A previously-unknown problem affecting counties nationwide has come to light in recent days. Estimates range from millions of records to hundreds of thousands of records mis-indexed due to failures in computer programs bought from commercial firms with taxpayer dollars.
On Monday, March 8th, a document in San Mateo County was missing from the search results on a landowners' name. A reconveyance which did appear, showed a reference to a 2001 mortgage. The mortgage did not appear on the search results. When the document number, as reference on the reconveyance, was pulled up directly by it's serial number in the county computer, it showed the man's name. The spelling on the mortgage was correct. Furthermore, the spelling of the man's name on the county index appeared to be correct as well.
The astute researcher will then ask how it could be that the index appeared to be typed correctly for the man's name connected to the document, but then the document did not display when the name was searched. The answer to this is a minor, technical detail about the indexing, but one with major repercussions for the public and the firms relying thereupon.
Upon receiving the mortgage in 2001, a Recorders Office staffer typed the name into the computer database. However, having typed the last name, he or she tabbed over to the next input field which would have been the “first name here” box on their screen. Therein, they proceeded to type the first name, but accidentally put a blank space as the first “letter” thereof.
As anyone with a D- or higer in 5th grade will know from having studied basic alphabetical and numerical theory (alpha-numerics which we use in English to “read” with), a blank space will be counted as a valid symbol, causing the name to be placed out of order on an index, and not located at all by a computer searching for “Joe Public” which should bear only one space.
Because the inputting computer program that is used to add new documents to the index was poorly programed, it fails to prevent this typo and thus creates a systemic problem on the effective index. On a hunch, our researchers at Business Research and Abstract Service began to check the index for “Smith”, entering two spaces between the last and first names and beginning with the letter “a” down. Within 60 seconds they had hit the letter “c” and found multiple mis-enteries over a decade back which have languished in the index incorrectly.
Testing this online with a few other California counties located more of the same.
This is a systemic problem which likely covers multiple states, many counties, and many tens or hundreds of thousands of records. The private firms which sell these database programs to local counties, and the contractors who administer these systems have failed to account for this very simple human error.
I will remind the researchers out there, that no level of reasonable and due diligence, nor standards and practices of our industry, would allow us to account for such systemic discrepencies. Running “Public, J” for “John Q Public”, would NOT uncover a mis-index of this nature.
I would note that the Deputy County Recorder in San Mateo County, was told by us a decade ago of the same mis-type problem involving the last names. These errors were corrected, for the last name only, when they were demonstrated this by BRASS, as they transited to a new computer system. None of us, BRASS or the County, anticipated or realized that the same essential error was occurring for the first names.
Be aware and beware!