MRSC's 90th Anniversary Celebration: How Technology Shaped Organizational Efficiency from the 1970s to the Present

This is the first blog in our 90th anniversary content series, which will discuss milestones in MRSC’s nine-decade history. Throughout July and August, we will release a historical timeline, another blog, and a video in commemoration of this achievement. 

When legal consultant Bob Meinig started at MRSC in 1989, the organization had a physical library that included city and county codes, copies of ordinances, studies, inquiry responses, and more. Consultants answered questions using Dictaphones, handheld recording devices, to record their answers, which were later typed up and mailed out. Publications were printed, and, occasionally, staff had to add inserts with revisions necessitated by new legislation when sending them out.

“Technology changed all that. The Web completely changed how we were able to provide our services,” Bob, who retired from MRSC in 2017, told us.

Technology has changed tremendously in the 35 years since Bob's first day, increasing the pace, expectations, and comprehensiveness of MRSC’s work. This blog discusses the most significant tech adoptions from the 1970s to the present.

Work Before the Internet

Legal consultant Pat Mason never intended to work at a single organization for his whole career. But after he finished law school in 1976, he started at MRSC — and stayed on for 39 years, until his retirement.

MRSC staff during an office move, 1988.

Pat remembers how inquiries were handled in the 1970s and ‘80s. After an official submitted a question, consultants shuffled through note cards that included descriptions of each inquiry listed by subject, such as the Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA). 

"If I found one that I thought would be helpful, I would note the inquiry number and then go to a larger file cabinet in the library where we kept hard copies of all prior inquiries," Pat said.

A later breakthrough was the microfiche reader, which allowed consultants to scroll through inquiries as old as 30 years. When an official wanted a type of sample ordinance, MRSC staff would mail or fax a compilation of related documents culled from its library.

"Things didn’t happen as quickly as they obviously do now. But at the end of the day, some people got compulsive about wanting to clear their desk each day. We did provide as prompt service as we could," Jim Doherty, legal consultant for 25 years, told us.

Providing Resources for the Public

Throughout the 1990s, MRSC increasingly became an aggregator of information, helping lo­cal officials sort through information available virtually.

In 1992, MRSC introduced an electronic database called the Washington Information Cities Partnership, which functioned as a municipal clearinghouse of ordinances, resolutions, reports, brochures, and forms.

In 1993, MRSC rolled out its first website iteration, the MRSC Electronic Bulletin Board. The platform gave the public access to WAC and RCW databases, 1990 census data, discussion boards, and downloadable library files.

"There would be millions of visitors per year to our website who would access that database. It got to the point where almost anybody who had any kind of important staff position had MRSC bookmarked, " said Rich Yukubousky, executive director from 1991 to 2011.

MRSC was also the first place to put the Washington State Appellate Court decisions from the state’s court of appeals and supreme court online so that the public could access them.

The MRSC Electronic Bulletin Board, 1993.

At conferences and by mail in the 1990s, consultants also started distributing MRSC on CD, a searchable database of MRSC’s legal opinions, Ask MRSC inquiries, publications, and policy research responses.

"They first put out a CD-ROM of Frequently Asked Questions. If you had a question about something, you could pop that in your desk drive and get a quick answer," said Lynn Nordby, a management consultant who worked at MRSC from 2008 to 2018. 

Computers and Databases

In 1985, MRSC started using computers and word processing software, along with dBase, a database program that offered access to previous inquiries through keyword searches. By the early 1990s, the software program Folio Views 2.1 allowed staffers to search and retrieve more than 10,000 previously submitted inquiries.

The dBase database, 1985.

Jim Doherty, whose tenure at MRSC coincided with what he dubbed the "computer revolution," said with a laugh, "I remember a memo going around that we were going to have email. Some of us thought, why email? Why don’t you just walk down the hall to talk to somebody?"

The Internet is so ubiquitous today, it's hard to remember that some organizations and municipalities were hesitant to give it a try. But not MRSC. 

"We didn’t resist it. We might have a lot of tough conversations about it to really figure out how to do it in a way that worked, but the necessity became pretty obvious pretty early on. That it was going to be helpful for the people that we serve," said Rich.

In 1996, MRSC published its first non-bulletin-board-style website, www.MRSC.org. The website featured weekly news, sample documents, state statutes and administrative rules, articles, publications, court decisions, and inquiry responses.

The library staff was primarily in charge of moving physical materials online. Naturally, the virtual transition took away some of the drudgery of mailing out materials, shuffling materials, and taking calls from officials asking when sample documents would arrive.

"The pace picked up, and it was fun because you deal with many more issues each day. But it was also challenging. You’d have to keep track of the expectations of people so that you get back to them with what they needed," said Jim.

Legal Consultant Jim Doherty, 2000.

In the first year of operation, the website received only a little over 30,000 visits. Two years later, in 1998, the website recorded more than 382,000 visits.

Lynn described the pace this way: "When we got a question, if it wasn’t something we could answer off the top of our head or with our own experience, we could search previous inquiries back years and years and years."

Remote Work and Virtual Training

In the early 2000s, MRSC also started experimenting with remote work. With the Internet and other digital services that were available, consultants could work at home pretty seamlessly. Many started working at home two days a week.

This early move to remote work meant MRSC was uniquely position for the COVID-19 pandemic. From 2020 to 2023, MRSC developed web material, free training, and blogs, as well as collecting sample documents related to the pandemic. Topics covered included furloughs, financing, the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, community support, human resource (HR) issues, operational issues (electronic signatures, meetings, OPMA, vaccines, facemasks), and post-pandemic reopening.

As the years went on, MRSC also expanded its virtual training.

"Local government, especially smaller entities, had difficulties being able to get away from their offices to attend training. The use of the internet via Zoom and other resources provided local government with the ability to obtain trainings that they previously were unable to attend," said Toni Nelson, a finance consultant from 2014 to 2021.

As the world emerged from the pandemic, MRSC staff decided in 2021 to continue working remotely, aside from quarterly in-person meet-ups for staff meetings, holiday parties, and other gatherings.

MRSC staff participating in a virtual escape room during the pandemic, 2021.

Decades of Staying Up to Date

Though technology adoption can be stressful, MRSC has always reaped benefits from keeping up to date.

"When we got our computers, we computerized all of the tech, all of the questions that we had the letters and phone conversations, and that was a great source of knowledge. That we didn’t have to always reinvent the wheel, and we [could just] cut and paste and look really smart," long-time legal consultant Paul Sullivan, who started at MRSC in the 1980s, said.

Technology has advanced considerably since Paul’s first day. MRSC's website receives over 1.2 million visitors from within the state each year, and consultants answer over 4,000 inquiries annually. As we look to the future, we can only wonder, what technologies will MRSC use to serve local governments over the next 90 years?