Ohio Requiring More Electronic Land Records
Since the introduction of electronic records to government offices, the tide has been pushing relentlessly toward complete open records access. States and counties have had different appetites for how quickly the goal can be achieved, but progress has been universal.
For many land records offices, the COVID-19 pandemic served as the impetus for moving records online as social distancing requirements and other hurdles made in-person visits a challenge. Many offices were able to take advantage of government funds for these projects, which is particularly helpful for offices that are working at capacity as is. As such, counties keep their focus where it makes the most sense; for many, this meant putting in processes to ensure all newly recorded documents were electronic and available to the public.
In Ohio, the experiment of moving to some digital records during the pandemic was deemed a success, so legislators are asking counties to go further down this path. Ohio’s Senate Bill 94 covers a couple disparate topics including college campus harassment, but for recorders, the bill means that recorded documents going back to 1980 must be digitized and made available to the public. Additionally, counties will have to offer an option for real estate transactions to be electronically recorded by June of 2026.
Online records access is a great quality of life improvement for constituents, but it’s also proven to be helpful for resource-strapped government offices. The switch proved that walk-in traffic could be virtually eliminated while providing easier access.
While that sounds like a win-win, there is still an upfront cost that is net new for each of the state’s 88 counties. When budgets are tight, the cost of scanning, indexing, and redacting sensitive information from historical documents can look a bit daunting. Like the funding provided by the federal government, although more limited in scope and amount, SB94 allocates $6 million to help counties complete the project.
Depending on the volume of documents to review and the available staff, it’s possible that the historical digitization project could be done internally at a land records office. Certainly, eRecording or scouring millions of documents for social security numbers will require help for any county though.
Luckily, the process of moving from paper to indexed and redacted digital records is becoming more efficient than ever. Machine learning and AI-trained software like Extract® Systems’ ID Shield® solution can scour documents for personally identifiable information in files no matter how or where it appears. If you’d like to learn more about how this redaction process works, please check out our product page here.
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