Paper-On-Demand Electronic Office

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

The Tarrant County Paper-on-Demand Electronic Office project began as a joint effort between the County Clerk, Criminal District Attorney Mental Health (MH) division, Courts, and the Information Technology Department (ITD) to mitigate the effects of the heavily paper-laden Probate processes for MH and Guardianship cases. These processes required paper files moving between county buildings, the county hospital, and long distance facilities. The printing and movement of these files frequently led to delays in processing time sensitive cases. Leveraging the existing Odyssey software application Workflow Paths and Queues, in a configuration design unique to Tarrant County as approved by the vendor, led to business process improvements and the delivery of an innovative, well-planned technology solution. This solution transformed the MH and Guardianship processes into an entirely new electronic paper-on-demand model. In addition, Topaz signature pads were included to capture required non-county participant’s signatures. The features and results include: 1. Cost savings of over $65,000 per year from: a. Reducing consumables costs; i.e. paper, toner, file jackets, labels. b. Reducing physical storage costs of physical files; short and long term. 2. Eliminating hand carrying 55,000+ documents annually between buildings. 3. Eliminating document routing delays by reducing document processing handling time by 86% from 1 week to 1 day. 4. Providing remote access to all case documents. 5. Providing electronic signature functionality to more than 18,000 documents. 6. Reducing staff hours devoted to file creation tasks by 75% from 2 hours preparation time per case to 30 minutes per case 7. Enabling the guardian to submit electronically the “Guardian of the Person” annual report. These measureable results will only multiply as the Tarrant County leverages the same process improvements to the remaining Probate process and the County Courts at Law in late 2017.