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Douglas County Assessor's Office

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New technology was needed to take Douglas County from a pen and pencil world to a new more modern and efficient County.We looked to GIS and a relational data base to accomplish this very large task.

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Business Problem

The first problem we needed to solve was to move our mapping system from a mixture of digital and hand drawn maps, stored in various locations, to a seamless all digital map.

The second problem we needed to solve was to get our tabular data out of Main Frame storage and convert it into a more user-friendly realtional data base.Contractors were brought on board and after years of hard work from various people and departments, we have accomplished most our initial tasks.

The next problem we decided to tackle is the sharing of our data between various departments, organizations and the public.Douglas County has developed a web site and data warehouse to be used in an intranet and internet mode.

Currently GIS maps,orthophotography and assessment related data is being displayed on the Douglas County Assessor web site. Plans are underway to add other GIS layers from other departments to this web site for a more efficient way to share data.

Technology Implemented

All of our digital maps were developed using ArcInfo and stored in various coverages.Arcview shapefiles are created and served to the various offices for analytical purposes.ArcIms and SDE were both used to develope and maintain the County Web Site.

Development Team Biography

Chris Jones joined Douglas County as webmaster in July of 2001 after working as a contractor in and around Omaha,Ne.In his first six months with the County,he successfully put together a large web based initiative.Nearly 4 months ago he began work on a web site for the Douglas County Assessor that includes a GIS search displaying Parcel Maps and Orthophotography with links to various assessment characteristics using ArcIMS and ArcSDE.The information dispalyed on the web site is based on the actual records and maps maintained by both the appraisal staff and the GIS department of the Dougals County Assessor.