more complete solution against which other alternatives can be compared," he said.
They system has a very powerful artificial intelligence search feature but there is a slight chance of having integration challenges with website generated searches.
"I can say that I have simultaneously been part of a great implementation using Laserfiche, and then simultaneously a very horrendous implication of it in different departments within the same town," Anderson said.
"So, it's something that has to be managed carefully, but done correctly is hugely beneficial for the town."
PubDocs is used by several municipalities, interfaces nicely with the town website, and is considered cost-effective, he said.
It is part of the eCode system that Dalton already uses for its bylaws and for which the town already pays a $1,300 annual subscription, Irwin said.
However, the system relies on well structured directory organization rather than metadata searches which is a much less efficient approach, he said.
CatalogIt is a very strong system used by many museums and libraries and appears capable of meeting the town’s needs.
However he was unable to identify any municipality using it for this purpose, so there is a level of uncertainty.
This software does have the lowest risk in regards to efficient search systems as it uses metadata and historically integrates seamlessly with websites, Irwin said.
Tags: digitize, public records,
