L.A. County is finalizing a contract worth nearly $24 million with Oracle for the second phase of a major IT modernization project within the Assessor's Office, according to county records. The company also worked on the first phase of the project, which started in mid-2015.
According to the Assessor's 2016 annual report, the current mainframe is a green screen system, and the county's 2.6 million properties are still associated with a paper file. Last year the county Board of Supervisors approved an initial $18.7 million to fund the project.
"In our extensive evaluation of COTS products and other California Counties' attempts to modernize their property tax assessment systems, we found high project failure rates in medium and large-sized counties throughout the State. One of the foremost reasons was the lack of understanding of California assessment practices by the vendor (even vendors well versed in property tax assessment in general) and the inability of those vendors to adapt their products to comply with California assessment practices. To mitigate this risk, Oracle's staff was co-located with the Assessor's subject matter experts to gain an understanding of the depth and complexity of California assessment practices. Over the past 16 months, Oracle's architects and technical staff have been onsite working hand-in-hand with Assessor's staff to develop the foundational pieces of AMP, including the complex data structures and business rules needed to support property taxation in the County," acting county CIO Peter Loo wrote to the board this week.
The new system will replace 120 old applications. The Assessor's Office summarized the system's new features in the annual report:
• A modern and flexible assessment roll database that improves the ability to respond to taxpayer inquiries quickly and efficiently
• The consolidation and integration of existing applications and databases into a single, easily accessible system
• Complete access to all data for all employees, eliminating lengthy delays required to research paper records housed in multiple locations, or accessing different systems
• A new interface for computers and mobile devices
• Increased data storage
• Enhanced functionality that will allow for faster analysis and input by staff, resulting in increased productivity.
