As part of the city's continued effort to digitize records, administration has been given the go-ahead to procure a commercial-grade scanner for roughly $50,000.
The scanner will be bought with money left over from a shelving upgrade project approved in 2015, says a report to council by the city's manager of records and information, Jacqueline Gartner. It will help combat annual off-site storage costs to store physical records.
“As development in the city continues to increase, more and more information is being generated and filed,” Gartner wrote. “The volume of growth of physical records has increased the need for more physical storage to the point that the previously planned shelving upgrade would no longer be able to meet corporate storage needs.”
The report says the city spends about $30,000 every year for record storage.
City spokesperson Kathy deJong said of the $56,800 council approved in 2015 to upgrade the shelving in the city's central records room in St. Albert Place, just under $5,000 of that money was actually spent.
“The pandemic shifted the city’s priorities to a focus on digitization and process efficiencies which paused any further work on this project,” deJong said.
Besides reducing storage costs, having the infrastructure to digitize records in-house will also allow the city to avoid contracting a company to digitize records, which could be extremely costly and disruptive to city operations, Gartner wrote.
“The cost to contract digitization services is extremely high,” she said, adding, “Quotations take into consideration the square footage of physical files to be digitized and fees include services for document preparation and processing.”
“Based on the quantity of records stored in the central records room, an estimated cost for completion would be well into the hundreds of thousands.”
A commercial-grade scanner could also reduce the amount of time city staff spend retrieving records needed for ongoing projects.
“With many employees working remotely, the need to access electronic information is more in demand,” Gartner wrote. “There are often challenges locating, accessing, and sharing information on physical files which electronic records would alleviate.”
“To accommodate this need, employees are inconsistently using multi-function devices to scan records into network drives for convenient access to these records. This type of ad-hoc scanning does not meet the legal requirements outlined in the National Standard of Canada.”
Given the “ad-hoc” scanning processes staff are using, Gartner wrote the city is at risk of having gaps in information and of legal non-compliance.
“A commercial scanner is designed to combine document preparation and digitization into one seamless workflow, removing the need for additional preparation stages and reducing processing time to complete projects,” Gartner's report states.
While having a commercial scanner will increase the volume of digital records, deJong said the city doesn't need to make a corresponding investment in any digital infrastructure.
Council approved the scanner purchase on unanimous consent on Aug. 29.
