Building a Better Mousetrap
From government employees working with property records, to realtors, GIS is proving
to be a cost-effective endeavor for real estate applications.
By Tom Lively

Few today would disagree that we are in a digital revolution. At the very least, we, being those of us that are in the emerging, so-called, "Convergence Industry." This is the business arena that includes information technology, media, and telecommunications. We hear today, as being dubbed, "the Information Age"; or were frequently encouraged to get on "the Information Highway," in order to not be left behind. Certainly the World Wide Web, the Internet, and intranets, all play a major role in this modern day phenomenal growth and technological progress of information management, automation, and dissemination. One of the many significant elements of this informational labyrinth is geographic information systems. GIS is the pragmatic side to today's informational fast track. City, county, and state government agencies have for more than two decades successfully employed GIS technology to automate the structure and methodology of their public access property information. However, today it's netable. Not just on LAN, or WAN networks. But now Internetable!
     Up until recently, GIS data, tax roll data, property characteristic data, community demographics, and pictures of county wide property was only accessible to a few highly trained GIS specialists. These employees required powerful workstation level computing equipment or above. Now, all of this data can be accessed over the Net! Which means, anyone with an inexpensive PC, and an Internet link, may access, view, manipulate, copy/paste, archive, and/or print millions of dollars worth of accurate GIS digital map data with tightly integrated property tax assessor data. This now can be accomplished via any local or national Internet provider. The best part of this is that the user is not required to know anything about digital cartography, aerial ortho-photography, digital train modeling, or digital photogrammetry; that is GIS and its cadre of related technologies. Just dial up a URL Web site and browse, and/or query, integrated relational data bases that were once only manipulatable by GIS experts and GIS workstations. Now, today, if you can surf the net, you have the capability to access GIS property data sets, from city, county, and/or state resources.
     Naturally, practical application must always lag behind technological achievements. Therefore, when will the entire country, all of the MSAs, all of the more that 3100 counties, be on-line, and accessible via the Internet? I don't know! It's anyone's guess. Clearly its going to happen, and possibly sooner than any one of us would predict. One such city's evolvement into today's informational parade of progress is Mounds View, Minn.
     Mounds View, during the past 40-plus years has grown from a sleepy bedroom community to a successful and thriving metropolitan suburb of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, Twin Cities metroplex. A proud community spirit is shared throughout its 13,000 residents, and 150 businesses. Mayor Jerry Linke, profiles his prosperous city's economic climate as the result of cooperation; "with a dedicated, professional staff, committed residents and proactive city council." Mayor Linke's commitment is, "To forge ahead as a cooperative, progressive community - a community that facilitates positive changes to meet the needs of both the residents and businesses." The key word in the mayor's message, I think, is the city's willingness to accept, and embrace positive change. Change seems to be the dominate nature of the close of this century and millennium. Any city or county that welcomes today's information technology shifts and quickly adapts to these rapidly advancing methods, and adopts the new paradigm will experience the benefits of becoming more capable in providing more services, to more constituents, faster and at less public cost.
     The city of Mounds View is in Ramsey County, Minn. - a county that more than a decade ago made the decision and commitment to develop an accurate GIS base and delivery system. Hundreds of GPS points within the county were established. The county was flown, new registered aerial photography acquired, renewed ground control monumentation laid, and the data conversion of the assessor's tax parcel map base accomplished. After millions of dollars were invested by the county for systems, personnel, training, data, programming, and new department organization, a leading edge GIS emerged. Implementation of this technology 10 years ago required a great deal of justification and studies to provide evidence that such investment of public money could, and would ultimately pay for itself through increased efficiencies for public services. Today there is little or no argument to such a debate. GIS is here to stay. GIS works, it is beneficial, and it's cost effective for most governmental entities. Ramsey County's successful entrŽe into a county wide GIS delivery system dripped down to its constituent cities. Mounds View, one of those cities, also made the commitment to take advantage of its county's efforts, and applied GIS in its Planning, Community, and Economic Development departments. As the paradigm shifts, the city of Mounds View, although small and only covering four square miles, decided to follow the change and accept the challenges and requirements of that change. The results can be empirically measured today in this city's continued growth and economic benefits to the many services provided to its residents. Quality of life for its residents is the bottom line for any city's mandate. Mounds View has kept its as a goal and is admirably achieving it. A GIS is a sophisticated tool allowing multi-departments of city government to cross-share city data in a user friendly manner. Mounds View's Economic Development Authority, Planning, Zoning, Park & Recreation, Environmental Quality, Human Rights Commission, and the Police Civil Service Commission may, although services greatly differ, all share the common city data sets, as well as their own specific integrated and geo-coded data. This teaming of data allows a team approach for city administration to offer services to its constituents. However, GIS as a technology is just a tool. Effective city services are always accomplished by people - namely city employees who can utilize these modern tools.
     GIS, with its related technologies, as a modern day informational tool, will continue to play a major role in the digital revolution. However, it's not just GIS, as a tool, or as a technology altogether, that can make the major impact on public information services. It's people, it's public staff, who are provided with the capability to access the combined public data bases, easily, rapidly, efficiently, and in an expense saving, cost-effective manner. Government budgets are being strained today, while the property transaction industries demand more information, more often, and desire it more rapidly. The ultimate question is, how can our public government agencies provide increased service at reduced cost? I do not think there is a single simple answer. Although, the information age is busy producing tools that are going to help! A few years ago, when you sold your home, your realtor would fill out with you, perhaps two to four forms, depending where you were in the country. Today, that same realtor must assist you in filling out nine to 11 forms, in order to place your home on the MLS, as a newly listed property. What has made the difference? Simply, regulations stipulate more disclosure today, for both sellers and buyers. Whether the property is industrial, commercial, or residential, more information is required today than ever before. Is it because we are more honest today? I do not think any one believes that! We are however, more cautious, and concerned about any litigating circumstances that could occur. Hence, city and county governments, like the city of Mounds View, in Ramsey County, Minn., have experienced the pressure and challenge to be capable of dispatching more property information, more rapidly, during this time of declining budgets. This prevailing problem around our country needs more than just GIS, to maintain the ever increasing flow of data requests.
     New technologies like the World Wide Web, the Internet and intranets; combined with all levels of telecommunication advancements, have evolved the possibilities for local governments to provide a new class of long awaited information. Government agencies need to be capable of providing information for city/county departments, community businesses, local constituents, and beyond, for regional and national interest as well. All this shared data, at a moment notice, may now be shared by all; rapidly, easily, cost-effectively, without aggravating interruptions to busy highly trained staff. Both public and private sector queries, requesting simple basic information, may now be acquired over any standard phone line at the click of a mouse button. With any personal computer and a common modem all the millions of dollars worth of GIS data can be available to any community's residence and/or various agency's departmental staff personnel.
     Through a stand alone local area network, a wide area remote access network via land-lines or cellular phones, or over the Internet; programs and technologies have become available to permit any government staff person with access to a PC to access any and all city/county GIS data and associated relational data bases. Data access may be accomplished both quickly and easily, with little or no training, or foreknowledge of GIS. One such program is IRIS. IRIS is a product of REMAP Corp. of St. Paul. REMAP's product name stands for "Integrated Realty Information System." In the 1991, NAR (National Association of Realtors) conference and expo held in Las Vegas. REMAP was the first to introduce an adjunct map based front-end for the Multiple Listing Service that utilized GIS digital mapping and geo-coding technologies. REMAP converts GIS data bases into its IRIS native environment, and integrates associated property data sets. REMAP's IRIS service combines pictures of every property, tax roll records, reverse phone directories, census population demographics, street and highway center-line stick maps, interactive points of interest icons, and MLS records, with the assessor's tax parcel map base, all tightly integrated and attributed. This is more than just GIS. IRIS is an information management and delivery tool that can automate any associative data sets for all employees, regardless of background or skill level to access and query city and county property data. REMAP has focused on simplicity of operation, and user friendliness to design and develop IRIS for all public and private sectors of the property information services. Many professionals now in their daily routine must frequently access property record information. The Internet, and GIS data query programs like IRIS, make it simple to just point and click on a screen tab to instantaneously receive the information necessary to answer a client's question, or create a presentation, or check the relevance and/or the up-to-dateness of property data.
     For more than a year and a half, Ramsey County's Department of Property Records and Revenue has been a user of the IRIS on-line service. IRIS offers an innovative new alternative way for county customers to get access to information. The county property record data is up-to-date, because IRIS is updated daily. Many counties currently use an annual, quarterly, or monthly, update practice in their property record management. Also, the city of Mounds View, within Ramsey County, is a user of the IRIS remote access on-line dial-up service. With a thin client of approximately 1-megabyte, a user can dial the IRIS server and search by tax record fields, such as owner's name, address, assessor's geo-code, price range, property characteristics, etc. You can search either visually or textually. Since every element of the IRIS system is geographically located, you can either find the data visually, or actually search for the data by address with the street road network, or by any of the fields in each data set. This unique Search/Filter function gives you the freedom to search for information with as many as 14 fields of information at a time. This can narrow your search down to a manageable list no matter how many records are stored on the IRIS server.
     Barb Benesch works for the city of Mounds View. Although Mounds View is a little city, nevertheless, it is a city with big ideas, goals, and plans for the future. Barb works in the city planning department. City planning is divided into Community Development, and Economic Development departments. Benesch has been a user of the REMAP, IRIS program for nearly a year. Like most employees of smaller cities, she has a wide range of duties. One of the common uses of IRIS for her, is to target a property requesting a permit that requires community notification - type in the address, point and click, and the property will display in the center of the screen. She must mail a notice to the residence of every property within 350 feet of any point of the selected requesting property. No problem - because GIS map bases are registered to "real world coordinates," are created to a scale, and are accurate. The user accessing these data sets and map bases can easily measure from any point or line segment, or set the mailing list by "framing" an area. From this frame a data base of names and addresses can be extracted in order to quickly, and easily print labels for the specific mailing. Jennifer Bergman of Housing, and Cathy Bennett of Economic Development, also with the city of Mounds View, utilize the IRIS system to assist them in fielding customer inquires. The IRIS system permits city staff to quickly answer questions, and provide information to their constituent customers.
     It presently seems apparent that city and county property records and the governmental agency depository of this data will continue to grow in the future. Public records will continue to become more current, more complete, more integrated, and combined with more ease of access by more users, more often. After all, the Internet's cyberspace never sleeps, and is not only national, but also global, thereby providing a leading media for public records to be lodged upon and accessed from. CD-ROM phone directories of 130 million listings are now available for only $14. When is enough, enough? Where is this Information Highway taking us? Whatever happened to our privacy? Questions for the future I suppose, because no one seems to have all the answers today! However, one thing today is providing the appraiser, the realtor, mortgage banker, property insurer, property inspector, title company, the builder, developer, escrow company, and closers is data. Lots and lots of data. All integrated, resourcefully packaged, readily available, and easily accessed by anyone, anywhere, at any time. The certainty of the future is the certainty of an information explosion. An explosion of information providers, resources, medias, and methodologies, all tapping faster and more capable communications technologies.

About the Author:
Tom C. Lively is the vice president/GIS market director of REMAP Corp., in Palm Springs, Calif. He may be reached at 760-323-1240 (phone); 760-320-4415 (fax); or e-mail: [email protected]

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