Albemarle to give online access to records

After investing $4 million and working on an online application called Access Albemarle for three and a half years, Albemarle County is beginning to post detailed county records online, some of which will be accessible to the public.
“This new Access Albemarle system will allow not only county staff but taxpayers to have access to information much easier,” said the county’s finance director, Richard Wiggans.
County budget information expected to be in the system late this spring would allow viewers to examine the details of budget items and view whether expenditures align with originally anticipated costs, for example. Wiggans said that his long-term goal is to allow much of that information to be accessible to the public.

The system would help county staff respond quickly to requests from the Board of Supervisors for information used to create budgets and manage county finances, Wiggans said. The interactive system will eventually allow supervisors to play with the information themselves.
Officials would be able to create budget scenarios, examining how tax rate changes would affect revenue, for example, or see how hiring of additional police officers would affect spending, Wiggans said.
Wiggans said he hopes the system will eventually provide residents with access to interactive accounts in which they could manipulate facts and figures, answer “what ifs” and create their own budget scenarios.

County spokeswoman Lee Catlin said that the system would allow residents to take care of business dealings with the county — and see the county’s business — faster and more easily.
“The more things that we can put out there that help people do business and get the information they’re looking for and get the service they need, without physically being here or having to make phone calls … the better everybody is,” Catlin said.
The county has already entered data about the county’s fixed assets into the system, including information about county vehicles, buildings and computers. While that information is public record, it is not yet accessible to the public using this system.

The county hopes to have other information available on the system by 2010, including outgoing expenditures and incoming revenue, purchases, employee compensation and other financial transactions.
Using a secure identification code, residents will have access to their own personal information — such as license and tax records and other accounting transactions — but will not be able to access other people’s private information.
Some of the county records will not be accessible to the public at all, because it’s considered confidential data, Wiggans said.
Officials say that the system will allow county employees to be more efficient, significantly cutting back staff time and employee expenses, and it would increase government transparency.
Michael Culp, the county’s information technology director, said that the system would allow viewers to access up-to-date information. He said that many localities are trying to move in the same direction as Albemarle, and some localities in Virginia are using the same software product, including Culpeper and Christiansburg.
Albemarle will be unique in Virginia in that the system will consolidate data from general government and the school division in one system, Culp said.

Officials initially expected to complete some of the project modules by June 30, 2006, Catlin said, adding that the county advertised the expected completion date before it realized the complexity of the project.
It has taken more than three years to start using the system, Catlin said, because developing a new integrated system is “very complex” and the county cannot afford to get anything wrong, because of the important and sensitive nature of the information being handled.
Another reason why it has taken years to get the system running is because consultants were initially asked to create a completely customized system to meet the county’s requests, Wiggans said.
“As we got further and further into the engagement, it was determined that the way we do things was much more complicated than what the consultant had [worked with in the past],” Wiggans said.
Wiggans said that the county shifted its original focus on a customized system to a new system with some customized components.

The entire project has cost about $4 million, Catlin said. About $3.5 million went to Microsoft for consultant fees and software; other costs include reusable software and hardware, and services to improve the county’s business processes.
The county hasn’t yet determined maintenance costs because two of the system modules have not yet been completed, according to Catlin.
The county has entered into an agreement with Microsoft that stipulates that the “maintenance renewal costs associated with each product will not exceed standard market maintenance and support costs charged to other government customers,” Catlin wrote in an e-mail.