Louisiana department saves time, resources by Web-enabling legacy documents

The Louisiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is posting millions of oil and gas documents to the Internet for public consumption.

With the help of partners FileNet and I T Group, DNR has already scanned and electronically archived four million documents, including conservation field orders, conservation production cards and mineral resource royalty reports.

By the end of 1999 DNR plans to have electronically archived and posted to the Internet 50 million documents dating back to the 1940's. All will be posted to the Internet, easily accessible to state employees, public contractors and constituents.

In addition to making information more readily available to the public, putting the documents on the Internet will reduce lost or misfiled documents and ultimately save the government department's valuable time and resources, according to DNR secretary Jack Caldwell