Service as Fast as You Can Say, ‘oc.ca.gov/’

Michael Berlant of Irvine was in Singapore on business during the November election and got tired staying up late to phone home trying to get an absentee ballot. So he fired up his computer, popped onto the Internet and voila.

“Lo and behold, the exact information I needed was in my hand in less than two minutes,” Berlant wrote in a thankful e-mail message to Joshua Wallingford, Web master for the county’s increasingly popular home page on the World Wide Web. “That’s the best service I’ve ever gotten from the county.”

Kudos have come from as far away as Australia, where soon-to-be visitors found maps and accommodation information, to Anaheim, where a real estate appraiser retrieved the city statistics he needed.

Berlant said last week that he received his absentee ballot the day before the election and mailed it back by Federal Express just in time.

“That’s what’s so wonderful about the Internet,” said Berlant, a computer-savvy guy who works for the Irvine office of Electronic Data Systems, the company Ross Perot founded in 1962 and sold in 1984.

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Computer experts aren’t the only people logging on to the county’s home page, as well as those of 13 cities, three police departments and five school districts that now post information online through the Internet, a worldwide system of computer networks.

The king of local pages is the County of Orange Home Page--at www.oc.ca.gov/--used by about 40,000 people monthly, logging 337,000 “hits” or inquiries for information each month.

Among its advantages is that its Internet address is simple and easy to find. (The city of Huntington Beach’s home page address, for example, is the more cumbersome www.ci.huntington-beach.ca.us.) Another plus for users is that the rest of the local government sites can be retrieved easily through the county page.

The page is a treasure trove of information for those daunted by the idea of scanning the phone book in the hopes of finding the right person to call.

Some of what’s available at the click of a button are marriage licenses, birth and death certificates, forms for appealing property tax assessments, county park information and trail maps, meeting agendas, the Superior Court calendar and county job listings.

“There’s so much to do,” said Diane Thomas, public information officer for the county, whose department oversees the Web page. “We wanted to find multiple ways to communicate with people and get them the information they need. This way, they don’t have to drive all of the way to Santa Ana any time they need something.”

The page also offers information from the Family Violence Council, the Area Agency on Aging, John Wayne Airport, Orangewood Children’s Foundation, North and South Orange County Municipal Courts, and the treasurer/tax collector.

Soon to come: maps and hours for the county’s libraries, an Emergency Management Department site with such necessities as what to put in an earthquake kit and instructions on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and election information and results.

Users can also link to special pages for the Pond of Anaheim, Disneyland, the Santa Ana Zoo, Mission San Juan Capistrano, area sports teams and local colleges and universities. There’s even a link to the Dilbert comic strip online.

Governments are finding more creative and interactive uses for their home pages than merely providing information. The city of Huntington Beach, for example, used its presence on the Internet to broadcast its annual Fourth of July parade.

Perspective is a weekly column highlighting trends and events that define Orange County. Readers are invited to call Los Angeles Times correspondent Jean O. Pasco at (714) 564-1052 or send an e-mail to Jean.Pasco@latimes.com