In Dauphin County, we are very fortunate to have an IT director whose philosophy is to let the elected office holder do their jobs independently. And what that means is they allow us to do the research, to figure out what our needs are, to find the best solution, and then they help to make it happen.
I’m fortunate in the Register of Will’s office that I have an automation computerization fund that I have instituted. I don’t use taxpayer dollars. I do not use county funds to pay for these solutions electronically. It is now paid for through my automation computerization fund. And I take pride in that, and I think that that also helps the Dauphin County commissioners get behind anything that I have asked for. There’s also a county records improvement fund, which is Act Eight, And I do serve as the chair of the Act Eight committee now for about eight years for Dauphin County. And that is made up of the three commissioners, the sheriff, the prothonotary, the clerk of courts, the register of wills. That funding comes through a statute that gets funding through the Recorder of Deeds office.
It’s a five-dollar fee. Three dollars go per transaction to the recorder of deeds’ records improvement fund, and then the remaining two dollars per transaction goes to the Act Eight committee. After a while, that adds up, and then we have various departments through Dauphin County that will submit requests to us for records improvement. That could be anything from scanning back files, old records, to instituting a new computer system, a new software system, and we work together to make that happen with them. Traditionally, we are the seed money to get the first deposit down, and then that department that is making the request is responsible for paying the balance.
All of that has changed our office for the better. We are no longer the stale old office that did things the old way. We are constantly looking to improve processes, make it better, make it easier, make it better overall experience for our customers, and I think we have done that. Our goal is to continue to do that, and I look forward to working with Neumo to find out what those new solutions will be down the road.
