RADIX Case Studies
Idaho Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors
The Board of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors was created by the Idaho Legislature in its present form in 1939. Their mission is “… to safeguard life, health, and property by assuring that those who practice the professions of engineering and land surveying attain and maintain competence in those professions."
The Board has issued approximately 24,000 licenses and certificates and each license and certificate was associated with a paper file of anywhere from a few sheets of paper to as many as a hundred or more. The Board opens approximately 30 complaint dockets annually, and the contents of those hard files varied from a few to hundreds of sheets.
In 2007 the IPELS staff published an RFP and the goal to become paperless. This would allow them to reduce the storage space and to improve access to the files for greater efficiency and improved customer service.
As a result of the RFP, RADIX was chosen as the repository. There was some debate about a hosted solution versus purchasing the software, but the clear choice was RADIX because there is no need to purchase servers, databases, spend the money for implementation or for the maintenance and upkeep of the system. An additional benefit has been the ability to access the documents stored in RADIX from remote locations which would have required significant expense if IPELS had purchased the software.
IPELS has two primary document categories: Application files for the various categories of licenses (PE, PLS, EIIT, LSIT, and Corp) and complaints. The document collection occupied 20 standard and 3 vertical filing cabinets and most of two rooms. After the scanning was completed the files were sent to the state record facility for permanent storage and the rooms can be re-purposed for product use.
Access to the files is greatly improved; there are no mis-files or searching for a file folder. RADIX is linked to IPELS access database for licenses, creating a seamless integration between the data and the documents. Jennifer Rowe noticed that “RADIX was easy to learn and implement and the retrievals are easy and quick. There are lots of features that make our jobs easier.”
A document can be emailed directly from RADIX and the documents can be retrieved from a remote location while at a meeting. “It has also enabled our telecommuting initiatives so that the employees can do their work from home without wasting the time, gas and expenses to come to the office on the designated days.” comments David Curtis, Executive Director.
RADIX has eliminated the task of filing and improved the office workflow. Documents are scanned after arrival using Digitech’s Systems PaperFlow and a high speed scanner and made available for easy access in RADIX whenever a retrieval is requested, regardless of the retriever’s location.
David Curtis, Executive Director observes “The cost to use RADIX was compelling and it made the project possible for IPELS.”
IPELS has started down the Path to Paperless by eliminating their filing cabinets through Imagetek’s Automate phase and is starting to Integrate RADIX into the daily receipt process achieving further return on investment.