That's what a growing number of local governments are finding as they look beyond the storage and retrieval function of imaging to the revenue potentials of enhanced service delivery. By converting documents into a digital format, imaging systems put a new spin on information access, which can be of great value to certain businesses. Attorneys, real estate agents, insurance companies and title companies have always needed certain government documents to perform their job. Time is money to these folks and retrieving documents from government agencies has always been a time-consuming process for them. When cities and counties invest in imaging technology to convert thousands, even millions, of documents into digital images, the old issues of time and access suddenly disappear.
Some counties offer fax-back services.
A title company worker can look up a record in the online index and see a notation that says the document is stored on an optical disc. When the worker hits a function key on the computer in his office, the imaging system back at the registry faxes the document image to the worker's office. Some local governments are exploring the possibility of using the Internet as an inexpensive way to provide businesses with remote access to document images. In every case, the county finds that it can provide access to documents using much less labor than in the past. Fewer documents have to be manually retrieved, photocopied from paper or microfiche, and then mailed.