CASSOPOLIS — The Cass County Law and Court Building’s gradual transition to the 21st century method of processing important documents and files appears to be working like a charm.

Robert Steinhoff, the county’s deputy Friend of the Court, delivered a presentation on the courthouse’s implementation of a new document imaging system to the Cass County Board of Commissioners during its meeting Thursday at the county annex in Cassopolis. Steinhoff gave a brief outline of the history behind the move toward computerized records and how the changes have transformed the way the courthouse conducts its business during his talk.

The courthouse staff moved forward with the move to imaging beginning last spring, purchasing state-of-the-art computer software that allows staff to scan paper documents to a desktop computer and share them with other employees remotely through an internal network.

“[We are] taking that document and moving it from user to user within the computer, rather than the old way, which was getting up and walking it down to the next office,” Steinhoff said. “As you can guess, it’s a really inefficient way of doing business.”

Although the county has only started implementing document imaging this past year, it has been an issue on county leader’s radar for nearly a decade, with then District 1 Commissioner Robert Wagel bringing it up as a possibility, Steinhoff said.

In 2015, the commissioners moved forward with funding the program.

A majority of the money the courthouse has spent installing new computer hardware and software for the transition has been reimbursed with federal dollars, Steinhoff added.

The benefits from the move to digital records have been numerous, Steinhoff said. For example, the process of running court orders from the court referee/administrator’s office for review, to the judge’s office for signing, to the county clerk’s office for filing, has gone from taking at least a day to mere seconds, requiring just a few clicks of the mouse, he said.

Another advantage of imaging has been increased document security. Although people may feel like paper copies are more secure, due to the fact that are a tangible, physical thing, all digital courthouse documents are backed up three ways, meaning even if one backup goes down, there are two other ways of retrieving old files.

“We are more likely to be struck by a tornado and have all our physical files destroy than we are to lose our triplicate backups,” Steinhoff said.

There are other benefits the county has seen from the transition as well, including the fact that it is impossible for people to remove digital copies of documents from the courthouse, which has happened on several occasions in the past, Steinhoff said. The document tracking system allows users to find out who has viewed or edited a particular file as well.

“[Documents] look clean and professional,” he said. “When it gets around to the end user, like the attorney or litigant, after we print a copy off for them, they see a really nice sheet, without any personal penmanship. It’s a really clean look.”

The courthouse plans to expand the imaging system to the entire building in the near future, and Steinhoff said he hopes that the entire county will consider making the move to digital at some point as well.