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Sacramento Clerk-Recorder's Office Posts Decades of Data

Middleware makes it possible for Clerk-Recorder to access legacy data and present it to the public on the Web

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- When interest rates dropped and refinancing activity and real estate sales heated up, Sacramento County was dealt a double blow. Just as activity at the County Clerk-Recorder's office dramatically increased, its ability to keep up with the demand for documents diminished. Like many counties across the United States, Sacramento is dealing with a serious budget shortfall that is demanding layoffs instead of hiring new personnel.

Fortunately, the Clerk-Recorder's Office had already begun an extensive effort to bring its public records online, according to Craig Kramer, assistant county clerk-recorder. "It took us the better part of three years to get there," he said. "It was a matter of having everything in the right place."

The task was to put more than 33 million records dating back to 1965 on the recorder's Web site without making a huge investment in new technology -- or discarding the old mainframe system. But the biggest challenge, according to Kramer, was the development of security. "We needed to make sure that anyone who received access to the information would not also have access to the county's mainframe," he said. The county's Office of Communications and Information Technology, led by CIO Pat Groff, tackled this important job and also developed the front-end pages to be consistent with the county Web site's look and feel.

Once officials were satisfied that security requirements had been met, the choice was to implement middleware that would talk to legacy systems while providing real-time Web services. Software AG was selected for its EntireX application that is based on XML standards. According to Bill Ruh, senior vice president of Software AG, XML gives cash-strapped governments an option. "The number-one trend is that I am not going to throw away what I've got," he said. "I am going to integrate what I've got. XML is a way of making data smart. It is becoming the 'lingua franca' of data."

Kramer said that concept was important to the Clerk-Recorder's Office. "We had all the information. It was all just sitting there. We just had to get access to it," he explained. Today, users can pull up a range of public records such as property deeds and real estate tax data. "What you can get is the general index," Kramer said. "You can't see the document itself. California law restricts government agencies from printing names and addresses of government officials." With millions of documents, it's not possible to find records that might bear the name of an official, he added, and states, in general, do not post images of such documents.

Adoption of the Web-based service has been almost instantaneous. Because the index is updated the day after recording, customers that include lenders and financial institutions throughout the United States can easily verify their recordings within 24 hours. After six months in service, the site has logged more than 1 million page hits, making it one of the most used Web sites in the county.

According to Ruh, Sacramento took a major step when it chose to tap its legacy system and build Web access. "There is no simple or baby-step to Web enable," he said. "Real-time data is required, and you have to integrate with the back end. Seventy percent of the work required is in the integration if you want to do it in real time." In addition, government is held to a different standard than is the private sector, he added. Once the system is live, there are millions of users. "There is no in-between for government," he observed.

In addition, IT projects have to fall within budget guidelines. Kramer said the allocation for the Clerk-Recorder's project had already been approved and was not an issue during the 2003 budget crunch. According to Ruh, the integration project and the software require an investment of about $100,000, depending upon a jurisdiction's existing technology.

Sacramento's initial investment is already paying off, according to Kramer, who said other county offices will able to leverage the security infrastructure designed for the Clerk-Recorder's application. There is also a payoff in customer satisfaction that doesn't easily lend itself to analysis. "There is more efficiency," he said. "But it's one of those nebulous customer services issues. We are showing that people don't have to come to our office to do business and impact things like traffic, parking and smog."