Last week I attended the GIS CAMA Technologies Conference in Savannah, hosted by URISA and IAAO. The event was a meeting-of-the-minds for tax assessors, property appraisers, and the GIS / technical staff for the industry writ-large to discuss the latest in tech and trends for the property assessment community.
I’ve been in the GIS business for a long time, but this was my first event specific to the CAMA (computer-assisted mass appraisal) and cadastral mapping industry. As such, I took the opportunity to soak up everything I could about the market and learn more about the particular pains that assessors have in advancing their data and technology stacks to take advantage of the latest and greatest things out there.
Damage assessment operations session
On Tuesday I presented during the session titled “Technology for Damage Assessment,” in which Michael Prestridge and I talked about how Lake County is deploying Fulcrum for damage-related property assessment operations countywide. Assessors are frequently the first source of property structure-level data, so emergency operations centers look to them for existing base data, and also the personnel resources to look at aerial imagery or (better yet) get out in the field and put eyes on the damage from the ground level. Fulcrum’s low barriers to entry, flexibility, affordability, and underlying power allow them to deploy a solution as powerful as any tailor-made solution, without the high costs of developing something themselves. We showed off what they’ve done with Fulcrum in a hands-on live demo without a hitch.
As an outsider to this specific market, but an expert in the data collection process in general, I wanted to provide my thoughts on the event from that context — an outside observer’s takeaways of industry challenges and potential solutions. So in this post I wanted to step back a bit and take a look at what tax assessors are actually responsible for, and how the data they create and manage is used by stakeholders. (This is US-specific, the details may vary in other geographies).
About tax assessors
Tax assessors are typically county-level elected officials, with support infrastructure underneath their departments responsible for assessing property values inside their jurisdictions. They must do this regularly, in accordance with state or local law, and do so accurately, because appraised property values have massive impact on the real estate market, property tax collection, government revenue, and many more derivative areas that use assessor data for decision making and operations. The foundational nature of assessor data is incredibly important. For many cases it becomes the ground on which other datasets are built, so if it’s wrong, that’s not good. Most assessors are responsible for parcel boundaries, ownership information, structures, addresses, and more. They need to have good data.
Challenges and common threads
Political and personnel challenges
As with most local governments, the majority of challenges are not technology issues but political or people-related problems. Many talks and conversations with attendees highlighted how leadership turnover disrupts departments by shifting priorities with election cycles. Additionally, the work appraisers’ offices provide to other government departments and directly to citizens is often poorly understood.
Public support, which directly impacts funding for local government initiatives, depends on understanding the value of these efforts. Presenters at the GIS CAMA conference effectively conveyed the obscure but essential role assessors play in government operations. However, communicating this critical message to the public remains a key challenge for sustained support.
Shift to SaaS and commercial solutions
For the past couple of decades, local government IT departments have created custom applications to serve internal users. These tools supported teams like assessors, GIS staff, public works, parks, utilities, and other municipal departments. In the last 5-8 years, SaaS software tools and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technologies have grown rapidly. These modern platforms significantly lower technology costs compared to building and maintaining custom software solutions in-house. Governments can now avoid creating permitting software or parcel base maps by leveraging SaaS platforms designed for nearly every need. As Frank Conkling, a Florida-based consultant in cadastral mapping, said during his talk: it isn’t government’s expertise to build and maintain software. IT departments should be looking to COTS products for the best returns. Imagine what departments could do if they spent their time on work that they’re uniquely positioned to do, instead of something they can lean on other experts for.
Improving data quality for better outcomes
Data cleaning, preparation, and conversion for GIS parcel maintenance emerged as a recurring theme. The “garbage in, garbage out” mantra resonates strongly with anyone managing data. Organizing your underlying data is critical for success when publishing content for the public or enabling modern system integration. Several speakers, presenting case studies, emphasized this point repeatedly throughout their discussions. All the talk of struggles with data conversions had me wondering why I didn’t hear any mentions of powerful ETL tools like FME Desktop or GDAL.
Where field collection is critical for property assessments
The best source of “truth” with regard to what’s on the ground is an eyes-on property assessment. You can scope out a lot of information from the sky with imagery from Pictometry and others. However, there are still qualities you can’t see without being on site. In addition, certain types of field surveys and inspections that can’t rely on passive overhead observation or auto-generated data. Cost management is a major factor in the motivation to rely on mass-collected imagery, but with the right tools and processes in place for capturing data from mobile, it can be incredibly cost effective. Old school pen and paper methods are rife with inefficiencies like data loss, inaccuracy, and delay. As we presented in our talk, going to a SaaS toolset like Fulcrum provides the ability to scale without a massive up-front investment.
Stakeholders and users of property data have ever-rising expectations of data accuracy, timeliness, and availability. Connectedness, technology growth, and open data contribute to this tide of entitlement, but if it’s possible to increase data accuracy and availability without soaring costs, why not look for ways to innovate? As IAAO president Pete Rodda said during one of his talks, citizens want to know a property’s value today, not what it was on January 1st.
Additional stray observations
There were a couple speakers talking about UAS systems for assessment. I’ve seen dozens of presentations from folks using drones for mapping, but many times it feels like a solution looking for a problem rather than a tool for real immediate value — a case of “shiny object syndrome”. At the CAMA conference that wasn’t the case. Keith Cunningham from the University of Alaska-Fairbanks talked about what they’re doing with UAS platforms for wildlife, pipeline mapping, and property assessment, with a dozen separate project demonstrations of how they’re using fixed- and rotary-wing platforms for aerial observation.
I was also thoroughly impressed by King County’s new property assessment tool, which is powered by Spatialest’s CAMA software platform. They’ve built an interactive self-service tool for viewing property value data alongside demographics, neighborhood boundaries, and more. AppGeo’s MapGeo product is another excellent solution for towns: a web-based platform for municipal data hosting and analysis. There are many interesting tech products in this space, but collaboration remains essential for meaningful progress. Communities must share techniques and best practices to reduce the frequency of counties reinventing the wheel.
Final notes
URISA and IAAO organized a diverse set of talks while fostering an intimate environment for genuine discussions. We look forward to collaborating more closely with our local government customers to apply these insights effectively. By integrating lessons learned from this community, we aim to enhance the Fulcrum platform for municipal data collection needs.