SR - AGR-6545 - UPGRADE CITYS DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (LASERFICHE)1. SUBJECT
Professional Services Agreement with ECS Imaging, Inc., of Riverside, California for the
upgrade of the City's Document Management System
2. SUMMARY 77771
The City utilizes Laserfiche as its Document Management System (DMS). There are two
separate installs of Laserfiche: one used by the Police Department, the other by all other City
users. Both installations have not been updated in many years and are past their useful life. As a
result, interfaces between Laserfiche and other software products throughout the City are no
longer supported by those various vendors. This Agreement with ECS Imaging will merge the
two separate installations into one central database; upgrade our DMS to the Laserfiche RIO
platform; upgrade Weblink, the City's platform for public access to City documents; and provide
professional services and ongoing support of the new platform.
3. RECOMMENDED ACTION
1) Approve the Agreement with ECS Imaging, Inc., of Riverside, California, in the amount of
$185,420, and authorize the Mayor and City Clerk to execute the Agreement on behalf of the
City.
2) Authorize a transfer of appropriation of $5,000 from Account 790.1601.56033.19640 (Info
Tech Upgrades) to Account 790.1601.56033.20284 ( Laserfiche Upgrade).
4. FISCAL IMPACT
Upon appropriation, funds will be available in the following accounts:
780.1601.51670.00000 Other Professional Services
790.1601.56033.20284 Laserfiche Upgrade
$37,750
$147,670
$185,420
5. STRATEGIC PLAN GOAL(S)
4a. Provide outstanding public services- Enhance technology to improve public accessibility to
information and services.
6. GENERAL PLAN IMPLEMENTATION 771
Not applicable.
7. DISCUSSION and BACKGROUND
The City has used Laserfiche as its electronic Document Management System (DMS) since 1997.
All of the City's contracts, City Council and Planning Commission agendas, staff reports, and
minutes are stored in Laserfiche, among other documents. It is the official system of record for
the City Clerk's office. The Police Department, running its own independent installation, also
uses Laserfiche for its document management and retrieval. Weblink, Laserfiche's online portal,
allows public access to City Council and Planning Commission agendas, minutes, and staff
reports. Additionally, several enterprise systems, such as the City's financial system, interface
with Laserfiche for document storage and retrieval.
The last major upgrade to Laserfiche occurred in 2008. The version that the City is running is, in
many cases, not supported by the systems that interface with Laserfiche. Although we have not
experienced a failure in these interfaces, if one were to happen, there would be no support to fix
the interface. We have also experienced incompatibility between the current Laserfiche client
and Windows 8.1 and have had to employ a workaround to allow access to Laserfiche.
Additionally, because of our current licensing structure, we occasionally have had issues with
members of the public receiving errors when trying to receive City documents on our website.
Another issue we faced was poor technical support for the Laserfiche product. Most users of
Laserfiche utilize a third -party reseller for support. However, up until recently, since we had
purchased the product directly through Laserfiche, they were providing support. City staff
reached out to other cities that use Laserfiche and found that ECS Imaging, Inc. (ECS) was
providing excellent support to their clients at reasonable prices. As a result, in spring 2017, the
City engaged ECS to provide reseller services and technical support.
Since 2013, IT staff has been working with the City Clerk's office and the Police Department on
a plan to upgrade Laserfiche. At that time, staff determined that the preferred option was to
obtain Laserfiche RIO licensing and upgrades. RIO is the top tier of the three suites of options
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available from Laserfiche and represents its enterprise -level licensing. Since the support that the
City was receiving from Laserfiche was unsatisfactory, staff ultimately suspended the upgrade
activity and focused on other priorities. However, because of the issues discussed above, the
Laserfiche upgrade has now become a bigger priority in order to ensure continued operation of
our DMS.
Now that the City has engaged ECS for Laserfiche support, they have provided a proposal to
provide licensing and services to upgrade to a current version of Laserfiche. Staff met with ECS
in September, where we examined the compliment of licenses held by the City and discussed
interests in expanding the use of features. The City currently has their "United" group server and
standard server, software development kit (SDK), web access, Weblink, and concurrent
licensing. When all of these were considered, similar to staffs conclusion in 2013, ECS
recommended RIO licensing. RIO licensing includes workflow, web access, mobile, advanced
audit trail, digital signatures, discussions, unlimited servers, and forms essentials. Rather than
utilizing concurrent users, which is part of the reason the public sometimes had issues accessing
our documents online, RIO licensing is named users internally and unlimited users through web
access.
Additional benefits of the upgrade and related services include:
• Updating securities, volumes and repository;
• OCR enablement and workflow for improved text search;
• Creating a single instance with multiple repository, thereby reducing the redundancy with
the Police Department;
• Future interoperability with GIS, maintenance management, and permitting, among
others;
• Potential use of workflow and electronic signatures to improve upon the flow of
approvals for and sharing of internal and external documents.
Below is a summary of the cost of the software and services to be provided:
Software $111,670
Annual Maintenance and Licensing $37,750
Professional Services $36,000
Total Cost $185,420
The software and professional services will be funded through Information Technology capital
funds (Fund 790), while the annual maintenance and licensing will be funded by Information
Technology operating funds (Fund 780). The annual maintenance and licensing would replace
our current annual maintenance of the existing Laserfiche software, which amounts to
approximately $16,000.
This Agreement represents the first of multiple phases to fully integrate all of the features and
capabilities of Laserfiche. The first phase will focus on migrating the City to the latest version of
Laserfiche and improving the security and file structure of the product. This phase will create the
foundation upon which future expanded use of the product can be laid. Future phases will
include only services to help implement further use of the product as the first phase includes all
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of the software and licensing costs. Detail of the services to be provided in the first phase is
included in Exhibit "A" of the Agreement.
8. ATTACHMENTS
Professional Services Agreement with ECS Imaging, Inc.
Price Quote from ECS Imaging, Inc.
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