An upgrade in technology for the Albany County Assessor’s Office in Wyoming will be a welcome site for county officials.
The Wyoming Department of Revenue purchased software and provided it to each county in Wyoming to ensure uniformity of evaluation throughout the state, Albany County Assessor Grant Showacre said. Albany County was one of the last two counties in the state to get the technology installed.
The upgrade deals with RealWare, a computer-assisted mass appraisal system produced by software company Harris Govern.
“The updated version, which was installed earlier this month, has a few more ‘extra’ features,” but the valuation modules are identical to those in the old version, Showacre told the Laramie Boomerang. “Basically, the software they had was getting out of date, and it wasn’t being as compatible with other software that you kind of use in conjunction with it. And so what they did was the company rewrote it in more modern language; now it’s more up to date, more compatible with more modern software.”
One problem with the previous version of RealWare was that it was compatible with Microsoft Access 2002 but not with newer versions of the program.
“We’ve received as part of the package from the Wyoming Department of Revenue a complete set of hardware for all our stations as well,” Showacre said. “And so the county was very lucky in that respect because in many instances it would have cost the county money to upgrade to a new computer that had been outdated.”
Brenda Arnold, administrator for the Wyoming Department of Revenue, said the hardware installation process began in October 2014.