LaserFiche adds Web service, fed customer

Government organizations at all levels face mandates to eliminate paper-based operations while maintaining accurate archives.

To help meet those challenges and provide the public with more information online, the Postal Rate Commission recently selected LaserFiche Document Imaging to move — and store — its information onto the World Wide Web.

LaserFiche unveiled WebLink 5 at the Comdex 2000 trade show in Las Vegas. The solution enables users to share information across the Internet without having to encode documents in HTML.

With WebLink 5, users can scan paper documents or drag and drop electronic files into a LaserFiche database, where they are instantly published on the Internet. The documents are searchable by any word or phrase and can be downloaded as PDF files or in their native file format.

"Government agencies need to be involved in digital archiving and also distributing the information effectively and efficiently," said Nien-Ling Wacker, chief executive officer of the Torrance, Calif.-based company. "They have massive amounts of information that must be easy to store as well as publish and distribute."

Wacker said LaserFiche's services provide government agencies with solutions to meet archive and access requirements and ensure that they will still be viable 10 years from now. The company has government customers at the federal and local levels, including the Library of Congress; Bakersfield, Calif.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Deschutes County, Oregon.

"Our system and media make sure the records can be accessed in the future" because their databases and systems use basic query language and coding, Wacker said. "Otherwise, it all mixes into alphabet soup and years later it's difficult to separate them."

To access the Postal Rate Commission service, users can go to www.prc.gov and click on "Archives."