Local governments often face a tough balancing act: deliver high-quality services with limited staff and outdated tools. 

That was exactly the challenge in San Miguel County, Colorado. With just 130 employees supporting everything from public health to property assessments, manual paperwork and inefficient processes were dragging teams down.

Documents were printed, mailed, and filed away in physical cabinets. Some were scanned and saved to individual computers, but there was no standard system. Finding a document could take up to an hour, and critical deadlines—like responding to public information requests—were at constant risk of being missed. 

Deputy Clerk Carmen Warfield even considered scanning years of archives herself, but the task was too big to tackle alone.

Sound familiar? Here's how San Miguel County tackled the problem with Docusign Intelligent Agreement Management—and what you can borrow for your own organization.

✍️ From stuck to streamlined: How to digitize agreements the smart way

1. Start where the pain is highest: The county began digitizing agreements in the attorney's office—a department handling the highest volume of contracts. This pilot approach helped the team refine processes before rolling them out more broadly. Since then, 10 departments have come online, with HR next in line to digitize onboarding documents.
    
2. Centralize your documents: San Miguel uploaded agreements dating back to 2015 into a centralized system. This became their single source of truth, drastically improving visibility across departments. Now, with Docusign Navigaor, finding a document takes seconds instead of an hour, and staff no longer rely on personal calendars to track expiration dates.
    
3. Automate response tracking and deadlines: Automated reminders ensure agreements never miss a renewal, and staff can consistently meet the county's mandated three-day response window for public information requests. That responsiveness has helped build trust with constituents and increased transparency around government actions.
    
4. Make burnout a thing of the past: Before automation, managing paper workflows consumed hours of repetitive work. Warfield said she saved so much time that keeping up with work became manageable again—and that without it, burnout would have been a real risk. Now, tasks like printing and mailing hundreds of pages for onboarding are being phased out.
    
5. Standardize for the future: With the system in place, San Miguel adopted a policy to process every new county contract through their digital agreement platform. This standardization ensures consistent records management and supports smarter, more sustainable operations moving forward.

If your team is feeling the strain of outdated processes, take a page from San Miguel County’s story. Start with one high-impact area, prove the value of digitization, and expand from there. A few strategic moves today can create a more efficient, transparent, and resilient organization tomorrow.