Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page 42)

first person S TAT E | L O C A L | F E D E R A L Synopsis: The Phoenix City Attorney’s Office and Risk Management Division streamline billing to save the city money. j j Jurisdiction: Phoenix. Technologies: TrialNet e-billing. Better Bill ike many legal clients, the city of Phoenix has a love-hate relationship with its outside counsel. Phoenix needs outside counsel to defend its interests when the City Attorney’s Office lacks the staff, resources and expertise to handle matters. But the city is under continuous and unrelenting pressure to cut costs, including its legal bills. Compounding this dichotomy is the frustrating delay in payment often associated with traditional governmental processes. Enter e-billing, which is popular among insurance companies, but not as widely accepted in government. E-billing was once an alien concept for Phoenix — but that’s no longer the case. Now, thanks to e-billing technology, the city has improved its billing process by offering timelier invoice review and approval, improved data integrity and prompt payments. These upgrades have improved our relationship with outside law firms. A Contact: Stephen Craig, assistant chief counsel, Phoenix, stephen.craig@ phoenix.gov. L Phoenix City Attorney’s Office fights tight budgets with e-billing. The City Attorney’s Office used ProLaw and a home-built Microsoft Access database, while Risk Management used CS STARS, a riskmanagement information system from Marsh Inc. These two systems didn’t communicate with each other, however. Consequently there were errors and inefficiencies caused by manual data entry. Time was wasted trying to address billing questions and resolve billing errors. The city quickly realized that its e-billing system would need to integrate with the city’s existing case-management and risk-management information systems. point for a network of the size required to meet the city’s needs was in the midfive-figure range. Unfortunately the city was experiencing budget cuts and layoffs during this time, and funding wasn’t available for innovative new procedures. Desperate to develop a funding mechanism, the city turned again to the insurance industry and learned that it wasn’t uncommon for insurance companies to receive a quick-payment discount: If the insurance company pays the law firm’s invoice within 10 days of submittal, legal fees are reduced by 2 percent. The city calculated that the 2 percent discount would more than pay for an e-billing application within the first year of operation. So the city modified its Bye-Bye, Paper Before we implemented e-billing, it took a frightening number of steps to process a paper invoice through to payment, including some redundant data entry between the Phoenix City Attorney’s Office and the city’s Risk Management Division. Law firms submitted paper invoices to the City Attorney’s Office. The invoices were logged in manually, routed to attorneys for review, logged out, and then forwarded to Risk Management for payment. Risk Management would then repeat the process. Each department recorded the same information in separate computer systems. Funding Fiasco Fixed Many e-billing vendors price their systems well into six figures. TrialNet’s price APR_08 42 BY STEPHEN CRAIG | CONTRIBUTING WRITER http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - April 2008

Government Technology - April 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Freeze Frame How Safe Is Your Data? Easy Street Gadget Overload Indiana Overhaul First Person: A Better Bill Data Defense Strength in Numbers Public Storage Products Two Cents Spectrum Personal Computing signal:noise

Government Technology - April 2008

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