Fairfax IT shows electronic affidavit tool to standardize disclosures; notarized paper remains official

Fairfax County IT and Planning staff presented an electronic affidavit creation tool designed to reduce manual entry errors, standardize name fields and produce clean PDFs for notarization and scanning. "We developed a group to really address some of these challenges," Chief Technology Officer Maura Power said, describing business-process engineering work and a move from handwritten, inconsistent forms to standardized electronic data.

Tracy Strong, Director of the Department of Planning and Development, said staff are testing the form internally and will move to external user testing. The app, she said, will create a printable PDF and users will still notarize and sign the affidavit before submitting it. "It will print out something that's very nice and clean, and you'll have it in the PDF form," Strong said.

Supervisors pressed whether the electronic draft could diverge from the notarized final affidavit. Strong and other staff emphasized that the notarized paper remains the official document and that applicants are responsible for reviewing and certifying printed affidavits. If an affidavit is updated, staff said the user can print a new notarized document for submission and the county will continue to review the final notarized version.

Frank Anderson, Braddock District chief of staff, said the electronic format will make cross-referencing names with third-party campaign or vendor data easier and streamline manual reconciliation. Staff said additional improvements (for example, handling e-notarization or automated ingestion of notarized PDFs) are under consideration, but initial rollout focuses on standardizing data capture and reducing manual error.

The committee posed no formal policy change; staff will continue testing with industry partners and seek to release the solution in the near term for internal testing followed by broader rollout.