Miami-Dade County’s Leap into Parcel Modernization

Miami-Dade County (MDC), Florida, is home to 2.8 million people, making it the most populous county in the state and the seventh most populous in the US. With more than half a million land parcels and over 1.1 million properties to manage, the county’s staff face a daily balancing act: maintaining precise records, supporting growth, and ensuring that every update serves both residents and the broader community.

For years, the county relied on Esri’s GIS technology to keep its parcel management system running smoothly. As the county’s needs evolved, leaders recognized the importance of modernizing their approach. Miami-Dade County staff embarked on a major project to migrate its custom desktop geographic information system (GIS) from ArcMap to ArcGIS Parcel Fabric and ArcGIS Workflow Manager—a careful and collaborative effort to bring a trusted system into a new era.

Miami-Dade County is a longtime Esri GIS user, with 40 years of experience using ArcGIS technology. Its GIS environment was built on a deeply customized ArcMap 10.7.1 platform and an in-house Miami-Dade County editing extension. This solution integrated tailored workflows for both the Property Appraiser (PA) and Regulatory and Economic Resources (RER) departments. Tasks were divided among editors, quality control staff, and managers, with each group using a specialized sequence of tools to keep data accurate and workflows efficient.

The legacy system, powered by the Miami-Dade County Extension developed in 2009, streamlined editing and maintenance across diverse datasets—including parcel boundaries, property locations, land records, water and sewer, and addresses—making it a vital engine for county operations.

“The use of Esri GIS allows data to be more readily and accurately available after updates were processed, enabling more real time and accessibility that positively impact analysis, reports, and decision-making efforts,” said Bibi Oung, senior systems administrator at Miami-Dade County.

With ArcMap reaching the end of its support life cycle in March 2026, the county had to adapt. The urgency was heightened by the retirement of senior analysts who had developed the original workflows, making documentation and knowledge transfer essential. Throughout this transition, Esri Professional Services partnered closely with county staff to guide the process and ensure a smooth path forward.

Staff, with the help of Esri Professional Services, began migrating from a custom-built environment to a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) solution. The new system centered on ArcGIS Parcel Fabric—a GIS-enabled software for mapping, maintaining, and accessing land records information. ArcGIS Pro, Esri’s modern desktop GIS application, provided the editing environment, while ArcGIS Workflow Manager automated and managed complex editing processes across departments.

The transition required reimagining workflows and capturing every customization to ensure the new system could match or exceed the efficiency of the legacy platform. Migrating from ArcMap and its parcel editing application to ArcGIS Parcel Fabric demanded extensive QA/QC efforts to resolve geometry errors and standardize attributes.

“Implementing ArcGIS Parcel Fabric means the county is positioned to now retain historical edits, improve data quality across all the layers involved in our land records datasets and improving customer confidence in our data,” said Oung.

Implementing a new system in a county as large and complex as Miami-Dade required the team to reengineer workflows, reduce manual steps, and respect departmental boundaries across multiple agencies. Editors were accustomed to a highly customized environment, and the initial version of Parcel Fabric did not fully match the streamlined experience of the legacy system. At first, editors had to take more steps to complete familiar tasks, and some functions were not yet available.

Additionally, the county strictly divided parcel editing responsibilities between the Regulatory and Economic Resources (handling subdivisions, lots, easements) and Property Appraiser (handling parcels for legal/tax purposes) departments. This division complicated workflow integration and data ownership. The migration team had to consider not only technical changes but also interdepartmental processes, user behaviors, data relationships, and workflow dependencies. Because the county needed to keep parcel editing operational throughout the migration, traditional cutover approaches were not feasible; therefore, a new phased approach was used to append updated and converted data into the initial parcel fabric, known as backlogs.

To address these complexities, Miami-Dade implemented ArcGIS Workflow Manager as part of the migration. Esri and MDC teams configured Workflow Manager and ArcGIS Pro tasks to mirror previous processes, helping the county model, automate, and manage intricate editing and maintenance workflows. This ensured the new solution would continue to handle the scale and diversity of tasks required.

Alongside ArcGIS Pro tasks and ArcGIS Pro project templates, ArcGIS Workflow Manager provided the structure needed to support parallel editing, QA/QC, and phased migration, while maintaining data integrity and operational continuity. Real-time dashboards give users and managers transparency and accountability across departments, providing visibility into editing activity and job status.

In short, Workflow Manager enabled the county to manage complex workflows, track job status, and provide transparency across departments, supporting the organization’s unique structure.

Esri staff provided training resources and direct support with configurations. Combined with thorough planning and documentation, this strategic implementation helped county staff overcome initial resistance and navigate a steep learning curve.

By working closely with Esri Professional Services, the county minimized disruption during the transition. Staff continued editing in the legacy system to support crucial operational functions but began to process updates in the new system simultaneously a month ahead of the go-live date. This approach allowed editors to gain confidence in the new production system and fine-tune processes and configurations. More importantly, it significantly reduced the final data conversion and implementation phase timeline, limiting go-live downtime to a single weekend and delivering strong operational ROI. Miami-Dade County’s experience shows the value of strategic planning, stakeholder engagement, and adaptability when modernizing complex workflows.

The project was completed in September 2024, marking a major milestone in the county's modernization effort.

County staff now have greater satisfaction with the new system, reporting they feel “exhilarated” and “relieved,” with greater confidence in their roles. Real-time dashboards created by  Miam-Dade County Division Director, Jose Rodriguez, provide clear visibility into editing activity and job status, making oversight easier for both users and managers. The migration also fostered collaboration between county departments and Esri, resulting in enhancements to ArcGIS Parcel Fabric that benefit Miami-Dade staff and other users.

Since the deployment of the COTS solution with ArcGIS Parcel Fabric, Miami-Dade County is now well-equipped for ongoing growth and future upgrades, with plans to migrate to newer versions of ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterprise in the next few months.

“Miami-Dade County is a firm believer in the Esri solutions. Despite issues encountered, we are confident that implementing Parcel Fabric and other models are beneficial financially, yield greater efficiencies, and improve confidence across the board when implemented with stakeholders on board,” said Oung.

Overall, this complex project was successful, because Esri, MDC, and PA teams worked closely at every stage—from database configuration and dataset redesign to new workflows, tasks, templates, and derivative jobs that preserved compatibility with downstream systems. The backend Parcel Fabric implementation remained transparent to county operations consuming parcel data—a win-win situation!