February 22nd, 2014
The County of Riverside Enterprise Solutions for Property Taxation (CREST) Team was formed as a joint effort between the Assessor-County Clerk-Recorder, Auditor-Controller, and Treasurer-Tax Collector offices with the goal to modernize Riverside County’s aging property tax system by implementing a new integrated property tax management system. The objective of CREST is to bring efficiency and productivity throughout the organization with the adoption of an integrated system that modernizes Information Technology’s capability to better facilitate staff to perform their work. As the County’s Property Tax System Information Technology Officer and Program Manager of this initiative, I know most of my users and stakeholders are probably thinking, that sounds good and all at a meeting or a presentation, but what exactly does that mean? Or the more precise question is probably, “What’s in it for me?”
I think this question is valid, practical, and can be best answered through three categories that describe the benefits of a new system at an individual level.
Technology Level
Like many organizations, the adoption of applications and systems evolves as business activities grow and change with the economy. Through time, with budget and technology limitations, a holistic approach to revamping operational core systems was not viable in most cases, therefore the use of small line-of-business or functional applications were developed to meet the needs. Before you know it, you realize you are switching between different applications for different information to complete your daily work. This evolution of increased adoption of functional specific applications is not unique within county departments, for example one department has 100+ home grown custom applications in production on top of a state mandated management systems for various different functions to keep the operation going. So what’s in it for our staff with an integrated property tax system is the ability to consolidate the technology components into one solution minimizing the need for individuals to access multiple systems to complete their work. It also opens the opportunity to integrate more capabilities into the single integrated system. Capabilities such as GIS and Document Management systems allow the operation to leverage the best of breed technologies into it so to offer the capabilities without the need to introduce another system solution outside of the core integrated system.
Process Level
One of the major limitations with fragmented adoptions of function specific standalone systems to facilitate work processes is it requires the data to be carried from one system to another with human intervention. I am sure many of you can relate that there is information which you know exists between two different systems, and sometimes you question which is the single source of truth. One of the key advantages of an integrated system is for staff to be able to access accurate and timely information from a single system, so decisions can be derived from it immediately to conduct work and execute processes. By ‘accurately’ I mean the data should have only one point of entrance into the integrated system by an operational function and be made available to all other operations within the system without the need to transfer and/or reenter information, and ‘timely’ means as soon as it is captured by one end of the business, it is readily available to others within the system. Ultimately, less human interaction translates to you having the information you need within the one single system to efficiently execute your processes for the benefit of another staff who receives your outputs in the system so they can effectively perform theirs.
People Level
Good process improvement ideas and concepts usually originate from staff who are the owner and the experts of their work processes; however, more often than not, good ideas are often unrealized because technology limitations to accommodate process changes prove more costly than the efficiency gains. This is the situation ACR faces with the existing mainframe system as the legacy technology is cost-prohibitive to process changes you and/or your unit believe can provide efficiency and/or productivity to the work you perform. This translates directly to missed opportunities for staff to be able to contribute to the organization in ways that usually bring the most value to the organization. Staff usually is the source that provides answers to the age old question for management, ”How else can we do this cheaper, faster, and/or more accurately for our customers?” With adoption of more modern technology with a high degree of system scalability, flexibility, and work flow design and configuration capabilities with minimal lead time and costs, it offers a platform for staff to help the department to innovate and contribute to process improvements with less technical limitations.
Overall, the holistic view of the benefits a modernized integrated system brings to each staff may be valuable to the organization, however I will also admit it is inevitable that there will be a few operational functions that will incur a higher learning curve, added work processes, and/or simply be performed in more steps in the new system than what is required now. This is inevitable because an integrated system also means if information is inaccurately captured at the point of entrance, many subsequent processes may be executed against false information with less human intervention to check and correct the data. In addition, more capable systems for decision making also translates to more data that are required in the system. Therefore, some operational functions may have a more important role to add additional processes and or steps to ensure the data entering the system is as good as we can make it for the benefit of other business functions as a whole.
I am sure many of you realize information technology continues to evolve at a record pace and the IT industry as a whole is still considered a young industry trying to find its equilibrium within people, process, and technology paradigms and costs and benefits it translates to the organization that adopts it. The opportunity to reinvent its operational systems and portfolio of applications within an organization doesn’t come around often, but this is exactly what the county is undertaking with its CREST project. If we see the horizon beyond the projects’ life-cycle and efforts of learning how to leverage the latest information technologies at all operational levels, I am sure you will agree the these departments will be at a better place for the next decade or two through our effort.