Digital generation
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By NANCY HICKS / Lincoln Journal Star
Kiah Odell is becoming quite a talker.
She can say her older brothers’ names — Caleb, Isaac, Micah, Jacob.
But sometimes, like her mommy, Kiah simply shouts, “Hey, boys.”
And these days one of her new favorite words is “baby.” She has a baby cousin and she likes to wrap her dolly babies in blankets so they look just like her cousin.
Kiah and her cousin are part of a new, totally digital generation.
Since 2005, all Nebraska birth records have been created and stored electronically. There are no paper copies, just magnetic particles on a hard drive.
Soon after Kiah was born in April 2005, Saint Elizabeth Regional Medical Center provided information about her by computer to the state, which created her official birth record, now stored electronically in a large server.
The state sends the information electronically to Social Security, which issues the new Nebraskan a Social Security number and card.
Kiah’s mom, Kate, ordered a paper certificate for her own files, but state archives hold no paper record of the birth.
In the next few years, death records also will be created and stored electronically. And at the beginning of the new year, marriage and divorce records will be created and stored electronically at the state level as well.
So, unless technology changes, Kiah’s vital records — her birth, marriage, the birth or births of any children she might have and her death — will all be created and stored electronically.
There likely will be back-up copies on microfilm disks, but no paper.
Nebraska has been ahead of the curve in transforming bulky paper files and microfilm to electronic databases.
If you are 76 or younger, the original paper record of your birth likely has been carted away to a climate-controlled building for historical safekeeping, and your birth certificate is stored in a computer server.
All Nebraska birth certificates from 1930 to the present are stored electronically, except for four years now being entered, said Stanley Cooper, vital records management administrator for the state.
Nebraska has been working on the conversion from paper to electronic files for more than a decade, converting birth records to optical disk and then to computer storage.
But many states just started.
Texas began converting its 48 million birth, death and marriage records to electronic files in January, a project expected to take five years, according to The Associated Press.
The movement to electronic storage speeds up the process for getting a copy of the record.
At the state office in Lincoln, the information goes into a cash register-like machine, which finds the file and prints out the record, plus your receipt, Cooper explained.
In the old days, a clerk had to take the file number, find the paper document or microfilm and make a copy.
Today, there is a 15- to 20-minute turnaround time at the Lincoln office, and a five- to seven-day turnaround for birth certificates ordered via the Internet.
“We have tried as much as possible to stay with the technology,” Cooper said of the state’s gradual change from paper to electronic storage system.
The state chose to convert birth records first because they are the most requested records.
Last year, the state provided copies of 77,200 birth certificates, 65,317 death records, 3,693 marriage license records and 801 marriage dissolution records, according to Cooper.
Requests for birth certificates continue to grow, fueled by the new demands for proof of citizenship.
* You need to prove your citizenship for Medicaid.
* You need a birth certificate to get your first Nebraska driver’s license. (Many states require birth certificates for driver’s license renewal, but Nebraska does not.)
And there is a looming deadline for travelers.
After Jan. 23, a passport will be required to travel by air to any country, including Mexico and Canada.
Also looming are fee increases required to pay for the new computer storage systems.
A month before the Texas conversion began, the state doubled the price of a birth certificate from $11 to $22.
The cost of a Nebraska birth certificate went from $8 to $12 this summer, the first permanent increase in more than a decade.
Nebraska temporarily raised the price of a certified copy of a birth certificate by $4 for four years during the mid-’90s to pay for scanning birth records and putting them onto optical disks. Those optically scanned records were more recently put into an electronic database.
“The reality is that using computer systems will make things faster, but normally it does cost more money,” Cooper said.
The state is moving to create an all-electronic death record system, where both funeral homes and doctors will send information to the state by computer.
About 48 percent of funeral home directors have been trained to provide death certificate information electronically, Cooper said.
An electronic system cuts several days off the time it takes to process a death certificate, particularly in rural areas, he said. Funeral home directors do not have to take or mail records to a doctor, which in some parts of the state may be 60 miles away.
Instead, he or she signs onto the state site and enters information to be routed to a physician or coroner.
The doctor signs the document electronically, and it becomes available through the state records system.
Reach Nancy Hicks at 473-7250 or nhicks@journalstar.com.
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