Government Case Study: Ottawa County, MI

Ottawa County is located in the southwestern section of Michigan's Lower Peninsula with Lake Michigan as its western boundary. The county comprises 17 townships, six cities, and one village in an area of 565 square miles. Serving a population of 262,000 residents, Ottawa County is the eighth most populous county in the state.

A leader in using advanced information technology, The Center for Digital Government ranked Ottawa County 4th in 2010 Digital County survey for 250,000- 499,999 population category.

Following the implementation of their OnBase solution, Ottawa County saw almost immediate improvements in many facets of their operations. A complete end-to-end electronic court solution was established, which provided instant access to legal documents throughout the courts and all county departments, integrated five different line of business applications, and eliminated the need to physically transport records from court to court. The result was improved and expedited communication between the courts and law enforcement agencies, and greatly improved employee morale. The solution also automated processes and standardized operations between departments and locations using rules-based workflows. Errors were reduced via Eforms, which automatically captures data at the point of creation.

In the District Court, a six-month backlog of civil cases was eliminated shortly after deployment. Today the court is processing greater volume with fewer resources. The District Court's Criminal Arraignment process has also been significantly improved. Defendant check-out wait time has been reduced from one hour to just 15 minutes, and post-arraignment paperwork, which once took up to three days to process, is now accomplished in just over an hour.