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Tarrant County Wins Award From Association of Counties

Motor vehicle inventory tracking system identifies $1 million in needed changes

The Tarrant County, Texas, Tax Office was awarded a "County Best Practices Award" for superior innovation in technology based on a Ciber Inc., custom software application. The award was accepted by Betsy Price, Tarrant County tax assessor/collector at an awards ceremony recently at the Texas Association of Counties Post Legislative Conference in Austin. Price nominated the project for the award.

The Motor Vehicle Inventory Tracking System (MVITS) was created to help the Tarrant County Tax Assessor-Collector's Office streamline its vehicle registration and titling process. The tax office registers more than 1.6 million vehicles and performs 500,000 title transfers each year. The office is also responsible for managing the inventory -- valued at more than $11 million -- of license plates, windshield stickers and transfer forms provided to dealers, who register and title vehicles as bonded agents of the tax office.

For the project, a team from CIBER's Dallas/Fort Worth office analyzed the tax office's existing procedures and software systems, identified inefficiencies, established specifications for a new system, and then designed, coded, tested and implemented a software solution using Microsoft Active Server pages and Microsoft's SQL Server Enterprise Edition.

MVITS system has almost completely automated the inventory management process, reducing by more than 50 percent the time and effort required to track inventory and transactions, and eliminating the need for annual dealer audits. Accurate inventory counts are available at all times, and include bond and dealer expiration dates, insurance company information and dealer contacts. The system provides alerts when discrepancies arise, so problems can be isolated to individual dealerships, and corrections can be made to reduce exposure to potential losses. Within the first month, the system identified more than $1 million in changes that needed to be made to dealer bonds.

The Texas Association of Counties selects projects for the County Best Practices Award based on the level of innovation involved in the project, significant and measurable increases in productivity and customer service, significant and measurable decreases in costs, benefits to the county and/or public, and repeatability of the project for use in other counties.
"The MVITS system has helped us enormously," says Price. "We needed to make changes to keep up with the county's growing population-Tarrant County is the seventh fastest growing county in the U.S. in number of new residents each year. CIBER's significant experience with state and local governments was a major factor in selecting it for the project. CIBER consultants understood and analyzed the situation quickly, and designed an efficient and highly successful solution. We're very pleased."

Prior to CIBER's MVITS program, the tax office used a mostly manual system to track inventory and transactions. This system required more than 200 hours per month of labor and did not provide an up-to-date picture of inventory. Inaccurate inventory subjected the tax office to significant potential financial loss if a dealer experienced economic hardship.

Tarrant County is home to more than 1.5 million people -- many of whom live in Fort Worth, the county's largest city -- and covers 864 square miles.
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