Jemison’s public records will soon enter the 21st century.

City employees are in the process of transferring all public records—including city council minutes, council agendas, ordinances and resolutions—to an online system that will give residents the ability to view and print those records at any time at the city’s website, www.jemisonalabama.org.

The VendorVault system, offered by TriNovus of Birmingham, will create an online database for Jemison’s public records.

The advantage for Jemison residents is that they will no longer have to visit city hall during business hours for a records request. Jemison officials will also have access to records, but they also now have a backup in case any of the records were lost in a fire or natural disaster.

“It basically opens up city hall records to all citizens 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Starr Largin, municipality coordinator for TriNovus. “It gives them a transparent government. Some citizens run into the problem of, when they get off work, city hall is closed.”

Jemison’s records would be backed up nightly on a server in Homewood. Officials would have a different level of access than everyday users, who wouldn’t be able to see all the information contained on the site.

TriNovus has provided similar services to private businesseses in the past but just recently reached out to municipalities.

Pelham was the first municipality to go live with the VendorVault system, in the spring. TriNovus has since entered into contracts with Montevallo and Wilton.

Jemison would be the first Chilton County city to use the service.
The system can be catered to each municipality’s needs. TriNovus can train city workers on all aspects of the system, for example, or the company can actually come in periodically and perform maintenance operations.

“We don’t want to actually be a vendor to these municipalities—we don’t want to sell them a product, we want to sell them a relationship,” Largin said.