Ingeo Electronic Recording Case Studies
Fairfax County, Virginia

Situated just outside Washington, D.C., Fairfax County is one of the most prominent counties in Virginia. In addition to Mount Vernon and several Civil War battlefields, the county boasts a thriving economy dominated by financial institutions and high-tech businesses. The county government has worked hard to position itself as an ideal location for those seeking a "digital lifestyle." Residents can pay taxes, renew library books, apply for county jobs, and even reserve golf tee-times over the Internet.

The Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk's Office, which manages land records for the county, has a long track record of using leading-edge technologies to streamline its workflow. The past several decades have seen a series of small steps leading them from traditional paper processes to fully digital ones. The Circuit Court Clerk's Office has used a wide array of technologies—from digital imaging to automated document systems—to accomplish its goal of maintaining current staffing levels and increasing productivity.

Building on existing technology, a new level of automation has recently been added, allowing the Circuit Court Clerk's Office to begin eliminating paper for certificates of satisfaction, which are the equivalent of a mortgage release. These documents are now being accepted for recording electronically, and the fully paperless digital records have been smoothly integrated with the county's extended recording system.

Electronic business and government

Since the early 1980's, the Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk's Office has worked steadily to implement computerized processes to help accommodate the ever-growing volume of land records. In the same building where archivists maintain and protect fragile sheets of parchment bearing the signatures of George Washington and George Mason, recording personnel have digitized decades of land records from paper, photostat, and microfiche archives. While these important old records are still kept as paper originals, most of the county's real estate documents are viewable on the Internet as digital images. New records are scanned in as they are received, then processed as document images, not pieces of paper.

While this system represents a step forward from previous manual systems, it still requires significant human involvement. Scanning all of the documents requires considerable time, and document images still need to be manually processed by county employees. The difficulties have been compounded by the increased length of real estate documents. Records that historically averaged 3.7 pages per document now average 8.6 pages. It is not unusual to record documents of 40 pages or more. This translates to more scanning, more storage, and more physical demands on members of the recording team.

According to John Frey, Fairfax County's clerk of the circuit court, his recording staff processes between 250,000 and 300,000 real estate documents each year. With interest rates hovering at 20-year lows, the county is also seeing record-level refinance activity, which has created even more volume for an agency already stretched thin by budgetary constraints. The long lines and long hours have only been partially lessened by the county's previous system upgrades.

About a quarter of the total volume of documents handled by the Circuit Court Clerk's Office is made up of certificates of satisfaction. Since the bulk of these satisfactions arrive by mail, and since the document can be generated from a standardized template, recording personnel targeted the satisfaction document as the ideal starting point for fully automated records processing.

Getting started

As a member of the National Association of County Recorders, Election Officials and Clerks (NACRC), John Frey has participated in ongoing discussions about electronic recording. As new systems were tested around the country, Frey became interested in providing this capability for his own county. In 2000, Frey and his team got serious about their curiosity. The time was right and the various parties were willing, so the Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk's Office teamed up with Navy Federal Credit Union and Ingeo to begin planning a large-scale electronic document recording installation.

Navy Federal Credit Union, which has its headquarters in Fairfax County, was an ideal choice to be the first document-submitting participant. As a national lender with a local presence, Navy Federal submits a substantial number of documents each month to Fairfax County. According to Johnna Cooper, Navy Federal's Associate Vice President in charge of the pilot, the institution was searching for new digital solutions to streamline its operations. "Embarking on this project required a very new mindset for the credit union," Cooper says, "but when we looked at the costs and the benefits, there was so much to be gained from participation."

The project team also included representatives from PEC Systems, the company that created the system used by the Circuit Court Clerk's Office for cashiering, imaging, storage and retrieval. Since Ingeo's Electronic Recording System needed to communicate with PEC's data management solution, it was important that engineers from both companies work together to ensure full integration. This work was expedited by carefully defining the methods to be used in passing information back and forth between the two systems. Both systems rely heavily on standards-based communications protocols, enabling information to be exchanged freely.

Preparation and integration

The hardest part of any electronic recording installation is understanding the needs of the various parties. After needs assessment comes the process of identifying what changes—if any—the existing solution would require to enable it to fulfill these needs. Ingeo worked closely with team members from the Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk's Office and Navy Federal Credit Union to make a line-by-line inventory of the features they needed. As it turned out, this installation required some functionality that Ingeo's system did not currently provide.

Because of the volume of documents that would be submitted by Navy Federal, they needed to be able to sign, notarize, and submit documents in batches, rather than clicking through the process for each document individually. In addition, it was necessary to find a cost-effective way to handle the transfer of document fees between Navy Federal and the county. Ingeo's product development team answered these issues with new product features. The Ingeo Electronic Recording System now includes powerful batching functions, as well as the ability to initiate electronic money transfers using industry standard Automated Clearing House (ACH) transactions. Even better, Ingeo's other customers can now benefit from these product improvements with future upgrades of

Ingeo's e-recording solution

According to Doug Clegg, the technical project manager for the Fairfax team, the county's experience with previous system upgrades had prepared them for challenges. "We expected technical problems that would need to be worked out before implementation." However, through careful planning, the installation of the Fairfax County system went relatively smoothly. An eRecord server was installed at the county court building to accept and process incoming documents. The county's Internet firewall had to be reconfigured to allow secure traffic in and out of the county's computer network. Overall, Clegg characterized their installation challenges as "hiccups ... nothing that was insurmountable."

At Navy Federal Credit Union, installation was simple. Ingeo's project team assisted Navy Federal personnel in obtaining and installing digital certificates, enabling them to create and submit digital certificates of satisfaction. Ingeo also conducted an extensive training session to ensure that everybody understood how to use the system.

Going digital

Fairfax County's first electronic document was recorded in September 2001. Susan Hansen, supervisor of Navy Federal's Payoff and Assumption Section, was in the process of refinancing her own home. Since the certificate of satisfaction required to pay off the previous loan had not yet been recorded, Hansen asked the project team to use her own satisfaction document to test the system.

"I wanted to see how the project was going to work, because it was going to affect my area," Hansen said. She went with team members to the Circuit Court Clerk's Office, where the newly installed system was ready to go. Everyone "watched as it popped up on the county's computer," then marveled as they watched the document pass through the system in less than a minute.

The initial test inspired confidence in the project team, but more work was still required. Finishing the ACH transaction system brought the installation much closer to completion. More test documents were processed in October, and the system was officially turned on in January of 2002. Hundreds of documents have since been electronically submitted by Navy Federal and recorded by the Circuit Court Clerk's Office.

According to Johnna Cooper, Navy Federal's employees are finding it very easy to get used to turnaround times of about 45 seconds. In addition, rejected documents are a thing of the past. Most importantly, the lender is now able to serve its customers in ways never before possible.

Cooper related a story of a Fairfax County borrower who needed to satisfy an existing loan so that she could close on a refinance loan. The catch was, she had less than 24 hours to get everything done.

"She went into one of our Member Service Centers, paid off the loan and had the teller call the Payoff Section," Cooper said. "We sent out an electronic lien release using the Ingeo platform. She called to make sure that we received the payment. We told her that the funds were received and that the lien was released. Her attorney did not believe her until we provided him with the confirmation information. He was stunned!"

As electronic document recording becomes common, Cooper believes it will be taken for granted like any other process used in everyday business. "I look forward to what's been referred to as the 'tipping point,'" Cooper adds, "when you get to the point where all of a sudden, the paper becomes exception processing. When we get those first 50 to 100 counties up, we're well beyond that tipping point. In our case, we're looking for our top 10 counties. You get our top 10 counties there, and there's no stopping us."

According to Doug Clegg, Fairfax County has several more lenders waiting to integrate this new system into their business processes. As more lenders adopt this new technology, Frey and his staff expect to see shorter lines at the counter, and a marked decrease in documents received in the mail. Lenders will see shorter processing times, and the county will hand process fewer documents. Everyone agrees that this has been an exciting and successful undertaking for the Fairfax County Circuit Court Clerk's Office and Navy Federal Credit Union.

Fairfax County considers its venture into electronic recording a success, and is looking forward to expanding its electronic recording capability as the technology continues to mature. They are currently in the process of recruiting additional lenders to use the system, and anticipate that this new service will have a significant impact on daily workflow.

What's New?

If you don't know me, or don't know me well, you can get a pretty good picture of who I am and what I do from snooping around in this site.

How I pay the bills:
DriveTime
Eclectic Interactive

What I do for fun:
Equinox
Spirit of Phoenix