Fulton County Modernizes Land Records with ArcGIS Parcel Fabric

Land records support some of the most important functions of local government, from taxation and public safety to long-range planning. In Fulton County, Georgia, those responsibilities extend across more than 360,000 residential parcels, making accurate, up-to-date parcel data essential to daily operations.

As the county’s land records program continued to grow, its legacy geographic information system (GIS) environment struggled to keep pace. Routine parcel updates required significant manual effort, parcel boundaries did not consistently align with current aerial imagery, and custom workflows had become increasingly difficult to maintain. To support continued growth and improve parcel accuracy, Fulton County partnered with Sidwell, an Esri partner specializing in land records and GIS modernization, to modernize its land records operations with ArcGIS technology.

For years, Fulton County relied on a legacy GIS environment that had become increasingly difficult to sustain. Because the system was no longer supported, the GIS team faced growing limitations in its ability to update land records and evolve existing workflows.

As the county’s parcel dataset continued to grow, routine updates required significant manual effort and a collection of highly customized workflows that had become cumbersome to support. Parcel boundaries frequently failed to align with current aerial imagery, creating discrepancies that affected parcel accuracy and reduced confidence in the data.

These challenges affected more than day-to-day editing. Time-consuming processes limited productivity, while unsupported technology made it increasingly difficult for the team to innovate, adapt workflows, and expand into more advanced GIS analysis. As demand for accurate land records and geospatial insights grew across county departments, the limitations of the legacy environment became more pronounced.

Fulton County needed a more reliable, scalable approach for managing land records and to replace its legacy GIS with a modern geospatial platform.

To support its modernization goals, Fulton County partnered with Sidwell to build a modern land records environment centered on ArcGIS Parcel Fabric. The implementation was designed to improve parcel accuracy while creating a more scalable approach to managing land records.

“Our comfort level with Sidwell is extremely high,” said Reginald Elder II, geospatial program manager for Fulton County. “Since 2012, the experience has been consistently positive. This transition felt natural—we were committed to staying partners.”

At the foundation of the solution was ArcGIS Enterprise, which provided a shared environment for managing and accessing land records data. By bringing parcel information, workflows, and analysis into a common system, the county created a more connected approach to land records management.

Within that environment, ArcGIS Parcel Fabric and ArcGIS Pro provided modern tools for maintaining and analyzing parcel data. Together, these technologies helped staff manage land records with greater consistency while supporting more efficient editing and review processes. The county also introduced ArcGIS Workflow Manager to standardize parcel workflows and reduce repetitive manual tasks. To support parcel life cycle management, Sidwell integrated its Parcel Administrator solution, helping ensure parcel identifiers could be created and maintained consistently. 

Rather than simply replacing legacy technology, the new environment aligned modern GIS tools with how the county already worked. The result was a more reliable land records system that improved day-to-day operations while creating a foundation for future automation, analysis, and innovation.

Within months of going live, Fulton County began seeing measurable improvements across its land records operations. Parcel editing became faster and more intuitive, allowing staff to complete updates with greater precision and less effort. Improved alignment between parcel boundaries and aerial imagery also increased parcel accuracy, particularly in areas where discrepancies had been most pronounced.

Automation further improved day-to-day workflows by reducing repetitive manual tasks and creating more consistent processes. As a result, the GIS team gained additional capacity to focus on higher-value work, including change detection, appraisal support, and advanced GIS analysis.

With ArcGIS Parcel Fabric, ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Workflow Manager, and ArcGIS Enterprise in place, Fulton County now has a scalable foundation for managing land records and improving parcel accuracy. What began as an effort to replace unsupported technology created opportunities to automate parcel workflows, strengthen data management, and explore emerging capabilities such as AI-driven analysis and parcel life cycle management.