Online Homestead Application Form

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

One of Hennepin County’s core values is continuous improvement, an ongoing effort to improve products, services or processes. The County Assessor’s Office (CAO) embraced that core value by committing to implement processes that eliminate paper from the work stream, reduce redundancy and promote efficiencies that benefit the taxpayers of Hennepin County. In alignment with that goal, in October 2014 the CAO identified one specific place where it could leverage technology to significantly improve service to county residents – the Homestead application form. The previous process was a time-consuming paper-based one, inefficient and inconvenient to both residents and county staff. The new process is an online application form on the county website that allows residents to use it as an option instead of the current submission process. This new method provides a convenient way for residents to securely submit their application for a property’s homestead status, while also automating some of the business procedures used for processing applications by CAO staff. The system was built from the ground up by enhancing SharePoint functionality and developing new workflows to manage data within the application process. The technical architecture of this system has also created the template to be used by additional digital government applications as they come online. The online Homestead application form was deployed in December 2016.