Transforming Berks County, PA Through GovOS Innovation

There’s many innovations that we were able to apply that we only had the capability of because of the GovOS software. So the first thing we had done back in two thousand eight and two thousand nine was to digitize all the record copies. So we took what digital image we already had in an old system, moved them to GovOS, digitized microfilm, and also we ourselves and our staff were able to scan many thousands of books that were all be able to put into the GovOS system. And then over time, we’re able to create a online accessible index of all those documents. So in the past, when someone wanted one of our historic documents, basically, they had to come into this office.

We had to do a thorough search of various indexes, including the old paper index books. We would most of the time have to get that book out of storage, make a actual photocopy of it, and then that might lead to the next document. We just keep repeating this process, so it was a time-consuming process. Now today with our online capabilities, all of our indexes being able to be searched from home, we just don’t get those requests anymore. So the time savings of that is astronomical. So that was the biggest advancement at that time.

Then we also implemented electronic recording. So that was, I think, the biggest innovation for our intake and processing of today’s documents to get them on record fast and to save us so much processing time. So the old process was you’d have a paper document come in by various formats, maybe hand delivered, sent by regular mail, or overnight courier. And what’s unique is Pennsylvania is what’s called a race to the courthouse state. Whoever gets their document on first in recording, they have first claim on that property. So it’s important to record things in their proper order. So electronic recording, which we’re now up to about ninety-five percent of our new documents come in that way. There’s very many that we see in paper format anymore.

We don’t have to process any paper. We don’t have to scan any paper. We don’t have to handle a check. We don’t have to add checks at the end of the day. Everything’s done electronically. We can record about ten electronic recordings in the time it used to take for one paper. So it greatly allowed us to speed up our processing. That’s what gave us a huge savings in our overhead costs of salaries and personnel expenses.