Challenge

In June 2008, much of Iowa was hit with a 500-year flood that resulted in $45 million damage to Linn County buildings, equipment and roads. The state of Iowa’s total cost of the flooding topped $1 billion. With the water rising to dangerous levels on June 11th 2008, Joan McCalmant, Linn County Recorder, received an email at 2:48 PM ordering a mandatory evacuation of the building at 3:00 PM. Joan and her staff quickly removed over 400 historic books containing county birth and marriage records from the vault and carried them out of their Cedar Rapids office. They also moved equipment and other records to tabletops. The water rose to 5.5 feet, severely damaging the county building and its contents. 

Solution: Quick Thinking and Good Partners

Cott Systems, an Extract Systems technology partner, has provided Linn County with document management services for over 30 years. When the flood jeopardized the operations of the Linn County Recorder’s office, Cott’s E-backup System ensured that mission critical data and records were securely stored electronically in a secure offsite location. Linn County’s purchasing department acted quickly to secure temporary office space in a mall about a week and a half after the flooding. Cott’s Web Hosting service enabled Linn County to maintain an internet presence while their offices were still under water. "Surprisingly, I was one of the first county offices to be back up and running after the flood. We had our disaster recovery plan in place for less than a year and it was a good insurance policy," Joan explained.

Linn County has a track record of being proactive. In 2006, Linn County decided to go the extra mile to protect its citizens from the threat of identity theft by permanently removing Social Security Numbers and other personal identifiers from public land records. Joan McCalmant and her team approached the county’s trusted document management provider, Cott, to explore a redaction solution. Cott recommended ID Shield Automated Redaction Software from Extract Systems. "Extract was the clear choice for Cott to partner with. They are very knowledgeable about legislation (nationwide) around redaction, and staffed with experienced, skilled programmers, analysts and executive management who know how to integrate their knowledge into a best in class product solution," explained Jodie Bare, Vice President, Cott Systems.

Extract Systems provided redaction as a service to Linn County, redacting its backfile of land records at the Cott facility in December of 2006. With the backfile successfully redacted, Linn County installed ID Shield Automated Redaction at its office in April 2007 to redact day-forward records on an ongoing basis. The County redacts approximately 10,000 records a month. When Iowa State Senate File 465 passed in April 2009, mandating every county to participate in the Iowa Land Records system and redact all personally identifiable information (Social Security Numbers, credit, debit, and bank account numbers) from electronic documents and records, Linn County was well ahead of the curve. 

Outcome

Joan McCalmant and the rest of her team look forward to moving back into their permanent office in late 2010.  Team work, determination, and technology can’t stop a 500-year flood. But they did help a Recorder’s office continue serving its citizens so people’s lives could be just a little more normal in the midst of adversity.

Customer Profile

"Privacy is a huge issue these days for those of us who work in the public sector dealing with public records subject to the open records law. ID Shield works in the background to protect our citizens’ privacy information.  It completes the tasks we ask it to do, easily and silently. It’s like a dream employee."
Joan McCalmant
Clerk-Recorder
Linn County, Iowa