RRG began development of the Virtual Assessors Office^TM technology in 2007 with the goal of extending our reach to communities throughout Massachusetts and the New England region by providing an Internet-based application suite that facilitates remote assessing. Using this technology, our assessment team will be able to perform many tasks from our office in central Massachusetts thereby reducing travel time and cost.

RRG is developing a suite of productivity tools and applications as part of the VAO^TM. They include analysis tools for use during revaluation, reports, and applications for managing data related to that stored in a community’s CAMA system.

In order to coordinate with each community’s Board of Assessors and assessors’ office staff, RRG also sets up and maintains an online office workspace for each community that it works with. The online office can be used to share documents and messages, track issues to completion, and schedule meeting times and onsite visits.

When starting work with a new community, RRG will coordinate with the local IT staff to establish secure remote access to systems in the community’s assessors’ office. RRG will also setup an area on it’s own servers dedicated to each community where member’s of the local assessors’ office can access the same tools and applications that RRG uses.

The VAO is Internet-based and can be accessed from any location that has an Internet connection and a browser. This does not include access to systems in the community’s assessors’ office. Those systems may only be accessed remotely from RRG’s office.

RRG uses industry standard tools to secure Internet access to the VAO^TM. Each user is required to login to the VAO^TM site where RRG staff members monitor activity and administer security settings. Each user is associated with a community and will only be able to access information for that community. Finally, RRG’s data center is physically secured and employs firewall and other security measures to ensure that it’s servers are not compromised.