The Town of Clarence web site features an online tool for citizens to search for information about recent home sales. The goal is to get citizens involved in the assessment process and to work toward ensuring fair and equitable assessments. Having the data online represents a way for individuals who believe their assessments are not accurate to do fact checking and data gathering on homes similar to theirs. This allows citizens to take an active role in the defense of their assessment appeal. The openness of the data and widespread access has contributed to a reduction in Board of Assessment reviews and the number of complaints registered in small claims court. The tool allows citizens to search property sales by street or get a listing of the entire town and returns information about the assessed values, physical characteristics and sales information. In addition, each address listed shows a picture of the property and provides the property identification number. The site is updated as needed with new sales information and pictures.

Dutchess County’s "Parcel Explorer" and "Atlas" applications represent another data management strategy. These countywide applications combine parcel data with GIS capabilities in a user-friendly format, which allows several county departments to access assessment and planning data faster and more easily. The County GIS is an up-to-date resource that can generate customized maps, which include real property parcels, along with roads, wetlands, zoning, and many other fields. This system makes it possible for departments within Dutchess County, along with property owners, to make more informed decisions and has led to a quicker approval process for these decisions.

The Town of Southampton’s "Govern" system goes a step further by allowing all the town departments to share the multiple data sets and by giving each department responsibility for managing and updating its own segment of the total data. While every department has access to the same central data repository, each views, uses, and edits the portion of the data that they use to support their own particular mission. The data is available in multiple formats to suit the needs of each department. Those who need to manage the data in a GIS format have the capability to do that, while other departments may see the data in graphical layout or in tabular form. In addition, the system has audit trails that allows everyone to see a record’s change history. Since each department has access to the data and uses it daily, updates are made several times a day. The timeliness of the data is beneficial not only for municipal functions but also for annual on-line subscribers ($300 per year) and for citizens who regularly come in to the county offices to use the system for searches and queries.

The New York State GIS Clearinghouse and Data Sharing Cooperative is a fourth alternative data management model. The Clearinghouse is a publicly accessible resource of information about GIS data, (including parcel data of various kinds), some in the form of actual data sets and some in the form of metadata descriptions that tell potential users how to obtain the data sets from different sources. The Data Sharing Cooperative is a special arrangement in which public and nonprofit organizations sign a standard data sharing agreement which entitles them to use the GIS data listed by the other members without cost but also obligates them to return any data enhancements or corrections to a designated "primary custodian" for each data set. Thus, cooperative members who use road data provided by the state department of transportation, for example, agree to notify DOT of errors and to share with DOT any enhancements they make in the course of their own work. In this way, all users follow a standard set of data exchange policies and shared data is readily available and subject to constant improvement.