Horry County leverages ShareBase to aid hurricane recovery
Horry County in South Carolina adopted OnBase as its enterprise content management system in 2006. The County controls the largest land mass in the State (1,200 square miles), and is home to Myrtle Beach, where the resident population of 330,000 swells to a staggering 2 million during the high tourist season. In the years since, OnBase has supported myriad County constituents and services, and become one of the foundational enterprise applications for the organization, used by approximately 2,500 employees.
In 2016, Horry County CIO Tim Oliver boosted OnBase’s power with ShareBase, a cloud-based secure file sharing tool hosted in the private Hyland Cloud and purpose-built for managing critical corporate information. Chief among the many benefits of using ShareBase has been its impact on hurricane and disaster relief efforts, when the IT team is tasked with supporting rapid collaboration between different offices, both internally and scattered throughout the country.
Before ShareBase
During recovery efforts, being able to securely share what’s happening on the ground with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other federal, state, and local representatives is critical. After every hurricane in the area, Horry County sends a drone into the field to collect damage-assessment footage—and the sooner it can share that footage with legislators and FEMA, the faster help can come in.
Before ShareBase, any file that the county needed to keep private for audit or security requirements prompted more work for the IT department. For each, Oliver’s team had to create a secure webpage, upload files and videos to that page (which took up time and bandwidth), and create individual logins and accounts to make them available to the right parties.
Of course, once funds start to pour in, the County also needs to manage the stream of paperwork and documents that start pouring out. Originally, staff used a free cloud-based sharing solution, but this led to some serious issues: Horry County often exceeded storage limits, and there were major security concerns with personal accounts after an employee departed.
After ShareBase
The process of sharing drone footage immediately improved after implementing ShareBase. Horry County could upload videos minutes after the drone returned from the field, and sharing was as easy as dragging a file into a folder. With a few clicks, staff could send automated links and emails to the right people, all around the world.
In addition, because the built-in ShareBase viewer allows users to upload and stream dozens of common file types, officials can see the same thing first responders are seeing without any technical difficulties, no matter what their set-up.
If internet access isn’t consistent after a disaster, downloads are also an option.
When it comes to paperwork, ShareBase has become a single, sole repository for all documents that Horry County needs to review, with edits and views shown in real-time. The ability to create folders to share both internally and externally is easy to manage; and with no storage limits, there is no cost increase. Documents no longer end up on private servers or duplicated with every consultant or outside party. In addition, IT now controls permissions and access rights, tracks views and edits, and even revokes accounts.
Ultimately, ShareBase has given the County more control over and visibility into what information it is sharing, enabling easy and secure collaboration that is instrumental to the success of disaster-recovery efforts.
Want to know more about the security features and capabilities of ShareBase? Check out this on-demand webinar to hear more from Horry County.
