Project Goal
The South Dakota Department of Revenue modernized its property tax processes to better serve the citizens of South Dakota. A complex, multi-faceted project involving electronic filing, software implementation, and GIS was initiated in 2021. The pinnacle of the project was the development of a regular process to extract transform-load assessment and geospatial parcel data from each of the state’s 66 counties. In the first year, assessment data was collected from all counties, and geospatial parcel data was collected from 60. The aggregated data is managed and hosted through the SD Bureau of Information Technology instance of ArcGIS Enterprise/Portal. DOR has configured a statewide parcel viewer that allows users to search and view the 800,000 assessment records and related geospatial parcel data. Integrating soils, political boundaries, and address data has made this a critical data set for the review of ratio data, analyzing tax rolls, managing sales tax distribution, and much more.Business Problem Solved
The primary goal of the project was to automate the division’s processes and develop a robust repository of property tax data. For years the property tax division managed their processes using paper data submissions with various formats that required manual data entry and redundant processes to ensure accuracy. DOR needed to leverage the copious amounts of data available to them but was unable due to the formatting constraints. The deployment of a fully automated system, underpinned by a uniform, statewide assessment and geospatial parcel dataset would bring DOR into the 21st century.
Technology Implemented
The DOR system is built using a custom ETL process that utilizes MS SQL Server and ArcPY to ingest, aggregate, and normalize the county data. Information is served to users through ArcGIS Enterprise and Portal.
Development Team Biography
The team consisted of subject matter experts from the SD DOR and their vendor, Catalis. The DOR team was led by the Property Tax Division Director, Wendy Semmler and supported by various staff including Lauren Gilsrud, Amber Jensen, and Robin Carlson. The Catalis team was led by project manager David Salzer.