Ever been to the Division of Local Government’s records vault? There are literally rows and rows of files containing paperwork for every local governmental entity formed in Colorado.

When a special district is organized, section 32-1-104, C.R.S, requires that the DLG establish and maintain on a current basis, as a public record, a file listing by name all special districts, the names and addresses of all board members, recording all changes in the boundaries, listing the names of the officers, etc., etc. Furthermore, during the course of operations, special districts are required to file a copy of various documents with the DLG. That’s a lot of paper records!

This summer, DLG has been undertaking a project to digitize their local government files. It’s a two-stage effort including both electronically scanning the paper documentation they already have and creating a system to accept regular filings via electronic mail.

Submitting your various filings electronically is optional, but the Division hopes that it will (i) reduce the burden on local governments of printing and shipping various documents such as election results, budgets, transparency notices, organizational documents, and annual reports, and (ii) make it easier to retrieve, access, and view local government records—thereby improving the service that DLG provides to you and the public.

All documents must be in a .pdf format, and the DLG asks that you follow a particular naming convention when sending documents to them to simplify and standardize how the documents are saved and filed electronically. The naming convention is: “Official_Name_of_Government(LGID)Year_Kindofdocument.pdf” (Use underscores instead of spaces.)

Here’s an example: “Aberdeen_Metropolitan_District_No._1(65180)2011_Budget.pdf” When files follow this convention, multiple files are searchable alphabetically or by year or LGID number.1

Full instructions about how to name the file, obtain your LGID, and what to put in the subject line are available at on the DLG’s e-filing webpage at www.dola.colorado.gov/e-filing. Very large files may need to be split into multiple attachments for transmission.
Address your e-mail and its attachments to dlg-filing@state.co.us.

The DLG apologizes for any inconvenience the digitizing of files has caused, but is convinced that the convenience of accessing the information within their files in an electronic manner in the near future will far outweigh any temporary, short-term hassles during this conversion period.

_________

1 The LGID is a five digit number assigned by the DLG when a record/file for each district is created in the DLG’s system. Don’t know your LGID number? You can look it up at http://dola.colorado.gov/dlg/local_governments/lgov_a.html.