One of the most important things a government can share with its citizens is transparency. Public records offices have been able to increasingly offer their constituents a look into a county’s files by making them accessible online.
The pandemic only caused this trend to accelerate, as many offices no longer had walk-in hours, leaving online access as the only choice for citizens looking for information. Many counties even used relief funds made available from the CARES Act to jumpstart these projects to ensure open records access for their citizens.
The key to getting your records available online successfully is making sure that your citizens stay protected. Your county will need a good redaction program in place to shield information contained in public records, like social security numbers and dates of birth, from identity thieves. You can take a look at our Government Resources page to read about some of the counties we’ve worked with to prevent identity theft that was occurring through publicly available documents.
One of the counties that has used our automated redaction software, IDShield, is Lake County, Ohio. This past month, Lake County’s Clerk of Courts Faith Andrews announced that public records for the county are available online going back to the start of 2020. Andrews’ office will redact sensitive information from new filings and will continue to go into the County’s archives to make further years of records available.
Regarding the public’s ability to access records from an online portal, Andrews noted, “[t]imely and efficient access to court documents is a key part of providing access to justice for the residents of Lake County. This new process shall not only speed up the public’s ability to access their records but enable them to be acquired without the need to interact with the Clerk’s office directly.”
It seems a bit odd that an office would want to reduce its contact with constituents, but in this case both government employees and citizens can avoid the inconvenience of having to physically show up for and retrieve these documents. Remote access to documents also makes them more accessible, as there are many reasons outside of a pandemic that people aren’t able to make it to a government office.
Normally it would be a painstaking process to identify every piece of sensitive information in thousands or millions of pages, but IDShield automatically reads your documents like a person would. This means it will not only spot things like social security numbers, but that it understands the text of the document to also identify sensitive information through context.
If you’re interested in learning how the software could help get your records in shape for the public, please reach out.
About the Author: Chris Mack
Chris is a Marketing Manager at Extract with experience in product development, data analysis, and both traditional and digital marketing. Chris received his bachelor’s degree in English from Bucknell University and has an MBA from the University of Notre Dame. A passionate marketer, Chris strives to make complex ideas more accessible to those around him in a compelling way.