Public-sector agencies struggling to collect revenue during tough economic times are getting new help from a venerable source – parking tickets. Armed with vCitePlus, a Bluetooth enabled system developed by Sandy, Utah– based Velosum that makes it easier to write and record citations, several cities around the United States are adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to local government coffers.

The solution, fi rst launched in January 2008, uses digital pen and paper technology from Anoto Group. The pen records the data as offi cers write citations and sends it to a mobile phone via Bluetooth wireless technology. Offi cers then use the phone to take digital photos of license plates or other details as evidence and upload all of the data to a central Web portal in real time. Faced with such timely and detailed information, violators are much more likely to pay their fi nes than dispute them.

Before Provo, Utah, began using vCitePlus two years ago, the average collection rate for parking violations hovered around 67 percent. Within a month of installing the solution, the rate jumped to 75 percent, and it now stands at about 88 percent, according to Jody Meyer, Provo City Justice Court administrator. “We’ve seen a 21 percent increase in effi ciency just from switching to the new system,” she says.

Provo’s citizens understandably have mixed feelings about the new system’s effi ciency. “Their reactions are as positive as they can be; nobody’s ever happy to receive a ticket,” Meyer concedes. But on the plus side, immediate access to citation records means violators can pay fi nes quickly, instead of waiting days or weeks to resolve questions. “The system helps the public reduce the risk of late fees,” she says.

Velosum’s solution is in place in 17 U.S. municipalities, including Provo and Grand Junction, Colo., for everything from managing parking and speeding tickets to handling weed abatement violations and even controlling graffiti.

“The genius behind Bluetooth technology is it allows us to get data in real time from the electronic pens to the Web,” says Michael Critchfi eld, Velosum’s chief operating offi cer. Solutions that don’t use the wireless standard typically require offi cers to download information at the end of their shifts using USB docking stations connected to PCs. The time lag means that municipal workers sometimes must fi eld complaints from irate citizens before details about the citation have reached back-end systems. “Bluetooth’s ability to transmit data to a cell phone in the fi eld takes the business to a whole different level,” Critchfield says.

The Anoto pen, an integral part of the solution, works much like conventional writing devices, which keeps training costs to a minimum. An offi cer writes out violation information with the pen, using ticket forms printed on special patterned paper. As he or she writes, an infrared camera in the stylus captures pen-tip movements by taking nearly 75 digital photographs per second. The pen transfers the images via Bluetooth technology to proprietary Velosum software loaded on a mobile phone, which then uses a secure Web connection to send everything to a Web portal, which also runs vCitePlus software. “We then play connect the dots,” Critchfi eld says. The software translates the pattern and pen movements into data that digitizes the handwritten information on the tickets.

The solution also captures the GPS coordinates of where the citation is issued as well as photographs agents take on-site using the cell phone. “When you see a photo of your car parked in front of a fi re hydrant, it’s hard to not pay the ticket,” Critchfield says.

Meyer says the ability to snap photos and wirelessly upload them to a central Web site is one of the key benefi ts of vCitePlus over the old electronic ticketing system Provo had been using. In the past, photos weren’t automatically linked to citations. If the city needed a photo for evidence, someone had to scour through all the pictures that were taken on a given day and match them to the appropriate violations, she explains. Now those processes are automatic.

Parking management isn’t the only task that’s getting a boost from the Bluetooth enabled solution. Last spring, the city of Grand Junction, Colo., acquired vCitePlus to handle weed-abatement violations. The process of capturing and uploading weed data and photographs is the same as for parking violations, except that Velosum, a provider of digital acquisition and Internet-based, on-demand portal technologies, customized the paper tickets and back-end software to accommodate the new application. For Grand Junction, the solution was a move away from manual ticket writing, which required someone to key ticketing and billing information into spreadsheets and fi nancial software.

With automatic uploads, the city now mails billing statements within 24 hours of the citation, far faster than the two or three weeks it used to take. New effi ciencies allow the city to cut its fi eld staff from two surveyors to one, who still writes almost as many citations each day during the season as before. The city also no longer has to assign someone to spend four hours entering data each day.

In addition, photographic evidence helps resolve disputes with landowners who live out of state and hire locals to maintain properties. Landlords can view pictures of violations on a Web page to see when a tenant or landscaping company has let the weeds get out of hand. “This defi nitely works to our advantage for collections,” says Sarah Jennings, administrative specialist for neighbor services in Grand Junction.

Officials in Provo and Grand Junction say increased collection rates and staff effi ciencies are yielding a fast return on their investments in vCitePlus hardware, software, IT services and maintenance fees. “We weighed the number of manhours we save by implementing the solution, and that alone was a huge savings for us,” Jennings says. She estimates the city recouped its expenses after four months. Provo achieved 100 percent ROI in about six months, according to Meyer.

The two cities are now expanding their systems to help them monitor and control the spread of gang activity and graffi ti in their jurisdictions. Provo police recently received a grant to deploy vCitePlus to capture identifying photos and suspect information on a custom-designed fi eld interview card completed by Provo’s Gang Task Force. Grand Junction is already documenting the work of graffi ti “taggers” and e-mailing the location data and pictures to the county sheriff’s offi ce, which then organizes inmate work crews to remove the “tags,” Jennings says.

For municipal governments, vCitePlus is a way to increase effi ciency in using limited resources. If there were ever a case of the pen being mightier than the sword – or any number of other solutions for handling local law violations – this is certainly it.

Alan Joch specializes in wireless, Web and enterprise technologies and has written for Inc., Computerworld and The New York Times.