Municipality of Waterloo Deploys Hummingbird Enterprise

Currently, more than 1,100 Regional staff members, within and across departments, can store, retrieve and share electronic documents from a central repository, enabling faster and more efficient access to a wide variety of information, ensuring the security of their documents. A final roll out of approximately 1,400 system users is planned for completion by the end of February 2005. The Region creates and receives a high volume of electronic documents daily, including word documents, spreadsheets, CAD drawings, database records, faxes, images, e-mail and e-forms. With Hummingbird Enterprise, the Region has deployed a centralized system that helps individuals as well as collaborative work groups to manage, communicate and share documents, and the information they contain, as efficiently as possible, reducing the amount of time spent searching for information and increasing productivity. With Hummingbird Enterprise, every document, record, e-mail and file activity is carefully maintained in a detailed audit trail. Intradepartmental sharing of documents is a critical requirement for the Region. With the Hummingbird EDRM system, Regional staff corporate-wide can share the most current and accurate information, when they need it, regardless of their location. Even remote or mobile users have secure access to the system, improving the decision-making process across the organization, said Kris Fletcher, Director, Council & Administrative Services/Regional Clerk, Regional Municipality of Waterloo. In addition, we expect to improve public accountability by reducing the risk of lost or unmanaged electronic and paper documents, ensuring compliance with provincial legislation. The Regional users are able to store all electronic documents including notes, correspondence, corporate records and e-mail memos as well as attachments, in a central repository. The powerful search and retrieval tools make this information easily available to manage and share across the entire Municipality. Anyone working on a document will use the same central copy when editing, assuring the staff that they are always working on the most current versions of the files, saving time in project development, eliminating duplicate efforts and improving accuracy of information. The Regional Municipality of Waterloo successfully put into practice a secure, standards-compliant system that allows staff to access and share all documents and records, regardless of type, across the organization, said Andrew Pery, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, Hummingbird Ltd. By automating its paper-based system, the Region is providing its constituents with an effective, efficient and responsive government.