2012 Digital Counties Winners Announced: Dutchess County, NY

The Center for Digital Government and the Digital Communities program has announced the winning counties in this year’s survey competition to identify leaders in the digital field. Four winners were named in various population categories. These four leading communities implemented new initiaties this year that created positive results and cost savings for, despite scarce funding. Today’s highlighted county in Dutchess County in New York, winner of the 250,000 to 500,000 population category. Yesterday, I highlighted the achievements of Fairfax County in Virginia. A review of the other two communities will follow.

Dutchess County, NY

1.) The feature of the county’s winning bid was its Parcel Access suite, a user friendly GIS service platform where users can lookup addresses and see property boundaries, estimate their taxes, access appeal information, and a number of other resources.

Address Look-up

Tax Estimator

Parcel Look-up

According to Tim Mahler, commissioner of Dutchess County’s Office of Computer Information Systems, this platform has saved the county $14 million annually. He said these savings are come from “eliminating thousands of field trips and visits to county buildings by municipal assessors, highway departments, businesses, Realtors and the public,” in an interview with GovTech.

2.) Their other major selling point is Dutchess Delivery, a subscription-based outreach platform that offers notifications using several different methods, including text, email and social media, provided by GovDelivery. People are informed on issues they choose, such as emergency alerts, events and surveys. They are also able to spread this communications service around at discounted rates to the county’s cities as a shared service, increasing the reach of their messaging. They are also planning the launch of a new organization website to update their current Dutchess County website.