Transcript:
Tarrant County has 2.2 million citizens. We have 41 cities within our county. In my vital records office, we are the third largest county in Texas. We have 23 team members.
We have a main office, and then we have sub-courthouses available. Currently, we do about 5,500 for marriage applications a month. It is the most heavily used process in the vital records, processing a marriage license. So it’s really all hands on deck, and it is a crowded place in Tarrant County being the third largest county in Texas.
So with the remote, we anticipate, with the applications, the appointments, we are able to minimize that time and put that senior staff and management on other projects.
The catalyst for us moving to remote marriage license really started during the pandemic. In our office, we knew we had to continue offering this process when people were shutting down their offices. So we started with a semi-remote marriage license, and then the legislature came in: SB 907. They determined that remote marriage license processing is the way to go.
So for my office, one of the things I’ve always done as the leader of this organization is to harness technology. Find the business partners that can deliver that, and we are clearly being successful from day one. You know, for the remote marriage applicants, their impact is convenience. It is time savings.
It gives them the ability to stay where they’re at in their home, their office, a military base, save on time, remote in, fill out the application, and then we’re able to process. And I think over time, that process that typically takes 25 or 30 minutes in our office, we’re going to reduce it down to 10 to 15 minutes. We have a collective sense of pride with our information technology and our business partner, GovOS.
To be able to save money and time at our counter is what makes us feel great about this new technology, and our partnership, and being able to deliver it first in Texas here in Tarrant County.
