Citizens visiting the Walker County Probate Judge’s Office in downtown Jasper may be surprised to find out they no longer have to wait in line for anything.
Thanks to new technology, lines in that office are now a thing of the past as a new system was put into place and went live last week.
“The new system that Ingenuity put in allows us (the office) and the public to do a lot of things online, but it also an into queue system, and it has taken us a little while to get it put and to work the bugs out, but it allows us to not have lines,” Walker County Probate Judge A. Lee Tucker said on Friday. “That is a goal that we’ve been kind of working because that something for the public that is a lot more convenient and a lot less stressful for everybody.”
When an area resident enters the office now, that person is met by a worker sitting next to a large, touchscreen monitor. The resident is asked what type of business they need to handle and they click that on the screen. The person is then given a number and sits until their number is called.
“It assigns the number to the correct side of the house, because it divides it out for different kinds of work,” Tucker said. “You are out into the queue so nobody loses their place.”
Tucker said citizens do need to realize the numbers are based off what they are needing to do at the office. “Someone who comes in for a deed might get called before someone who was there first who is getting a tag, just due to volume in each area,” he said.
The system is working well in its first week of service, Tucker added.
“The proof will be in the pudding when we have the higher volume at the first of the month or the end of the month, or when we have the income tax checks come in,” he said.