Long-term storage of court documents is a critical problem in the state of Iowa. It is estimated that in the last ten years the amount of paperwork generated in the judicial system in Iowa is double the amount that had accumulated in the 100 years before. The upward trend in case filings is continuing.

In Sac County, Mary Jo Herrig, the clerk of the district court, had records scattered in four locations outside of the clerk’s office, and each of these locations was full. Records were stored in the basement and two different attics in the courthouse and at the courthouse annex one block away. Bats, birds, and wasps guarded the records stored in the attics of the Sac County Courthouse. Retrieval of the records was time-consuming and put employees at great risk of injury. Some records were stored in cardboard boxes that were stacked 9 feet high. In addition, the paper records were beginning to show significant signs of deterioration.

Microfilm had been the medium of choice for long-term storage in many counties in Iowa since the late 1960s. However, after only 25 years some of these microfilm records have begun to deteriorate and the equipment is worn out. Replacement microfilm readers/printers and cameras are not cost-effective when compared to PC technologies. Maintenance costs are high on microfilm equipment compared to maintenance costs on PCs. Microfilm hardware is proprietary, meaning it can only be used for one purpose, namely, reading, printing, or filming microfilm. PCs can be used for numerous tasks in addition to accessing CD-ROM records.

During a trip to Mason City, Iowa, in early February 1995, Billie Determann, district fiscal officer of the Second Judicial District in Iowa, was listening to a radio talk show. The guest on the talk show was the energetic vice president of a new company that was breaking ground in the electronic imaging field in Iowa. Ms. Determann saw an opportunity to utilize this new technology to solve ongoing problems associated with long-term storage of court documents. She shared what she had learned with me. I am the district court administrator for Second Judicial District in the state of Iowa. Together we proceeded to obtain as much information as we could about CD-ROM imaging technology and how that technology could be applied to our storage problem in the clerk of the district court offices.

I approached the chief judge with a proposal for a pilot project to test imaging technology as a long-term record storage medium. The chief judge approved the project and appointed a district CD-ROM committee consisting of five clerks of district court, the assistant district court administrator, and myself as chair person. The district committee presented a request for $20,000 to conduct a pilot project to the Judicial Council’s records management committee and to the state court administrator. The state court administrator, as the chief justice’s designee, approves funding for pilot projects in Iowa’s Third Branch, and the records management committee recommends changes in records retention schedules. Funding for the project was planned to come from the Second District’s operating budget and was available because of savings realized from a negotiated long-distance telephone contract.

In March 1995, a plan to pilot test the conversion of paper files to CD-ROM images in Sac County was approved. Sac County was chosen because of its manageable size, the significant records storage problems, and the fact that Mary Jo Herrig was a results-oriented supervisor with technical experience. None of the records in Sac County had been microfilmed.

Case filings in Sac County in 1996 are listed below.

The Sac County clerk and her staff, with the help from other surrounding clerks’ offices, purged the paper files of records that had no legal, administrative, or historical value according to procedures contained in the Iowa Court Rules. This was a time-consuming part of the project that took approximately 325 hours to complete.

During this phase of the project, the district committee worked closely with local abstractors and the Sac County Bar Association to ensure issues regarding access to records, indexing, and certification were coordinated properly. We also spoke with county officials to determine their interest in participating in the pilot project.

Digital Data Resources (DDS) of Iowa City, Iowa, was selected as the contractor for the project because of their extensive background with CD-ROM technology. DDS arrived in June and began the task of scanning the records. Initially they set up shop in a conference room and worked on-site with a one-sided scanner. This proved to be slow. A decision was made to move the files to Iowa City and to use the new two-sided scanner. Thus DDS was then able to work around the clock and the scanning was completed in July 1995. DDS employees scanned the paper documents onto a hard drive and then indexed the images using Kofak Ascent software. The images were then burned onto CDs, and the name/case number indexed was maintained on a hard drive.

The district committee worked with the vendor regarding software, indexing, and hardware requirements. We depended heavily on the vendor’s expertise during the pilot project. The committee selected a stand-alone, read-only CD system to keep the scope of the project manageable. The clerk of the court in Sac County had weekly contact with the vendor during the project.

The decision to convert the civil records was driven by the fact that those records were located away from the clerk’s office. The committee had elected on recent projects to convert probate files first because those records were accessed more often. The staff time saved by converting probate files first is significant. More efficient use of clerical staff is certainly a goal of any electronic imaging project.

Transporting files and being able to access those files was a major issue during the project. Hardware was purchased and set up by the vendor. Finally, the software was loaded and the system was tested rigorously on-site.

The six-month project was completed on schedule in early September 1995 at a cost of $21,000. Fifty years of civil records that filled 65 drawers were transferred to eleven 4-inch CDs. A total of 192,656 images were scanned. The records stored on the CDs can be accessed by name search or case number through the Kofax Index Program. One of the goals of the project was to make the system easy to use. The feedback has been favorable. A Pentium desktop computer with 24 megs of RAM and a laser printer have been placed in Sac County for this application. The clerk also uses this computer for word processing and some spreadsheet work.

We had some unexpected hurdles pop up during the course of this project. Onion skin paper is not biodegradable. The landfill would not accept onion skin paper or some of the other long life paper, so other methods of disposal are being explored. About 20 years of records had been file stamped on the back side of the page. We elected to digitize the front and back sides of those documents. During the purging process, the clerk’s staff removed staples, paper clips, and other fastening devices. It was necessary for the vendor to go back through the files and actually clip the corners away in some instances because the paper had literally fused together where the fastening devices had been.

We elected to have the vendor provide three sets of CDs. One set is used as the working copy and is maintained in the computer workstation on-site. One back-up copy is stored on site. The third set is the "major catastrophe" copy and is stored in the district court administrator’s office in Fort Dodge approximately 65 miles away. A nice feature of the CDs is that they can be stored in a normal office environment.

With any automated system there are ongoing maintenance lists to address. In Sac County, we had not sized the RAM memory properly. The vendor originally loaded 16 megs of RAM. The system response time was slower than required, so the vendor added 8 megs of RAM, which resolved the performance problem. The clerk’s staff were not exiting the program properly, resulting in information being saved inadvertently to the hard disk. One day a message came up that the drive was full and the operator could not proceed. With some training and some clean-up by the vendor, we were back on-line within a day. We also had the CD drive crash, which the vendor replaced for $500.

A key element to a successful imaging project is to plan for ongoing maintenance and include that plan with the written contract. Again, a nice feature of PC technology is that hardware maintenance costs are relatively low. There is usually a repair person located near even the smallest courthouse.

The results of the project were studied by the records management committee of the Judicial Council. The committee concluded that imaging is a cost-effective option and the best alternative to microfilm for storage of court records; the process produced high-quality images; retrieval and reproduction of images is easy and accurate; fast retrieval saves time for the clerk’s staff; and use of an outside service provider to scan and convert documents is cost-effective and safe.

Mary Jo Herrig and I demonstrated the Sac County CD-ROM system to the general public and the legislature after Chief Justice Arthur A. McGivern’s State of the Judiciary Address in January 1996. The success of the Sac County project convinced the records management committee to recommend statutory changes to authorize the use of electronic imaging for reproducing court records. Based on those recommendations and the demonstration, Iowa’s Seventy Sixth General Assembly changed the Iowa Code in the spring of 1996 to allow electronic imaging as a long-term storage medium.

The Sac County project has opened several windows of opportunity to be explored. For example, the CD-ROM system may be marketable as an indexed database on CD-ROM abstractors, genealogists, insurance companies, and other users of court records. What the actual value of 50 years of civil records in Sac County, Iowa, might be to a local abstractor has not been determined, but the implications are very interesting not only as a potential funding source for future CD-ROM projects but also as a source for information outside of Sac County, perhaps on the Internet. Our work has focused on using imaging technology for long-term record storage; this technology also has some exciting possibilities for manipulating real-time records in a paperless court. We will be looking through those windows in the near future.

The Sac County pilot project was an unconditional success. The project was completed on time and only $1,100 over budget. A project summary is enclosed showing a breakdown of costs.

In addition to amending the Iowa Code to allow electronic imaging as a record storage medium, the Seventy Sixth Iowa General Assembly appropriated $444,000 to the judicial branch to be used for electronic imaging projects in the current fiscal year. The eight judicial districts are projected to complete several projects by the end of June 1997.

This case study is a classic example of an employee coming up with a good idea to improve efficiency of the judicial system--an idea that was then developed by the management of the Third Branch in Iowa, approved by the legislature, and implemented by the employees of the organization with management support. In this case study, all pieces of government worked together in harmony to accomplish a common goal: better service to the people of Iowa.

If you have any questions about CD-ROM as an alternative storage medium, please contact me at (515) 576-3758.

SAC County CD-ROM Pilot Project

The total cost of this project breaks down as follows: