The Ohio State Highway Patrol fulfilled more than 103,000 accident report requests in 2004, nearly 40 percent more than in the previous year; and OSHP accomplished this with 25 percent fewer staff members, all while improving response time and customer service levels.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol (OSHP) is an internationally accredited agency dedicated to professional law enforcement service. The Patrol provides statewide police traffic services to keep Ohio’s roadways safe, Statewide emergency response services and support services to the public and the criminal justice community, Investigation of criminal activities on state-owned and leased property throughout Ohio, and, security for the Governor and other dignitaries.

In today’s economic squeeze, government agencies are continually asked to do more with less. The catch, however, is that as the amount of information and number of documents continues to grow, funds to support additional staff never appear. The result is long waits in line for documents and forms, slow response times, lost and misplaced documents and continual delays in processing.

OSHP was no exception. With responsibility for documenting every accident that occurs on state highways, it’s easy to imagine the large volume of reports that are generated each day. For years, this reporting process had been handled with hand-written reports filled out by officers in the field which were then submitted to the OSHP Central Records Unit for processing.

At more than 80,000 traffic crash reports per year, there was an immense workload for the administrative staff at OSHP. Once this mound of paperwork was processed, it was even more difficult to retrieve it when a request was filed.

In the past, researching a report required an administrative attendant to manually locate the proper paperwork by sifting through thousands of reports—it could even require travel to an offsite storage location where papers were sometimes piled waist high. Once retrieved, the document request was completed, and then the original report had to be re-filed following the same manual process. This procedure could take as many as four to six weeks to complete.

“We tried improving our processes to handle the request volume, but it was just not making an impact. We knew the entire process needed to be upgraded to make our records more easily accessible in a shorter timeframe,” said Major Stephen Friday, Director of Central Records. “That’s when we found Intellinetics.”

It was important for OSHP to work with a company that viewed their relationship as a partnership. They wanted to work with a company that would go through the change process with them and evolve with them as their needs evolved. “Intellinetics quickly put us at ease as they demonstrated their familiarity with our situation and how they have successfully led other organizations from a paper-based system to an electronic document management system many times before,” Major Friday noted. Working closely together to identify specific requirements and outline the existing processes and document types, a plan for converting the manual system to the Intellivue solution was developed.

Specifically, OSHP required a seamless solution that would integrate with their existing AS400 legacy application. The physical conversion process was handled through two high-speed scanning stations. Once documents are scanned, the OSHP records staff indexes them by screen scraping the data from the legacy system. “With our new system we converted enough paper into electronic files that we literally filled half a semi trailer with all the paper we eliminated. Intellivue has made a huge improvement in our ability to process, store and retrieve records.” said Jeff Maute, Administrative Assistant III, Central Records Unit.

The initial Intellivue installation in 2002 did take care of speeding up the processing of OH-1 accident reports, but there was still the problem of requests for the OH-1 forms. “Not only did our office handle 80,000 – 85,000 traffic crash reports each year, but we were also getting 50,000 - 60,000 requests for these reports at that time,” commented Anne Milliron, Records Management Supervisor for OSHP. “In fact, out of two to three postal bins of records requests each week, we would have thousands of requests go unanswered every year.”

Working collaboratively, Intellinetics and OSHP created internet access to the imaging system. The result is a cutting-edge online request system that allows citizens, insurance company representatives, and any other interested parties to search, pay for and receive traffic crash reports online. This online service has helped take the burden off internal staff by reducing the mail-in and walk up requests by an astonishing 40 percent.

The public website, http://crsweb.dps.state.oh.us/crashreports/index.asp, has improved the average turnaround time document requests from an average of five weeks to an average of five minutes.

As a result of the new online request system, there are no requests that go unfulfilled and OSHP has received a very positive response from the community. In addition, OSHP has been able to reallocate three full-time staff positions to more value-added work, including additional officers on the front lines.

The Intellivue document imaging platform and the online module continue to provide significant administrative benefits for the Central Records Unit. The response to online access has been overwhelmingly positive across Ohio including both citizens and businesses. In 2004 alone, citizens made more that 103,000 requests online for OH-1 reports – nearly 80 percent of the total request volume. No more lines, no more lost or misplaced files, no more waiting.

As Major Friday summed it up, “Intellivue has made a huge improvement in our ability to process, store and retrieve records. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

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If your organization manages large volumes of documentation that you’d like to turn into a tool to enhance service levels, increase productivity and boost profitability, contact us today to learn more about the power of Intellivue.