The Council for State Archivists (COSA) has designated October 10, 2018 as Electronic Records Day which is designed to raise awareness among state government agencies, the general public, related professional organizations, and other stakeholders about the crucial role electronic records play in their world.
The City of Brookings has embraced the idea of electronic records management in the interest of transparency, and to both reduce the need for paper document storage and to safely secure historical documents against calamity.
In July of 2017, the City of Brookings executed two contracts related to electronic records management. The first was an intergovernmental agreement with the Oregon Secretary of State for electronic records management services. The other was with Chaves Consulting for subscription services. With these two contracts, Brookings entered into the State’s electronic records management system known as Oregon Records Management Solutions (ORMS).
Once software had been installed and training had been conducted in late 2017, City staff started the in-house process of scanning documents into the system. In early 2018, staff then secured permission from the State Archivist to store specific permanent-retention documents in an electronic format.
In less than a year, City staff has uploaded into the system nearly 3000 documents which are available for the public to view through the City’s database at https://www.brookings.or.us/index.aspx?NID=299.
Records can be searched by a variety of methods such as title or content. The City has also set up category searches from its webpage for documents such as Resolutions or Council minutes.
For documents not yet available electronically, the public can still submit Public Records Requests to the City Recorder.