Profile: The Nebraska Department of Property Assessment and Taxation (PA&T) collects, maintains, and distributes information in various formats to help administrators, tax payers, and beneficiaries of property taxes make informed decisions concerning the quality of the property tax assessment function in the State of Nebraska.

Problem/Opportunity: Continued growth in the State, along with additional requirements placed on assessors and PA&T, have created an extra burden on the processes at both the state and local levels of the system. Streamlining the assessment and taxation process with an integrated system has the potential to greatly reduce paperwork, increase accuracy, and support the process of valuing real property.

Solution: The Design Studio team, along with PA&T, is examining the current property assessment and transaction system in the state of Nebraska, focusing on the flow of information through the PA&T system and how redundancies can be avoided. This includes an assessment of how each county maintains and transmits its property information, as well as the ways that the information is used. A recommendation will be made to PA&T on how to modify its processes and information technology systems to create the most efficient property assessment environment. The J.D. Edwards Design Studio Team will evaluate and redesign the current assessment process, investigate possible information technology solutions, and provide a prototype system that represents the “look and feel” of the new system but does not provide specific functionality.

Benefits: The ultimate goal of this project is to provide PA&T with an improved ability to satisfy their primary customers - the citizens of the State, and the Nebraska legislators through:

1. Improved data verification processes.
2. Improved data availability and turnaround time on information requests.
3. Increased accuracy of information maintained and reported.
4. Reduced number of data entry points.
5. A digital interface to the data available within PA&T.
6. Decreased amount of time assessors must spend entering data into the system.