Marina Havan-Orumieh
Mark Massucci
Maureen Lavan
Reengineering The Land Records Process in Chester County, PA
Abstract
Chester County, PA has been in the process of implementing a GIS to reengineer its land records system for three years. The system is establishing direct links amongst the Health, Planning, Emergency Services, Tax Assessment, Computing Information Services and Recorder of Deeds. The departments are located in three buildings in two townships West Chester and East Goshen. The links are established utilizing ArcInfo- GIS, Oracle- RDMBS, Banyan Vines- WAN on a combination of IBM-RS600 and PC platforms. All this is an effort to streamline the handling of property data. During the initial assessment of the County's processes it became clear that the current ways of doing business would have to be changed. The land records process as it existed had to be reengineered in order to provide access to information to departments as well as provide better services to the County's customers.
This paper describes the processes where the County with assistance from its consultants identified areas requiring change and the way in which change is being implemented. We will first start by providing the reader with the existing institutional structure and history of land records project. In the following paragraphs we will describe the Reengineering process at the County which consist of three major components: Establishing Business Roles; Institutional Restructuring; and Application Development.
I. Background Information
Chester County in Southeastern Pennsylvania, borders on the State of Delaware and Maryland. The County encompasses 73 municipalities with approximately 150,000 parcels. A board consisting of three elected commissioners govern the County. With the exception of the cities and boroughs the County is responsible for property taxes.
In 1988, PlanGraphics, Inc. was asked to assess the implementation of GIS in the County. The needs assessment report consisted of an overall review of the departments and their interdependencies. It identified the core departments that would benefit from implementing a GIS. That report was accepted but put aside for a year. In late 1992, Chester County requested that PlanGraphics update the need assessment report and prepare a budget recommendations to be reviewed and adopted by the County Commissioners.
The Land Records Area in the Department of Computing Information Services (DCIS), was designated in the County to implement the GIS. The Master Plan for the County was updated based on new technology and new County requirements. At this time it was assessed the County required more then a departmental GIS. The nature of the project changed from implementation of a GIS to an enterprise land records system. The staff at the DCIS-Land Records Area were designated to be primarily responsible for implementing and the modernized County Land Records System (LRS). The LRS would consist of a GIS software, a relational database software in addition to an imaging and electronic document management software.
On the institutional side, two committees were formed, a Policy Committee consisting of key support/user department heads as well as the County Administrators. This Committee is responsible for establishing policy, priorities, guide development, and assist in budget coordination. The second, Technical Committee consists of representatives from the same core departments that provide input about their departments needs and activities. The major responsibility of this Committee is to provide budgetary initiatives, also, the technical requirements of the LRS are reviewed by the Tech. Committee and if need be recommendations for decisions are sent to the Policy Committee. It is in this frame work that the Chester County Land Records System is developed and is being implemented.
II. Establishing Business Rules
The first task in developing any system is to establish what the system is required to do, as well as, how many ways it is required to carry out the activity. During the course of the project three levels of business rules were developed:
a)The rules that govern the mandates of each department
The first set of mandates were established during the development of the initial Master Plan where departments were contacted and their needs and contributions to the LRS were documented. For example, a significant demand of property management was identifying who has the mandate to regulate all land development activities. During the need assessment it became apparent that although the County's Planning Commission is responsible for evaluating the land development activities, the final approval and rejections are the responsibility of each municipality. Thus a major component of the Planning Commission's mandate is clear communication of land development concerns to the municipalities.
b)The functional rules of the departments
Once the general mandates were established, further detail on departmental activities was established. A team consisting of staff from the County DCIS and PlanGraphics conducted detailed interviews with the departments. In many cases this was the first time some of the departments had established a work flow. The main goals during the interviews were to establish each departments business rules by identifying:
The standard operating procedures for the work flow of the departments involved in property related activities, were documented. For each department a detail data flow diagram mapping data input and output requirements was produced. Using the same example, land development plans are submitted to the Planning Commission for their review. The findings from the review process are then documented and communicated with the customers and municipalities. The seventy-three municipalities are then able to incorporate or disregard the recommendations. The final development plan however, are required to obtain a Planning Commission signature. The Commission does not have the authority to reject these plans.
c)The transaction based rules that customers and staff use to conduct business on daily basis.
This level of information gathering took place after the reengineering of the logical data flow design was completed. process is further described in the next sction.
The information collection took the team approximately six months to complete. The initial assessment that the County's property record management procedure had to be reengineered was accurate. Samples of the data flow charts could not be furnished for this publication.
III. Institutional Restructuring
A combination of the Policy and Technical Committees, DCIS and PlanGraphics staff, designed the logical process to be implemented in the County. The logical design was completed over multiple meetings which took almost a year. Seven major property related transactions requiring changes in the current standard operating procedure were identified as: Subdivisions, Combination, Same As Transfers, Vacated Lots, Construction Plans, and Condemnation Plans. Each one of these transactions were dealt with step by step in detail, samples from the extensive flow charts that were produced could not be provided for this publication.
The procedural changes impacting these transaction are designed in the context of:
a)Implementing Uniform Parcel Identifier
The County decided to take advantage of the Pennsylvania State Law to implement a Uniform Parcel Identifier (UPI). The State of Pennsylvania in 1988 passed a law describing a UPI and setting forth regulations that would govern these unique parcel numbers. The UPI over time becomes the single identifier referenced in legal documents. Iinstead of stating meets and bounds, the UPI can be cited on a deed as the legal description of a particular parcel.
b)Implementing the BLR
Implementing the UPI required establishing a new organization. The Bureau of Land Records (BLR) was recommended and has now been established within the Chester County Tax Assessment Department. The BLR is the body responsible for assigning the geocoordinate based UPI to the County parcels. At the time of this paper's publication an ordinance was being developed to implement the Pennsylvania UPI Law in the County, requiring all land transaction documents to recite a UPI. The ordinance will also put in place a fee structure that the County can charge to offset the cost of LRS maintenance.
c)Implementing GIS, RDBMS and an Imaging System
The work flow designed would not be possible without introducing new software and hardware. In an effort parallel to the interview processes and establishing the BLR, the County selected hardware and softwares required to implement the LRS. Through a Request for Proposal (RFP) process County chose ArcInfo and Oracle softwares running on RS6000 platform to develop the LRS. In addition to these basic softwares several utility softwares such as Erwin case tools; Humming Bird; ABC Flow Charter; etc. were also selected and used to design and implement the applications required to manage and perform the tasks in LRS. Imaging software and hardware have not been selected yet.
IV. Application Development
Once the general data-flow models were completed, then approved by the County Committees and the hardware/software was selected; it was time for application scooping, design and development.
The LRS consists of six major application components:
Once the major application components were identified, detail development began. The County staff were and continue to be interviewed for detail day to day transactions and problems that are faced in their activities under the current regime of data flow. Extensive work sessions were and continue to be conducted to establish and create new business rules. State charts were created to follow documents and electronic transactions from capture of one field in the database to the other. They are also used to anticipate similar problems and assure that nothing was missed during the application scooping for the new mode of transaction once LRS is fully implemented.
V. The Challenges
The Land Records System continues to be developed and implemented. As this paper is going to press, several prototypes of the applications listed are being tested by both the LRS team and County users. Although, the reengineering of Land Records is not completely implemented, already there have been challenges that have delayed and impacted the progress of the LRS. Some of these challenges are summarized below:
County Staff
The world of GIS and Relational Database Management is growing which has meant relatively high staff turn over. Chester County was not immune to this phenomena. There is very little a local government can do to compete with the private sector salaries. However, in Chester County the problem was exasperated by the fact that the DCIS Land Records Area along with other County departments were already understaffed when the project began. This has been a problem that is continuously plaguing the project. The time involved in having to train staff not only in the ArcInfo and Oracle softwares but also to maintain and address problems in the legacy mainframe systems has greatly impacted the schedule of the project.
Hardware Software Purchase
Despite the LRS team's recommendations, due to other projects underway in the County, bulk of the equipment and software was purchases in the Spring of 1994. The knowledge, databases and infrastructure needed for the County staff to effectively use the equipment to assist in their daily tasks was not available, thus in some cases workstations are not being used to their full capacity. The equipment also provided an added pressure to quickly provide tools for the users to utilize the software impacting progress on the main application development tasks.
Data Conversion
Chester County, PECO the local utility company and ADR Company entered an agreement to license a landbase product consisting of digital orthophotography, and vector planimetric database. The agreement although highly beneficial for all parties took a long time to process. Three sets of solicitors had to review the agreement in the mean time the tax parcel conversion task was put on hold while the landbase discussions were taking place. The impact of this was that the County staff did not have the time to work on the application scooping delaying development activities.
Once the landbase agreement was finalized the County through an RFP contracted a data conversion company for tax map conversion. The County and the contractor performed a pilot conversion to set up procedures for the full County-wide conversion. The pilot took approximately 9 months to complete. Because the UPI is based on a geographic coordinate without the conversion UPIs could not be assigned. The delays in the conversion process are impacting the BLR time table for full functionality.
Application Development
Developing Applications is difficult when a process is being replaced, but developing a new process in addition to the applications is even more challenging. The challenge has been apparent during sessions, where the users are requested to comment on prototypes. The application utilities were and continue to be evaluated based on the old way of conducting business and not the new business rules. The experience in Chester County has been that the users were continually reminded that their processes are being reengineered and that the process will work.
The application development has also been impacted by the instability of the hardware and software. The demands on the County staff for maintenance of the legacy systems took away their attention from the new system requirements. Since the LRS application development was a team effort the PlanGraphics could not proceed without the assistance of their counter parts in the County. To date, this has been the only problem in the team approach to the application development.
BLR implementation
Establishing an organization and staffing it while applications were being developed impacted the implementation schedule. New regulations had to be established for the BLR to function. The impact has been continuous demands to alter the application scope. It has caused frustration amongst the development team as well as creating budgetary issues.
Other County Projects
While the reengineering of the land records has been under development, two other major projects have been implemented in the County. A reassessment and transition to CAMA system, and the implementation of a 911 system. For these projects, two separate field crews collected data in different time periods. One set concentrated on the capture of tax assessment data and the other group on the collection and modification of addresses throughout the County. The LRS had to be linked to both of the projects, thus the delays and problems in those projects have had major impacts on the LRS database and application development schedule.
VI. Conclusion
Despite the challenges the LRS is well in progress. The applications and database model developed are under prototype tests. A full pilot will take place through the summer of 1996. The legal and institutional components are also under development and will be in place. The BLR begins operation in phases based on the tax map conversion project, while testing the hardware and software developed for the County.
Author Information
Marina Havan-Orumieh,
Senior Research Analyst
PlanGraphics, Inc.
Silver Spring, MD 20910
Tel: (301)588-8535
FAX: (301)588-5979
EMAIL: M_HAVAN@Mail.Co.Chester.PA.US
Mark Massucci,
Land Records Area Manager
and
Maureen Lavan
User Leison
Chester County DCIS
10 N. Church Street, Suite 306
West Chester, PA 19382
Tel: (610)344-6475
FAX: (610)344-6794