Counties recognized for government innovation
Two counties are among the winners of this year’s Innovations in American Government Awards — often referred to as the Oscars of government programs because of their prestige and rigorous selection process.
King County, Wash. was honored for its Electronic Court Records Program, and Genesee County, Mich. was recognized for its Genesee County Land Bank. They were among seven state and local government winners and were the only counties honored.
“These programs demonstrate that government on all levels can achieve scalable solutions to pressing global issues,” said Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in American Government Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. The awards were presented Sept. 24 in Washington, D.C.
Winners were chosen by a national selection committee, chaired by David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership the Kennedy School, from a pool of nearly 1,000 applicants nationwide. Programs are cited for their innovation, benefit to citizens nationwide and strong potential to be replicated across the country. Each winning program received $100,000 to help share its expertise with other communities.
“We have already begun advising government officials in New Orleans, Baltimore and Cleveland,” said Genesee County Treasurer Dan Kildee, “and we look forward to the opportunity to encourage and support even more municipalities across the nation with our shared best practices.”
In recognizing the program, the Ash Institute noted, “Before the Genesee County Land Bank was established, the county could do little to stall the degenerative community impact resulting from abandoned properties, housing foreclosures and outside land speculation.”
The program was founded in 2002 to “halt this downward spiral.” The county developed a self-sustaining $8 million land reutilization fund with revenue generated from tax-delinquent property fees to fund the cleanup and revitalization of run-down properties. The program was profiled in the April 23 issue of CountyNews.
King County’s Electronic Court Records Program was recognized “as a more efficient, cost-effective solution for addressing the cumbersome paper-based court record storage and retrieval process.”
The King County Superior Court Clerk’s office receives 8,000 daily filings for both criminal and civil cases. With court records only accessible at the clerk’s office during business hours and with only one person able to view a case file at a time, retrieving records could take days. Often judges had to make decisions without all relevant information in hand, the Ash Institute said.
Encouraged by a 1998 statutory change, King County’s Department of Judicial Administration was able to designate electronic documents as official case records.
In 2000, the ECR Program kicked off a phased roll-out of projects, including conversion of all paper records into electronic documents, implementation of electronic filing and enabling online public access. Thanks to the dramatic improvements in operational efficiencies, the program reports over $5 million in savings,” according to the Ash Institute.
“The King County Electronic Court Records Program demonstrates the power of collaboration to fundamentally improve the judicial process,” Goldsmith said.
Barbara Miner, director of the King County Department of Judicial Administration and superior court clerk, said, “We are incredibly grateful to be recognized as a 2007 Innovations in American Government Award winner.
“As a result of the efficiencies put in place by the ECR Program, our judges have dramatically improved access to court case record information to support more informed judicial decision-making.”
Additional information about The Ash Institute is available at www.ashinstitute.harvard.edu. Organizations are encouraged to apply to the 2008 Innovations in American Government Awards by Oct. 15, 2007 at www.innovationsaward.harvard.edu.
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