Secure Remote Access to Land Records-Fully Comprehensive Database

About the Program

Category: Criminal Justice and Public Safety (Best in Category)

Year: 2009

Pursuant to Virginia law, Circuit County Clerks were required to provide secure remote access (SRA) to land records by July 1, 2008. Even among peers nationally, Chesterfield’s Circuit County Clerk’s approach to designing an SRA system was unique, ensuring a comprehensive system focused on user convenience and continuity of search methodologies. With assistance from land records vendor Logan Systems, Chesterfield’s Circuit Court Clerk began by converting all land record images and indices back to 1749, the year of the county’s inception, to digital format. Historical indices were previously in hard-copy “family-style” books. Other clerks had simply scanned such indices and their cumbersome solutions offered little improvement over the hard copy books. By contrast, Chesterfield County’s Clerk, working closely with Logan, implemented a system whereby historical indices are organized alphabetically and searched intuitively. These indices, combined with the historical images, make Chesterfield’s SRA site arguably the best in the nation—one by which all land records data, regardless of its initial format, can be accessed from a single user-friendly interface. Chesterfield’s innovations have been praised by officials with the Library of Virginia and have since been emulated by clerks and registers of deeds throughout the southeastern United States.