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Benchmarks: Making up for lost time in Allegheny County
Sunday, October 22, 2000 By Mark Belko, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
At first blush, there are things to like about www.county.allegheny.pa.us, Allegheny County's official Web site, particularly for the time-pressed who view a trip Downtown to the hub of government with the same dread as root canal surgery.
Need to register to vote? Simply go to departments, click on elections, then on how and where to register to vote. Find the link to the Federal Election Commission Web site to print out a registration application.
Need a dog license? That application, too, can be found online.
Want to check what's happening at the next county council meeting? Agendas and proposed ordinances are available online. Looking for the latest court filings? The link to the prothonotary's Web page can help you.
But as taxpayer-friendly as the county Web site can be in some cases, it is missing an important link: property information.
You can get a form to appeal your property assessment, change your property address, request an exemption or get tax relief if you're a qualifying senior citizen.
What you won't get is the most basic of property assessment information: what the county says your house is worth, what your neighbor's house is worth, what the houses on your street and in your neighborhood are worth, and what the houses like yours are worth.
Contrast that with, say, the Hillsborough County, Tampa, Fla., Web site. There you will find a link to a plethora of property information, all free.
You can search by owner, street address or parcel number to get market value, the taxable value (market value minus any exemptions), sales history, replacement cost and the value of "extra features" such as fireplaces. There is a square footage sketch and a link to a map showing the house's location.
Go to the tax collector's Web page to find out the taxes on a property and whether they've been paid.
And Hillsborough County is not the exception among the 15 PG Benchmarks regions and their main counties.
Seven others -- Hennepin (Minneapolis), Maricopa (Phoenix), Jackson (Kansas City), Hamilton (Cincinnati), Denver, King (Seattle), and Dade (Miami) -- provide property assessment information to varying degrees.
Another, San Diego County, offers property information for $1 a parcel and sales information -- including purchase price, square footage in the living area and number of bedrooms -- free.
The lack of property assessment information is the most glaring deficiency in comparing Allegheny County's site with the main counties in the other PG Benchmarks regions.
But it's not the only shortfall when it comes to using Internet and computer technology to cut costs or to serve residents, the PG Benchmarks survey found.
Per Madsen, the county's new chief information officer, wasn't surprised.
"The county did not devote the assets to computers until the Y2K problem was at the doorstep in 1999," he said.
On the assessment front, at least, it looks as if the county is finally ready to make amends. Online property assessment information is expected to be available on the county's Web site in January after the completion of the reassessment.
Madsen plans to pattern the page after those available in Hamilton (Ohio) and Hillsborough (Florida) counties. Visitors will be able to search for data by owner name, address, lot and block number, street or ZIP code.
They will have access to the assessed value of the property, the address, property characteristics, such as number of rooms and fireplaces, and a digital photograph. Madsen eventually hopes to provide a link to Geographic Information System, or GIS, maps.
The Information Technology/ Telecommunications Transition Committee appointed by County Chief Executive Jim Roddey recommended earlier this year that the county offer property assessment information linked to GIS maps over the Web.
It wasn't the only recommendation to improve the county's Web site or its use of technology.
Another -- online tax, fee and permit payments via credit card -- already is available to some degree at four other county sites. Hennepin, San Diego, Cuyahoga (Cleveland), and Hamilton offer residents the opportunity to pay property taxes over the Internet.
The committee also called for direct e-mail links to elected officials and the means to submit, via the Internet, budget testimony or information about pending executive or legislative action. Both are available at the King County site.
Other ideas to make the county's site more customer-friendly included live or archived video of county council meetings and e-mail notification of county events, sports, neighborhoods, public safety or local entertainment activities.
"A sophisticated [information technology] system will advance a government without walls, doors or clocks," the report stated.
The committee also wanted Roddey to take the lead in developing a regional fiber-optic network to link governments, nonprofits and other agencies, improve accessibility, and enable information sharing and e-broadcasts of government meetings.
It suggested that the county investigate the idea of outsourcing the operation and maintenance of its mainframe and server-based systems to determine if there are "sufficient cost savings to justify this move."
The committee pointed out that the state, which contracted out its mainframe and micro computing operations in 1999, could save as much as $140 million over five years through state-of-the-art mainframe technologies, rapid response disaster recovery capabilities, and employee reductions.
San Diego County also hopes to significantly upgrade its computer and telecommunications services and equipment by outsourcing to a consortium of computer vendors.
Madsen said he was negotiating with vendors to begin installing a fiber optic system for the government. He hopes to have 11 county buildings in Downtown, Oakland and Point Breeze wired within six months.
The county also is planning to add more PCs for employees. Currently only 60 percent of office employees have personal computers. Other workers are still hooked up to mainframe terminals the county hopes to replace next year.
Lack of leadership
There's no doubt the county's system is in need of work.
"The entire information system suffered badly from a lack of leadership and vision for a number of years prior to the current administration," said Carnegie Mellon University Provost Dr. Mark Kamlet, chairman of the transition committee.
The committee's report said such shortfalls produced "a deeply fragmented, uncoordinated, undisciplined set of management information systems and practices, with many agencies and row offices pursuing their own operations without thought to coordination, interoperability or economies of scale."
Perhaps the prime example of this lack of vision is reflected in the fate of the Geographic Information System.
The GIS, which has been under development since the 1980s in the county, is a computerized mapping system which can be an important tool in planning a variety of government functions, including economic development, public safety and public works. If programmed with up-to-date information on the county Web site, the GIS would enable visitors to get detailed county, city and street maps, often broken out by categories such as neighborhood, facilities, topography and property parcel. In some cases, the system is linked directly to property information.
The transition committee minced no words describing the neglect of the system, saying the operation was "virtually eliminated" from 1993 to 1998, making the initial multimillion-dollar investment "nearly worthless."
By mid 1996, GIS operations, for the most part, ceased -- even after the county had mapped all streets, buildings and topography based on aerial photos.
The committee said completion of the system should be "a top priority." At one time, Madsen said, the county was "one of the leaders -- if not the leader -- in the country on this." Now it lags seven other Benchmarks counties that employ GIS on their Web sites.
All Allegheny County offers at the moment is a GIS demonstration.
Madsen faces the Herculean task of literally picking up the pieces and trying to put them together. He said he hopes to have a base system operating on the Web site before the end of the year.
As Allegheny County struggles to get up to speed, other counties have been quite innovative in their Web offerings.
For instance, several sites give visitors the opportunity to find out who's in jail or among the most wanted. Several also offer the opportunity to check out dogs and cats available for adoption at animal shelters. Hennepin in Greater Minneapolis goes much further, offering photos and biographies of children available for adoption.
At the Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, site, you even can find out where to go for the lowest gasoline prices. The Hamilton County Web page allows you to pay your parking tickets online. Through the Denver site, you can pay your water bill, register your bike, complain about your cable company or check to see if your airplane flight's on time.
At the Dade site, you can register to vote online, pay a traffic ticket, or schedule a hearing to fight one. Maricopa offers detailed inspection reports of restaurants online. Visitors to the King County site can find out whether convicted sex offenders are living in their ZIP codes.
But in one respect, Allegheny County is much more progressive than most of its peers.
Prothonotary Michael Coyne offers visitors to his site, which is linked to the county's Web page, the ability to search online for civil court filings, including general lawsuits, Family and Juvenile Section actions and federal tax liens, dating back to 1995.
The site also allows lawyers to file lawsuits over the Internet, allowing visitors to view them.
"My opinion is that we're probably the most sophisticated e-filing county in the country," Assistant Deputy Prothonotary Eric Feder said. "I really think our site is the best in the country."
Searches by docket number are free. A name search during office hours costs 15 cents. After hours, it is 10 cents. The fees help offset the costs of maintaining the system, though the office is considering the idea of making all searches free.
Allegheny County is making progress on other fronts. The office of the recorder of deeds is hoping to offer its indexes on the Internet for $100 a month by the end of the year.
It has offered the service to subscribers through modem hook-ups since 1992. The eventual goal is to provide subdivision plans and deeds, mortgages and other documents on the Web.
Recorder of Deeds Michael Della Vecchia said he hoped to get about $130,000 in his 2001 budget to add the subdivision plans. He estimated that it would cost about half a million dollars to add the rest.
"The current administration is taking the position that if we show them how we can make money, then they'll go for it," he said.
County Treasurer John Weinstein said he hoped to have online payments available by 2002 but not sooner. But he said he wants to have applications to operate bingo or small games of chance and to apply for hunting and fishing licenses available online next year. He has to get permission from the state to offer hunting and fishing licenses.
To do the latter he'll need help from the state. "Everything we sell, we want to make available on the Internet," he said.
On the plus side, Weinstein said Allegheny County was the first county in the country to do online bidding to get the best rates from banks for certificates of deposit.
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