Conveyances bureau looks at going online
Laura H. Thielen says she is "cautiously optimistic" that online document filing at the state Bureau of Conveyances could better serve the public and be the catalyst for better relations among workers there.
Land registration offices are increasingly going electronic to varying degrees across the country, said Thielen, interim director of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, who has oversight of the bureau.
"Our bureau uses 1990s technology," Thielen said yesterday after the first meeting of a new working group that is to draw up plans for getting the troubled agency more automated.
Thielen says she foresees:
» Same-day filing of documents, instead of a one- to two-day lag.
» Standardized forms to speed filing and reduce errors.
» Retraining of bureau staff to complete the entire process of recording more quickly, versus the current lag of several months up to a year.
» A public, searchable database of recorded documents.
» Electronic fee payments.
The change will happen with no job losses for the more than 40 employees in the bureau, Thielen said. And she hopes to have the specifications for a request for proposals complete by the end of the year, so a contract could be in place next year.
"I don't think this is rocket science," Thielen said. "It would be like ordering a book from Amazon.com. You can't complete the transaction until all the blanks are filled."
Workers who now type and retype information from paper documents onto computers will instead check aspects of the documents' accuracy that must be done to finalize the recording.
The promise of no jobs lost is important, said Randy Perreira, Hawaii Government Employees Association deputy executive director and part of the working group.
Also in the working group are representatives of the banking, law, real estate, title and escrow industries, as well as the Land Court judge. A parallel working group of all bureau employees will funnel its recommendations through Thielen, she said.
Thielen also has hired a mediator, Nanci Thompson, to facilitate communication among registrar Carl Watanabe and the administrators of the two branches of the bureau, the Land Court and the regular section, for the next three months.
Personal disputes among bureau employees and resistance to Watanabe's leadership have contributed to the bureau's backlog of work, according to testimony before a legislative committee looking into its problems.
Thielen was appointed to lead the DLNR this summer after the state Senate refused to confirm Peter Young for a second four-year term. Complaints about problems at the Bureau of Conveyances and Young's lack of responsiveness to them were among some of the reasons given for his ouster.