Document recording system tested in Washington

In April, the Thurston County, Wash., Auditor’s Office began a 72-day pilot program to test an electronic document recording system. The program’s goal was to determine how the system would per-form in a large county and whether it would work in other Washington counties.

Thurston County has been a technology leader in the state, testing and adopting new technologies and procedures in areas such as financial reporting, vehicle licensing and elections. With the pilot program, the growing county wanted to test how a new computer system would handle its increasing volume of land records.

In the past decade, the county’s population has more than doubled; however, the Auditor’s Office has been able to decrease the size of its staff by increasing its use of automation technologies. For example, by implementing a computer-based title-processing system, it recently eliminated the need for staff to manually process paper documents from title companies.

The county contracted with Logan, Utah-based Ingeo to install new hardware and software in the Auditor’s Office and software in three local title companies: Olympia-based Pioneer Title, Richmond, Va.-based Transnation Title and Chicago-based Chicago Title. At each title company office, the company set up computer workstations that could create, sign and submit electronic reconveyance documents.

At the county office, the company obtained and installed digital certificates for endorsement signatures and installed a server to accept, process and return digital documents. The server was set up to operate with the auditor’s existing data management system from Eagle, Colo.-based Eagle Computer Systems.

During the pilot program, title company employees reported that they generally spent two to five minutes creating and electronically submitting each reconveyance document. Meanwhile, the county’s server recorded and returned each document in 25 seconds. By the time the program ended on July 20, the system had processed 230 reconveyance documents. At less than half a minute per document, the server could be expected to handle more than 1,100 documents in one eight-hour day.

The system saved the county time and money, and title companies found that it streamlined their workflow and helped them keep track of documents. Thurston County reported the results of the program to the Washington Electronic Task Force, a body of the Washington State Association of County Auditors, to gauge applicability to the entire state. Pending county review and evaluation, the Auditor’s Office expects to restart the system and expand it to accommodate other types of documents.