Handwriting Recognition

[npowell]

My day job is working as an AI applied researcher and financial technology entrepreneur. We have three remaining people in our ward who still don't use the online system for paying tithing, and I am a newly called assistant ward clerk.

As I've been training to learn the process for recording and depositing the tithing, I've had the thought that the tithing receipts could be entered more quickly by allowing the clerk or Bishopbric member to take a picture of the tithing receipt, and if something can recognize the handwriting, then it would be potentially faster and possibly less error prone (with modern AI systems) than typing the information in manually. I can use the Azure Form Recognizer API to implement this functionality. I'm thinking I could create a Chrome browser extension that you could download and install. If you're sitting at the computer in the clerk's office you could push a button which would appear on the web page where you enter the tithing receipt, and you could then use a web camera to take a picture of the tithing receipt, and the form would automatically get filled in, and you could then verify if its all correct.

If you are a ward clerk or assistant clerk / financial clerk with responsibilities which include processing the tithing every week, I would appreciate feedback as to whether you would find this helpful (assuming that the system is significantly faster and at least as accurate as you would be entering it in manually)? Would you be willing to chip in some small amount of money per month to access the chrome extension to offset some of the costs in running the infrastructure behind it? Also let me know if anyone else has implemented this functionality. Also, if you have technology skills and would like to work with me on implementing this functionality, please also let me know.

Once we test out the functionality and find it is working well enough using the chrome extension, we could approach church HQ and see if they are willing to integrate it into the website for all to use permanently.

[rmrichesjr]

Before spending any effort on building this system, you might check with someone (I don't know who) at Church headquarters to get a preliminary green light. It is _EXCEEDINGLY_ rare for Church headquarters to take any Church-specific external software and integrate it into the official systems. Just my personal guess, but I would be extremely surprised if Church headquarters was willing to incorporate this into the standard systems.

[russellhltn]

I'd think if the church was interested in integrating handwritten recognition, they'd make some inquires with FamilySearch as I believe they've been doing that already.

[sbradshaw]

I can use the Azure Form Recognizer API to implement this functionality. I'm thinking I could create a Chrome browser extension that you could download and install. … costs in running the infrastructure behind it

I don't know a lot about the Azure Form Recognizer API, but if it's not just local, but requires external infrastructure, or sending data to an external server, that sounds problematic. I don't think the Church would be comfortable having photos of tithing forms with members' confidential donation information sent over the internet and processed by an external third-party service.

In concept, I love the idea, though!

[cschlehu]

As a long time clerk and a software developer, my feeling is that with only 3 donations a week you will probably spend more time setting up and taking the pictures than you would just entering the information into LCR. I agree with the previous post that tithing slips are not something that should be going outside of church systems. This may have been useful in the past when 40+ donations would come in on a Fast Sunday and fatigue would start to set in, but now days the number of donations is so low that taking the pictures and reviewing may be slower. After a few months of entering the donations from repeat donors, it will practically be from muscle memory and you will be finished before you know it. I would also like to see how the AI would do with the kids donations We have the companionship principle where the bishopric member should be watching you as you enter information into LCR and then reviewing again before submitting the batch to catch any errors.