Bright Ideas - March 21, 2016

Kiosks Print Marriage Certificates for Las Vegas Wedding Couples

Hidden behind the flowers, dancing music, surf and turf and sometimes underneath a table centerpiece, the marriage license is the part of the ceremony that can’t be cut out, even if the couple elopes. Or gets married in Las Vegas.

Clark County, Nev., issued 80,738 marriage licenses in 2014, more than twice as many as second-place Cook County, Ill., which means a lot of work for the county recorder’s staff, who would be responsible for not just processing but producing certificates for the couples.

Budget cuts to the recorder’s office made the task even tougher, because a 22 percent cut to funding forced a 20 percent cut in staff. But people kept getting married, particularly from outside of Clark County, and needed copies of their marriage certificates immediately.

But perhaps the staff did not need to be a third wheel for the couples.

While they couldn’t make their own certificates, couples could do the next best thing — enter the identifying data, pay with their credit card and get their certificate.

“It’s as easy as going to the DMV and getting your car registered,” said Maurice Reid a senior business systems analyst for the county, in no way implying that the same romantic feelings necessarily applied to automobile registration.

There wasn’t a mad rush for certificates at one particular time to prompt the county to move this function to a machine.

“This was a way to streamline the process,” Reid said. “Now people aren’t waiting in line to get their marriage certificate, and they don’t have to come all the way to the government center to get it.”

The county also has a marriage certificate kiosk in its remote government center office.

The kiosks contain digitized certificates back to 2002, for a total of more than 1.3 million. Couples who married before 2002 will have to continue to request certificates in person at the clerk’s office.

In-house development of the software through the county recorder’s office, plus the equipment to build the kiosks, totaled $60,000. The county projects that the kiosks save $20,000 a year in overtime costs. The kiosks print out a monthly average of 200 certificates.

The program’s success has prompted the county to develop kiosks to assist the recorder’s office staff, which are scheduled to debut in early 2017.

“The marriage certificate kiosks have been a way to improve customer service and we see some opportunities to expand that,” Reid said.

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