Oconee County in Georgia is required by state law to assess every parcel at least once every three years, which the county has been unable to keep pace with because of staffing issues. But new technology may help the undermanned appraisal district.
The county has experimented with a system that Paulding County uses. It equips appraisers with electronic tablets that they take with them on field reviews. It maximized the amount of work an appraiser can do, because the appraiser can communicate electronically with a central server through a data cloud.
“The first test with a tablet was unsatisfactory,” Chief Appraiser Allen Skinner told The Oconee Enterprise. “The stylus could not be attached. A keyboard typically covered much of an image that needed to be seen while typing. A second tablet featured a detachable keyboard, but that made it bulkier.
“I want to take county IT Director Paula Nedza and an appraiser on another field trip to observe appraisers in action using the system,” Skinner added.
Currently, appraisers use cameras and hand-written notes on appraisal visits, then transfer photos and notes to the server.
“Paulding County could do in four days what it previously took five days to do, a 20 percent improvement in efficiency. Some of those appraisers do the bulk of their work without ever coming into the office,” Skinner said.