Suffolk County Clerk's Office - Recording Unit
Located in Long Island, New York, the Recording Unit of the Suffolk County Clerk's Office is responsible for receiving, examining, filing and recording instruments presented. Fees, mortgage taxes and real estate transfer taxes are also computed and collected for the county's 1.3 million residents. The unit's customers include title, abstract and insurance companies, mortgage vendors, lawyers, banks and the general public.
As is the case for many government agencies at both the state and federal levels, serving the public and maintaining trustworthy records are mandated for the Clerk's Office. The county had been using Kodak Imagelink Scanner / Microimager 990s to provide images to their online FileNET Imaging System. The scanners would simultaneously scan and microfilm the images, creating official copies of the documents. Unfortunately, the capture portion of the process was not keeping up. Instead of reaping the benefit of automated processes through imaging, labor hours were increased. Extensive amounts of time were being spent preparing documents for the imaging system. This, coupled with the increase in filings over the previous five years, led to a system bottleneck.
Suffolk County elected to upgrade their scanning and filming equipment with two Kodak Digital Science 9520D Scanners, two Kodak Digital Science Document Archive Writers (DAW) and two Kofax Image Processing Accelerator cards. While the county's previous 990 Scanner provided both image and film index information to the online FileNET system, it was no longer possible with the 9520s and the DAWs. FileNET Professional Services came up with the solution to write an interface for the equipment.
County documents are now captured by the scanners and then processed by the FileNET system in random order. Next, the documents are sent to the FileNET interface, which places the images in order of the ID number (bar code) that was assigned at the beginning of the recording process. The DAW then creates the official copy on microfilm. Index information generated by the 9520D and its host software is then collected and placed into the online FileNET index. The online system maintains pointers to both electronic and microfilm images — thereby meeting government mandates.
A sharp increase in record filings meant more labor hours for the employees of the Suffolk County Clerk's Office. Preparing the documents for imaging added even more time to the process. To keep up with the increased workload and to decrease workflow steps, the county implemented a Kodak capture and reference archiving solution.
The 9520s have built-in Perfect Page Scanning features that allow users to take steps out of their document preparation workflow. The imaging capture technology is used to create correct reading images without having to rescan documents. This process used with the Kofax Adrenaline Processing Accelerator automates the capture process in its entirety, which yielded significant process streamlining. Also, since the quality control occurs prior to digital filming, the Archive Writer creates film that is superior in overall image quality to its analog predecessor.
"Built-in image processing capabilities mean correct images and the elimination of rescanned documents,' said Peter Schlussler, Suffolk County IT director. 'Overall, the system now keeps pace with the demands placed on it and is easily scalable to meet future growth. The backlog of paper documents waiting to be imaged now can be virtually eliminated. We have been able to reassign employees to the other critical functions within the county.'
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