Tuesday September 2^nd, 2008

LaPorte County, IN Announces Launch of Beacon™ Web Portal

LaPorte County, IN (September 2^nd, 2008) The LaPorte County Council along with the County Commissioners, have unanimously agreed to open this public service website located at beacon.schneidercorp.com to the community.

LaPorte County’s beacon portal features a public site which includes important property taxation and assessment information, with detailed information and search capabilities. The beacon portal also provides users the ability to view an interactive map of the County’s Geographical Information Systems data and aerial photography as well as convenient tools to collect specific parcel information.

Melissa Mischke, LaPorte County GIS Coordinator played a key role in working to provide beacon to the community. She had this to say:

“Beacon is allowing La Porte County Government to provide better services to its tax payers.  It is also allowing better information sharing within Governmental agencies.”

Beacon is able to provide benefits to the county by reducing requests at the counters and telephone, allowing county employees to complete their work more effectively.  Beacon also benefits the community by giving users the ability to do work with county offices even when the courthouse is closed; 24 hour access to public records and better services all in a single location.

“It is well structured, easy to use and gives powerful tools all in a single spot. It was very easy to get started; we had a prototype very quickly. Said Mischke

Because all website set-up, development, hosting, and maintenance tasks are handled by Schneider, there was no need for LaPorte County to purchase additional equipment. Beacon has been designed with a component-based architecture which allowed for a rapid deployment of the product to the county.

Tyler Poling, The Schneider Corporation’s Beacon Product Manager said:

 “LaPorte County has always been a pleasure to work with. They have been extremely helpful throughout the beacon implementation process and are very eager to provide property information access to their community via the web.”

The Schneider Corporation is currently hosting similar sites for more than 100 organizations across the Midwest, including Marshall, Kosciusko, LaGrange and Wabash County, Indiana. For information about beacon, please visit www.geogearonline.com/beacon or to see beacon in action visit http://beacon.schneidercorp.com.

About Schneider: The Schneider Corporation has been providing GIS solutions since 1989 to hundreds of county, municipal, state, federal and private entities. Built on the strength of our traditional surveying and engineering services, we provide GIS services that exceed the expectations of our clients. Learn more about The Schneider Corporation at http://www.gis.schneidercorp.com.

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