Xerox, Google, and Search Technologies helped transform the vision into reality through providing superb real estate record search capabilities and effectively combatting mortgage fraud. To read the full case study, visit http://www.searchtechnologies.com/gsa-case-study-government.html. http://www.searchtechnologies.com

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Xerox, Google, and Search Technologies helped transform the vision into reality through providing
superb real estate record search capabilities and effectively combatting mortgage fraud.
THE CHALLENGE
Macomb County, Michigan, is one of the three counties
comprising the Detroit metropolitan area. While the area is
known for manufacturing, county officials are known for using
technology to make their citizens’ lives easier. Back in 1996,
the county partnered with Xerox to capture and index land
records dating back to 1818, making Macomb the first county
in Michigan with computerized land records. The system now
holds roughly seven million records. Although the system
worked well, an increase in mortgage fraud, nationwide, in
combination with a growing local housing market, left county
officials wanting more.
At the time, fraudulent mortgage warehouses were on the
upswing. Falsified documents, notarized by a fictitious “Linda
Green” made national headlines. Yet, even the most
sophisticated land record databases weren’t searchable by
notary. In fact, most weren’t even searchable by anything
more than the very basics. This made it more difficult for
property owners and home seekers to search, yet easier for
criminals to hide deceptive mortgage practices. Macomb
County Clerk and Register of Deeds, Carmella Sabaugh,
believed it was time for a new change.
“The American Dream of homeownership was threatened by
loose regulations and a lack of accountability,” Sabaugh said.
“In Macomb County, Michigan we have the audacity to believe
in the American Dream. So, we were willing to take bold
action to make it harder to hide fraudulent mortgage
practices.”
Her vision, a “Super Index,” enabling constituents, corporate
users, and law enforcement personnel to conduct freeform
land record searches, was to make it as simple as “Googling a
topic on the Intranet.”
THE SOLUTION
Macomb County chose Xerox, a long-time trusted partner with
expertise in document processing and land records to lead the
project.
Xerox brought in Google, with their strong enterprise search,
offering the Google Search Appliance™ and Search
Technologies with their deep expertise in search solution
design and integration. Together, these three companies
brought this vision to life. Although the county already had
images of its land records, these needed to be converted to
text files via OCR, so that they could be indexed and searched
by the Google Search Appliance.
Each of the seven million files was converted into PDFs with
embedded OCR text. These files were then processed through
Search Technologies’ Aspire content processing framework to
analyze, normalize, clean, and load them into a Google Search
Appliance, to create the Super Index of almost 200 years of
land use documents.
Xerox, Google and Search Technologies researched what
metadata information was needed within the index, necessary
to provide the optimum search relevance. This includes, for
example, a capability to identify every property for which Bob
Smith is a grantee, or Mary Jones is the notary.
At the time, all of the records didn’t include spouse
information, so a variety of new index categories, data
sources, and metadata extraction techniques were applied
using Aspire, to fill these categories, both for residential
research, and fraud prevention use.
CASE STUDY:
Macomb County wanted to make public records search
and fraud detection as easy as possible

2. Because of the complexity involved with this project, Macomb
County officials agreed to an 18-month proof-of-concept, in
which:
 Eight years’ worth of images were OCR’d and
converted to PDF
 An interface was designed around the standard GSA
search, with the sophistication required for the
“Super Index” vision
 The main “search user types” were identified, and
their specific needs assessed
 A prototype was created for testing by various
stakeholders
One of the key challenges of the “Super Index” was that it had
to satisfy a multitude of user types – from residents, to title
companies, and from law enforcement personnel to
commercial enterprises. To ensure that the resulting system
fulfilled everyone’s needs, the prototype was field tested by a
hand-selected group chosen by Sabaugh herself. As a result,
the team gained great insight from key users, and
confirmation that the project was headed down the right
path.
From here, the project moved to production mode, working
through the nuances of emailing receipts, extracting data, and
adding features such as intuitive search for practical
identification of numbers, and other conveniences – all while
continuing to convert the remaining electronic files to OCR
PDFs.
THE RESULTS
The “Super Index” had a soft rollout in early 2013, with a more
expansive “go live” phase during the spring. The index has
already been recognized with awards and honors, and has
produced the following results – even in its early stages of use:
 It provides residents with much easier, online access
to Macomb County land records
 It provides law enforcement personnel with a
tremendous tool to research and combat fraudulent
activities
 It gives land record professionals, title companies,
and other commercial users, a versatile tool to make
their jobs more efficient
 It enables users to perform searches using a
multitude of variables, and not just the standard
fields from the original data
 It improves search-time from minutes to seconds
 It provides images of land records in the universal
PDF format
 It provides search navigation options to narrow down
search results. This popular technique, used by
Amazon, Ebay, and many other leading online brands,
is familiar to users and highly effective
The solution also uses Google Analytics™ to track system
usage. By mining this data, the team can continue to optimize
the system, and deliver an increasingly efficient user
experience over time.
Macomb County is also positioned to expand the use of the
Google Search Appliance and Aspire in the future,
incorporating voice searches, mobile search capabilities and
Google Maps™.
But, back to today, Macomb County officials are receiving
accolades from users, the press, and other government
entities for following a vision, and accomplishing something
no similar agency had done before.
“Property owners now have a tool to protect their property
rights,” Sabaugh said. “With help from Xerox, Google, and
Search Technologies, Macomb County is making the search for
the American Dream a little easier.”
About Search Technologies
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