Scott County, Minnesota - Case Study

Case Summary
Scott County
Shakopee, Minn.
Services: County government for the fastest growing county in Minnesota with more than 89,000 residents.
Critical needs: Content management. Ease-of-use for non-technical staff. Content subscription. Digital asset management.
"We selected Stellent Content Management because Stellent was able to customize the content management system to specifically fit our county government model. Stellent Content Management enables us to keep our content fresh, easy to manage and easy to retrieve online, ultimately providing residents with convenient access to our services and significantly reducing our costs and increasing our productivity." - Gary Shelton, Scott County deputy county administrator

Background
For years, residents of Scott County had one way to retrieve information on land parcels, view court documents and renew vehicle registrations-they had to pay a visit to the Government Center. Now, Scott County has changed that by making certain public information and transactions available online.

Scott County is using the Stellent Content Management system to publish, index and manage certain information on its external Internet site and employee intranet. By managing this content and related transactions online, Scott County officials have experienced a dramatic increase in the efficiency of its staff, resulting in a large return on investment for the Stellent Content Management implementation.

"Information is what county government is all about," said Gary Shelton, Scott County deputy county administrator. "The public gains knowledge of what we do through our Internet site, and Stellent helps us keep our content fresh, easy to manage and easy to retrieve. We anticipate we will reduce costs by $100,000 to $200,000 per year using Stellent to manage content on our public Internet site alone."

How Scott County's Internet site Works
To power its public Internet site (http://www.co.scott.mn.us/), Scott County is using several components of the Stellent Content Management system, including Stellent Content Server which is a repository for the information that is contributed and published to the site. County employees contribute content to Stellent Content Server using any Web browser. The content is saved in the server in its native format, such as a word processing document, spreadsheet or graphic file, enabling easy updates.

Once submitted, Stellent automatically converts content from its native format to a variety of Web formats, such as HTML, XML, PDF or WML. Stellent Content Publisher then automatically publishes the content to Scott County's Internet site, eliminating the need to route content through a Webmaster for coding before publishing it to the site.

The end result? Scott County residents can access land records filed in the recorder's office; access the county's geographical information system; view election results as they happen; see property tax information and ordinances; and apply online for jobs with Scott County. Additionally, by integrating Stellent's content repository with Gov.doc, an application service provider that assists Scott County with general subscription services, users may request email notifications when certain kinds of information, such as changes in county zoning laws and ordinances, are updated on the site.

"Stellent customized Stellent Content Management to specifically fit our county government model, allowing us to grow into it as we expand our online services," Shelton said. "For example, they designed unique templates for our property tax and land record functions. Since all of the counties in Minnesota use the same forms, these programs could potentially be implemented in counties across the entire state."

Before the end of 2002, Shelton expects residents will be able to search and sign up for volunteer opportunities on the Internet site. Residents will enter specific volunteer activities in which they are interested and will be matched with appropriate opportunities. And, tapping Stellent's subscription feature, commercial users, realty and title search companies will be able to automatically receive expanded tax and land records information as it is updated. Finally, Scott County intends to add a function that enables police officers to access files, such as police reports and records, from their squad cars.

Employee Intranet - Connecting Scott County Employees
Each of Scott County's 38 departments contributes and manages its own content for the intranet. All of Scott County's 600-plus employees have direct access to the Stellent Content Management system, enabling them to publish content to the intranet for co-workers in locations around the Twin Cities.

Most of Scott County's basic administrative processes are conducted on the intranet. For example, employees can schedule conference rooms online and even determine whether a particular room will meet their needs - every room's configuration is available online. In addition, Scott County's internal phone book is on the intranet, and Stellent's search function enables users to search the phone book by employees' first names, last names and departments.

The employee intranet also includes training and evaluation programs, including new employee orientation, risk management and professional development materials. Employees can also access policies and procedures on the intranet, and Stellent Content Management's subscription feature notifies employees when a certain policy or procedure has been modified. In addition, information about employee benefits is accessible via the intranet.

"Stellent Content Management enables us to check in and track Scott County's nine different benefit policies, based on agreements with nine different unions," Shelton said. "And, Stellent's digital asset management capabilities allow us to manage video clips that employees can click on to learn about different health benefits."

Benefits of Bringing County Government Online
Both Scott County residents and staff are enjoying the benefits of bringing government business online. For taxpayers, accessing information via the Web is more customer-friendly and convenient.

"In a recent survey, 75 percent of our county's population can access the Internet at home or work," Shelton said. "Stellent Content Management allows us to provide those people with the convenience of viewing documents and completing transactions without making a trip to the Government Center."

Since launching its external Internet site, Scott County staff members spend less time and money processing transactions and are freed up to spend more time on other projects. Shelton foresees that the county's increased efficiency could lead to cost savings of up to $200,000 per year from the public Internet site alone, a large return for Scott County's $453,000 investment in Stellent Content Management. Internally, Scott County has experienced similar ROI with its intranet.

"Employees are no longer wasting paper printing updates to policies and procedures or wasting time tracking down the most up-to-date version of documents," Shelton said. "As soon as content changes, departments check it into Stellent Content Management and it's published to the intranet."

Going forward, Scott County anticipates reaping substantial cost savings by using Stellent Content Management to better manage and improve access to documents and data within its community development and court administration departments. Information from these departments will reside within Stellent Content Server and will be accessible through a browser, setting the stage for users to some day access this information on their wireless devices. According to Shelton, an independent group assessed ROI on using Stellent Content Management for these functions and made a six-year projection. For community development, the group predicted a cumulative savings of $450,000 over six years. For court administration, the group projected a $433,000 savings over a six-year period.

Finally, like other county governments, Scott County was under pressure to implement its Web site quickly. Initial deployment of the Stellent Content Server, the backbone of the county's Internet site, was completed in two weeks.

"Stellent Content Management's out-of-the-box capability enabled us to get our e-government functions up and running quickly, allowing us to better serve our citizens and increase our staff's efficiency," Shelton said. "Stellent cut our projected implementation timeline in half. There were no other vendors we looked at that could do that."

The implementation of Scott County's intranet, which has been operating since January 2001, moved even more quickly, according to Shelton: "Our intranet took only two to three weeks to get up and running. In fact, the Stellent system itself was running within a day."

Stellent Content Management Features
Stellent Content Management, formerly known as Xpedio Content Management, rapidly deploys scalable content-centric Web sites and manages business and Web content for other e-business applications, such as enterprise portals and business commerce applications. The system Web-enables business content by aggregating content from multiple sources, converting it to Web formats, managing and publishing it to the Web, and personalizing it for specific audiences, devices and applications. Stellent Content Management allows anyone, from one to thousands of users, to easily contribute content via a browser in any format and automatically convert it to a variety of Web formats, such as PDF, HTML, XML, WML and cHTML. The system also integrates with existing security systems and provides business personalization features. For information on how to obtain the Stellent Content Management system, contact Stellent at 1-800-989-8774.