Scott County is the fastest growing county in Minnesota, and the eighth fastest growing county in the U.S. Because its population is growing so rapidly, the county was finding it difficult to serve its constituents.

In fact, if residents needed to retrieve information on land parcels, view court documents, renew their vehicle registrations or do any other government business, they needed to do it in person, by physically coming to the Scott County Government Center. With more than 100,000 residents and a growth rate of more than 78% since 1990, just providing basic services was becoming a challenge.

The county decided to move most of its functions to the Web, in an effort to save on time and staffing costs. At the same time, it wanted to implement a standard document management system that would let all of the county’s various divisions do document archiving, security, retention, retrieval and disposal in a standard way. This would also save on time and staffing costs, since information would be easier to store and retrieve.

"Information is what county government is all about," said Gary Shelton, deputy county administrator for Scott County. "Stellent has helped us meet the increasing content demands of both our internal employees and our residents.”

Using the Stellent system, county employees were able to scan government documents into the system and tag them for easy search. The documents could then be repurposed for use on the county Web site, or for use across the county departments. With documents, forms and other government information easily available via the Web, most residents didn’t need to visit the county center, since they could perform their tasks right from their home computer.

”Residents can access land records, tax and GIS information, and in the near future, they also will be able to pay property taxes and apply for building permits on our site,” Shelton said. “By transitioning our content and services to the Web, we’ve significantly reduced costs while increasing our productivity."

In addition, leveraging the Stellent document management features across county departments has also cut costs and bolstered productivity, he said, and both initiatives have led to a robust ROI on the system.

In fact, META Group, a Stamford, Conn.-based consultancy, found that the county would reap an $865,000 ROI by year-end 2003. META calculated Scott County&singlequot;s ROI through a study that identified 14 ways in which the Stellent system has allowed Scott County to enhance operations and better serve its citizens. It found that benefits to the county ranged from reduced shipping, printing, paper and copying costs to increased physical space, improved staff efficiency and better content maintenance.

For more information, visit the Scott County site here.