1994-12-12 Public Hearing and Regular Meeting

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,;: CITY <lj LA POR.l.~ e Th'l'EK-OJr~It.;E MEMORANDUM 0 (, 0 0 To: John Joerns, Assistant City Manager -' , Louis Rigby, Director Admin. Services 11I~1I11111111111~:-=J.-"f -~ I Sue Lenes, city secretarY~ From: Larry Mabe, MIS Manager \ fv-f-. //~ =-;~m\ Managemenll'lformadon Services Date: November 16, 1994 subject: Review of Text Retrieval Applications for Code of Ordinances Several weeks ago I attended a demonstration of several software applications proposed for on-line retrieval of the Code of Ordinances text. Each satisfied the, basic function of searching the codes for sections that contain a match of "key words" entered by the user for viewing the selected sections, exporting them to WordPerfect, and printing them. Of the applications offered, I found two of them that were best suited for La Porte's current needs. These were "CODE Master," offered by Book Publishing Company, and "SOCRATES," offered by Municipal Code corporation. From the users standpoint, these two applications were easy to use and featured intuitive functions. The highlights of each of these are as follows; SOCRATES: This application is a scaled-down version of the ISYS software. It does not have the ability to make code amendments or to directly add new codes. The ISYS software would have to be purchased to provide full in-house maintenance of the codes. I feel that ISYS would be too complex for the average user doing research. Whenever code supplements are added to the La Porte's codes, Municipal Code Corporation's codification service ships the entire Code of Ordinances on disk. These would contain the new or modified codes as well and are already indexed. The only thing required of the user is to load the updated codes into the computer. SOCRATES is available in a network version, (three concurrent users is proposed). This will allow, as example, Administration and Code Enforcement research access of the codes without conflicts. The "synonym" search capability could be quite useful in locating codes that refer to a common subject such as animals but have statements containing other words such as PETS, REPTILE, MAMMAL, BEAST and LIVESTOCK. This software interfaces with WordPerfect to allow extraction and modification of sections for proposed code amendments. This software will allow the archiving of the old complete code each time a code update is received. This is useful in research of codes before they were amended or rescinded.