Baltimore retools property management system
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The Maryland city is modernizing its property management capabilities, making city-owned properties more visible to the public and improving property acquisition and disposition processes.
Baltimore is modernizing its property management capabilities, allowing it to more easily buy and sell public property.
In a three-year agreement with Tolemi Software, the Department of Housing and Community Development will update its home-built system to streamline property-related workflow within DHCD and the Baltimore City Comptroller’s Office.
Tolemi’s Slate information and project management solution will digitize and centralizing data held in different systems and formats across agencies, making city-owned properties more visible to the public and improving DHCD’s property acquisition and disposition processes.
Slate tracks property data directly on a map tied to parcels. With the tool, the city will be able to create, geo-code, and integrate new property and project information into a map-based application along with all other city data, city officials said. By digitizing and automating 15-year-old spreadsheet-based processes, the city will streamline the information and decision-making regarding public properties.
“This collaboration will completely restructure the City’s paper processes into a digital workflow – alleviating resource constraints, strengthening our coordination and elevating our customer experience,” Comptroller Bill Henry said.
“We started a process improvement analysis earlier this year, and the need for better technology was paramount in our review,” acting Housing Commissioner Alice Kennedy said. “Slate will streamline our internal processes while bringing an improved customer interface that will help expedite the disposition process. We are grateful to be one step closer to the launch of this tool.”
“It’s going to be a night and day improvement for our customers and internally as well for staff,” she told Technical.ly. “It’s going assist us in expediting the disposition process and, overall, that provides a significant benefit to the taxpayer in terms of ease of use and better customer service.”
The city expects the first workflow to migrate to Slate by the end of 2021, with full implementation by the summer of 2022.
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