Traffic Fines Go Online in O.C.

Orange County motorists can now pay traffic fines online with a credit card, thanks to a new service officials hope will help eliminate the long lines of people every morning at Superior Court.

Motorists already pay fines by mail or telephone as well as in person, said Alan Slater, Superior Court’s chief executive officer. “This [online] service is an added convenience,” he said.

Orange County is the first county in the state to use a recently developed program by ACS State and Local Solutions Inc. for public agencies called Governlink III. The public can log on to the court’s Web site--https://www.occourts.org--and follow the instructions to pay fines. There’s a $4 fee.

This is the latest online service announced by the county, which has been rapidly improving access to everything from reserving a book at a county library to paying property taxes.

“For some years now, we’ve been trying to streamline access and create a paperless process for the public with transactions,” said Leo Crawford, the county’s chief information officer.

The county’s Web site (https://www.oc.ca.gov) has recently been revised to make it more user-friendly, Crawford said. More services are available through the site, such as viewing pictures of animals available for adoption at the county animal shelter, scheduling an appointment with a building inspector and applying for a county job.

The clerk-recorder’s office was the pioneer agency; it began providing, for a fee, online birth, death and marriage records more than two years ago.

The program to pay traffic fines was developed by technicians at ACS. Mike Sinkinson, ACS’ program director in Orange County, said the firm has other projects involving Web applications and high-tech services. It has enabled residents in San Diego and San Bernardino counties to make property-tax payments online through Governlink, he said.

“This is the first time a county is offering to [let violators] pay traffic fines with Governlink,” Sinkinson said. “We have another system used in major cities for paying parking tickets.”

The company has been providing online-transaction programs for about five years and has developed a relationship with banks, Sinkinson said. “The encryption we use is extremely secure,” he said.

When the firm bought Lockheed Martin IMS, the company also acquired Lockheed’s $260-million data-processing contract with the county.

The contract, approved a year ago, runs through 2010.