In cities and towns across Massachusetts, technology is rapidly changing the methods used to provide public access to government records.

On websites like www.framinghamma.gov and www.worcesterma.gov, clerks and information technology directors are providing around-the-clock public access to an expanding array of government records. As the demand for public documents grows and budgets shrink, communities are finding that they can save money by investing in technology that provides government records to the public so that city and town hall staffers don’t have to.

“In the past two-plus years, our departments have worked hard to post more and more of our records online,” said Carly Premo Melo, the acting director of technology services in Framingham. “The more accessible we make our government through our website, the easier it is for us to run our government. It’s that simple.”

Framingham and other communities have taken that access to a new level by building portals into their websites that link directly to what were once internal document databases. Worcester, Lexington, Northampton and Beverly are just a few of the communities that provide access to records repositories of various government departments.

Website postings of meeting agendas, minutes and even official meeting packets have become standard fare and have helped communities comply with the state’s open meeting law. Residents, however, might be a little alarmed to see their building plans or zoning variance applications on the Internet. Chelsea and other communities are now balancing those concerns against the benefits of not having to hand copy and deliver such records to residents, as they’ve done for decades.

“Intuitively, the more documents we have on the website, the fewer we’ll have to hand out at City Hall,” said John Hyland, the city’s information technology director. “From an ease-of-use perspective, it’s not difficult to make these documents available on our website. … It’s the security issues that can complicate things.”

Framingham’s public portal to its document database was originally designed to provide municipal officials and staff remote access to records so employees could work more effectively in the field and elected officials could work more effectively from home. The town is finding, however, that removing the password and opening the database to the public is proving to be an enormous labor savings.

Framingham, Northampton and Worcester all report that resident visits and calls to city or town hall are down due to the increased availability of documents on their websites.

By providing a public portal directly to its document database, Chelsea expects website maintenance will also be easier because scanned documents will automatically be uploaded to the website; they won’t have to be converted into Word files or PDFs and uploaded individually.

“The efficiencies realized are compelling communities to store more and more of their records in a publicly accessible way on their websites,” said Mike McDonough of Brockton-based Duplitron Inc., which is installing the new system in Chelsea.

Right now, Framingham provides unlimited public access to annual reports, campaign finance reports, election results, meeting agendas, meeting minutes and a half dozen other types of files through its website. It next hopes to add building department plans and applications to the list.

The town of Reading has similar ambitions, but it is consulting with its attorneys about posting records such as birth, death and marriage certificates. Accessing those records currently requires a visit to Town Hall, filling out a form and signing it.

“I’m concerned with what unsavory people can do with this information,” said Reading Town Clerk Laura Gemme. “If someone can just print out someone’s birth certificate, it’s going to make it considerably easier to steal that person’s identification than if they come in here and ask me for the document and have to sign for it.”

Worcester, meanwhile, built its own vital records and tax assessment databases and opened both to the public through portals that staff built into its website. Only the names on birth, death and marriage certificates filed in the city are accessible through Worcester’s website, but certified copies can be ordered online and are mailed out for a $14 fee. The online assessment data are more revealing, listing a building’s specifications, its ownership and other details.

“When we first started to add those things to our website, people actually called and asked why we were doing it,” said Eileen Cazaropoul, Worcester’s deputy chief information officer. “But they started to appreciate the convenience and are now definitely taking advantage of it.”

Hyland said such efficiencies will be weighed carefully, along with other considerations, in their decisions about what records to post on Chelsea’s website. Along with privacy concerns, the cost of these systems, and whether they are built or bought, figures into how vigorously they are embraced.

Cazaropoul said she couldn’t estimate how much Worcester spent designing its own vital records software repository, but she acknowledged that not every community can afford to hire full-time IT staff with such skills.

The public portal software purchased by Chelsea, which allows open public access and password-secure edit options, added 20 percent to the package costs. A stand-alone product the same software designer offers to access databases costs $47,000.

Framingham, Northampton and Lexington use an older, less expensive version of the same software, offered on a per-user basis. Lexington Town Clerk Donna Hooper said the town is tempted to buy more licenses, but budget considerations are getting in the way.

“It’s a balance for us, of meeting the demand as resources allow,” Hooper said.

In striving to achieve that balance, Framingham Town Counsel Christopher Petrini, a past president of the City Solicitors and Town Counsel Association, advises communities to err in favor of increased public access to public records. He agrees that some government records contain details that, if published, could raise privacy concerns in the community. A government must weigh those concerns, however, against the benefits gained by taking advantage of technology, particularly in these tight budgetary times.

“The values of posting outweigh the concerns the average person may have about his or her record being online,” Petrini said. “People may not realize that their building permits, assessment records, deeds and mortgages can be accessed through this technology through a few clicks of the mouse. But it’s a modern society we live in, and these are public records. We’re supposed to be able to access them, and the convenience of doing so is a very important issue.”

There’s more to posting government records online than the benefits accrued to government operations, Petrini said.

“Transparency enhances the credibility of a government’s operations,” Petrini said. “In general, Framingham government favors transparency, and certainly our citizens do, too.”

Chris Wacker has worked with a number of communities as a developer of enterprise content management software systems.

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