FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
November 22, 2002

Thanks to IMAGE-X, a leading document management solutions provider, Contra Costa residents can now pay their child support online. Utilizing, Image-X’s cutting edge form creation software—X-Forms—Contra Costa County is able to collect more child support quicker and with no paperwork.

For over a decade Image-X has been a leader in document management solutions for public and private institutions. During California’s recent electricity crisis, the California Supervisors Association of Counties (CSAC) looked to Image-X to provide X-Forms and EDAR in order to manage the shear mass of information collected about the crisis.

Contra Costa, as with the whole state of California, has recently felt pressure from the state and federal government in order to comply with a federal mandate to increase the amount of child support collections. In 2001 California was fined $46 million dollars for inadequate collection of delinquent payments. Image-X’s web collection solution allows Contra Costa to take one step closer to complying with the federal mandate and help California eliminate future fines.

Child Support is only a part of Image-X’s suite of e-government services to be launched in Contra Costa. The building department, working with Image-X, is in the process of applying X-Forms and Image-X’s document management technology—EDAR—to building permits and other documents. The application of X-Forms to building permits will dramatically speed up the process of obtaining a permit or submitting and getting a response on a complaint.

This is because X-Forms goes after the core of the problem that organizations are faced with when trying to collect and distribute information from the public: Forms. The piles of paper documents that need to be filled out by hand, mailed or faxed, and entered into a database. Voting, registering a vehicle with the DMV, and applying for credit are but a few of the everyday matters that require a form to be filled out.

Paper forms result in a slew of problems. Just managing these forms can be cumbersome for both the public and the organization. Many organizations have attempted to streamline this process by placing forms on the Internet, where they can be filled out and submitted electronically rather than by hand. But this process is done through with HTML, which is timely and costly. Existing paper forms must be redesigned and formatted in HTML. That means organizations using hundreds of different forms, for hundreds of different purposes, must design hundreds of different Web pages—one for each of the forms being used.

X-Forms alleviates the problems associated with HTML and paper forms. Unlike with paper and HTML, with X-Forms the forms are filled out, the information is entered into the database, and the forms are filed all in one step. In addition X-Forms are inexpensive when compared with the costs associated with HTML or paper forms.

In the future, the county will bring more services online giving the people greater access and input in their local government. Image-X will walk hand in hand with the county and ensure that the best and most up to date technology is used in order to help Contra Costa become a more responsive and more open county.

For more information on Image-X’s involvement in the County’s Electronic Commerce Transaction Processing contract, please call (805) 964-3535.