Looking back at recent years most can agree there is a common theme among the Assessor community: Times Change. Even as many county governments are emerging from hard times, others are rushing to harvest the rewards of a boon era. Still, this theme of rapid change holds true. While the core mission of the Assessor’s Office hasn’t fundamentally changed, the role of technology and the role of the modern Assessor as a technology leader have evolved to meet some interesting new challenges.
The Assessor’s relationship to GIS is central to this evolution. Having been a GIS early-adopter in their own offices, Assessors are now leading the way to make GIS a more pervasive technology across county offices and their local region. This leadership role fits Assessors because they are stewards of the most sought after cadastral GIS datasets. Likewise, they have the mandate and savvy to generate cross-department collaboration to research and solve land administration data problems. It’s no exaggeration to say that trustworthy cadastral GIS data is the foundation of effective decision making in any jurisdiction. Today, modern Assessors are using GIS to broadcast these valuable decision making capabilities across the county and the region.
Extending the reach of GIS from a single office to a wider audience is what technologists might call Building an Enterprise GIS. Here’s why it makes so much sense. For those Counties experiencing staff limitations it now takes even longer to locate information, compile reports, and respond to stakeholders or citizens. For instance, where are the county’s properties near the floodplain that had new construction activity in the past 9 months? An Enterprise GIS is uniquely capable of ingesting snippets of data from numerous sources and placing them on intelligent maps for visualization, analysis, and dissemination. This data integration framework adds significant value to key IT investments in databases, permitting systems, CAMA, finance systems, and the like.
Sharing data is perhaps the most important aspect of the modern Assessors GIS agenda. Cadastral GIS data drives numerous critical business processes outside the Assessor’s office in departments like Planning, Building, Roadway, and Emergency Management. It can be risky to make critical planning and infrastructure decisions based on questionable cadastral data. It can be equally risky to propagate disjointed copies of data within the organization; this is not an effective sharing strategy. The enterprise GIS securely manages a single source of authoritative cadastral data and makes it available to other departments in various formats including the ever-popular web map. What about the cadastral data that is constantly changing? An enterprise GIS acts as an automatic switchboard to keep those departments up-to-date as new data becomes available. Since GIS is a pervasive technology in nearly every government and large business, this vision for data sharing is equally applicable to regional government initiatives and government-to-business relationships.
Similarly, citizens and public entities are increasingly demanding access to public information. While an enterprise GIS does not dare stir the political debate over appropriate fees for public data access, it can improve the County’s accountability and image on many levels. There are countless good examples of Assessors using intelligent web maps to engage with citizens, realtors, and the broader community. Arguably the most compelling example of the GIS and Government Transparency trend can be found by visiting www.recovery.gov and clicking on your home state in the web map.
Through its GIS agenda, a modern Assessor will play a critical role in protecting a county’s most critical data assets, enhancing local and regional decision making