PTI 2011-2012 Solutions Abstracts 2 of 2
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Charlotte, NC: CATS STS IVR/Web Transportation System
The CATS STS IVR/Web Transportation System enables employees to work more effectively in delivering services to customers with special transportation needs. Servicing more than 5,000 citizens and providing approximately 250,000 ADA trips annually, the automated transportation system enables citizens to schedule trips through a call center, via a phone interactive voice response, or via the Web online. Additionally, this new system provides call ahead for earlier cancellations and notification of scheduled trips, ensures driver safety, and reduces management costs.
On average saving CATS 24.4 reservation shifts per month, reducing no shows, decreasing same day cancellations, and more, the transportation system is allowing CATS STS to provide better services to its customers and meet federally mandated guidelines. Initial investment for the technology project was approximately $286K and was provided through a State of North Carolina DOT Advanced Technology grant.
Collier County, FL: GIS Based Valve Maintenance Program
Collier County Wastewater Collections has 407 miles of pressurized mains outfitted with 1590 isolation valves to assist in flow isolation during a line break or a scheduled line maintenance activity. Prior to February 2011, isolation valves were not located with GPS coordinates, and many were maintained on a run to failure schedule, resulting in frozen and rusted equipment. The poor condition of the isolation valves adversely impacted staffs’ ability to quickly isolate a pipe during a break, and increased the risk for large volumes of sanitary sewer overflows.
In response to this compliance risk an annual valve maintenance program was developed. This program was resourced with two dedicated isolation specialists tasked with finding, inspecting the valves, collecting GPS coordinates, and exercising the valves. Using the Wastewater GIS database, our GIS technicians broke down the sewer district into 22 manageable quadrants. Planning and route creation were established for each quadrant. Upon completion of a quadrant all data is uploaded into GIS and viewable for future use. 1590 valves were identified, of these valves 1260 were successfully located, GPS coordinates taken, condition assessment conducted, and exercised. 330 valves were identified as needing corrective action and work orders placed. This plan has allowed Collier County to quickly respond to isolations and reduce the timeframe for exercising all isolation valves from one year to nine months.
Santa Monica, CA: Be Excited Be Prepared: Keeping Citizens Informed About Major Public Works Projects
Traffic congestion has long been identified as a top issue among Santa Monica residents. A host of planned projects intended to transform the City’s Downtown and Civic Center created so much concern over traffic that an initiative was placed on the November 2008 ballot intended to limit commercial development citywide. The ballot measure was defeated, but received enough support to make it clear that the proposed projects had to be tightly phased and managed and that innovative communication strategies, messaging and online information tools had to be developed to stay in contact with community members. It was also essential that a two-way communication system be successfully maintained enabling stakeholders to articulate their needs and obtain information.
A multi-channel outreach program was devised, centered on a special website that repurposes existing content created for other parts of the City website, leveraging the City’s content management system. Other elements included community meetings, televised public service announcements, radio announcements, printed articles, Email and text message alerts, a Twitter feed and a Facebook page. Key elements of the website include a navigation coverflow control, an interactive layered map, and a dynamic timeline. The response has been positive with the press acclaiming the City for its transparency and residents “discovering” the site, and signing up for the associated Twitter feed as well as the “SMAlerts” Email and text messaging alert system.
Austin, TX: Austin Fire Department "Added Time Signup" Program
The Added Time Signup Program developed by the Austin Fire Department helps Battalion Chiefs select firefighters for overtime. The program helps manage conflicting interests by addressing: Concern for safety of firefighters by limiting consecutive and cumulative hours worked; management’s desire to pay least expensive personnel to work; labor’s desire to “spread the wealth” with a more even distribution system. The Operations Chiefs worked with the AFD Business Technology Development group to create an intranet application which aids the overtime sign-up process as well as the selection process.
Scottsdale, AZ: Integrated Parking Enforcement Management System
This entry concerns a lightweight, low cost solution to managing the issuance and payment of parking citations. In 2003, the City desired to enhance its response to parking enforcement management and put key resources into the program’s administration. The City invested in off-the-shelf systems and software to streamline the issuance and collection of parking violations. As the years went on significant financial and resource challenges hit our City and the funding to maintain the system began to diminish. In addition, the software was end or life and no longer supported by the vendor.
In looking at the market for similar systems, the best case scenario for a replacement solution was in excess of $100,000, plus hardware, as well as the ongoing annual maintenance costs of roughly $25,000. These solutions had far more features than the City needed and would require significant work to integrate into the downstream systems. Using our own knowledge of parking and finance, a cross-divisional team used standard development tools and off–the-shelf hardware to build a system that enabled mobile electronic issuance of citations, real time update of that issuance to a central database, financial management of the citations, and integration into court and financial systems.
The system costs a fraction of the previous one to maintain and build, it uses standard, low cost, off-the-shelf technologies to operate, its expandable, flexible, and completely within the control of the City of Scottsdale. The cost savings over the life of the solution is expected to be over $300,000.
Montgomery County, MD: Continuity of Operations (COOP) Automation Program
The Montgomery County, MD Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (OEMHS) develops and administers implementation of the Continuity of Operations (COOP) Plan cooperatively with county departments, agencies and municipalities. With approximately 40 departments, 15 municipalities and 6 agencies, most with a large number of subordinate organizations and buildings, it is imperative that the county government develop a continuity of operations program that ensures all organizations are prepared to provide mission essential functions during times of disaster.
OEMHS, in close collaboration with the National Capital Region WebEOC administrative support team, has developed a COOP program management tool that is integrated with the county’s WebEOC Emergency management system. The WebEOC system is a widely used web-enabled crisis information management system used by various emergency response and management personnel across the country. The COOP automation tool simplifies the county organization’s COOP plan development process; optimizes the management of resources such as alternate office space and facilities, resources and supplies, and communications capabilities. It captures data which allows for the analysis needed to ensure that COOP may be executed without disrupting another organization’s efforts.
By integrating the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) emergency management with COOP operations using the WebEOC system, Montgomery County is one of the few jurisdictions in the United States that has successfully merged these two critical emergency programs into one system. Situational awareness, leadership “dashboard” reporting, collaborative information exchange, timely and orderly planning support, and ease of use has greatly increased the readiness of the county organizations during times of emergency.
Lubbock County, TX: Mobile Command and Emergency Management Interoperable Communications Platform
The Lubbock County, Texas Mobile Operations Vehicle provides Internet access, data, wired and wireless Voice over IP using existing phone lines from the core network. Utilizing interoperable radio communications including Wi-Fi, it has been repeatedly tested in exercises, and proven in events. It also serves the State of Texas Rapid Response Task Force as statewide asset. Resilience of the Lubbock County data network supports Voice over IP telephony and data services, making the MOV a mobile office building inheriting operational sustainability of the core network. Utilizing VoIP through satellite, they deliver existing phone and fax services avoiding traditional SAT phone costs, to a MOV deployable anywhere in North America.
Recent additions of two smaller MOV units in the West Texas jurisdictions of the City of Plainview, and Garza County are integrated into the VoIP phone network at Lubbock County though utilizing different satellite providers. This enables the three units to simultaneously deploy in different areas of the state, and to interoperate using the common infrastructure at Lubbock County. Configuration is poised to support additional jurisdictions that may wish to develop similar capabilities at reduced cost.
Whether tornados, wildfires, hurricanes etc., the units stand ready, the teams are trained, when disaster strikes. The platform and structure whether for mobile or stationary deployments are helping set the standards for the State for functional interoperability, resilience and jurisdictional continuity of operations.
Fort Worth, TX: Police Department’s Executive DashPro Management System (Dashboard)
Today’s major urban area police departments face an intimidating challenge in providing executive staff and managers with near real-time data related to crime trends, staffing and other pertinent administrative information that is crucial to day-to-day operations. Researchers have found that more than 50% of top-tiered executives have experienced negative business situations as a direct result of less-than optimal handling of overwhelming amounts of data.
Fort Worth Police Department has recently implemented the “Executive DashPro Management System”, providing a revolutionary tool for personnel to leverage vast amounts of data into intelligent business decisions, resulting in better service to the citizens of Fort Worth.
Baltimore, MD: Open Baltimore: Open Data for the People
Public release of government data allows governments to tap into a pool of public talent that can solve many problems faced by government. Welcoming new ideas and allowing open discussion and collaboration is a key goal of releasing open government data. Our way of life has changed over the last decade; “green”, “open”, “transparent” and “social” have become the community standard.
The software development community is eager to develop useful applications using government data, as soon as it is made available. Frequently, developers provide their software openly and free for others to use. The Open Baltimore Initiative will give the developer community the professional tools and access they need to gather and create a centralized repository for using government data.
03-26-2012
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PTI 2011-2012 Solutions Abstracts 1 of 2
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Houston, TX: Automated Time and Attendance System Project (ATAS)
After a long, but successful ERP implementation the City of Houston knew they could still bring more efficiency into their payroll functions. With 75% of their budget going to their workforce, they couldn’t afford to still be manually entering employee time as well as having limited visibility into leave and overtime. Automating their time and attendance was a logical choice and finding the right solution to meet their needs was the challenge. Finding the right Workforce Management partner meant they could easily interface with their existing ERP, had proven track record, and had Public Sector experience.
An experienced vendor was chosen and the City of Houston was on their way to saving approximately $7.2 million dollars per year on improvements of actual hard dollar numbers that could be applied to general fund dollars.
Alexandria, VA: Domino/Lotus Notes Migration to Microsoft Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) / Office 365
In an effort to modernize service delivery, increase productivity, and reduce costs, the City of Alexandria became the first jurisdiction in the Virginia to transition its on-premise enterprise messaging and collaboration platform to the "cloud" with Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Services (BPOS) and then in less than a year upgrade service to Office 365. Office 365 includes hosted versions of Exchange, SharePoint and Lync.
In approximately 6 months, the City migrated over 2,700 E-mail accounts from their legacy Domino/Lotus Notes on-premise architecture to the "cloud" with no data loss and minimal downtime. The project also included the conversion of over 30 legacy Domino applications, an enterprise desktop productivity suite upgrade, and the transition of over 400 mobile devices from BlackBerry to iPhone and Android smartphones. By leveraging the "cloud" and streamlining the telecommunications and information technology infrastructure, the City realized immediate operating efficiencies and cost savings.
Raleigh, NC: Raleigh Connected Initiative
We seek to promote economic growth and security across the city through workforce training and widespread Internet access. That is why we have teamed with One Economy, a global technology nonprofit organization. One Economy is bringing $1.4 million in federal stimulus funds and corporate support to make technology available and affordable for people seeking jobs, education and useful information. We believe young people are key assets for Raleigh to continue as a national leader in high-tech innovation. Together with One Economy, the City of Raleigh has started four Digital Connectors program to offer intensive computer training to young people ages 14-21.
The Digital Connectors program offers youth a chance to expand 21st century technology skills, develop professional and life skills, explore workplace pathways, serve their communities, and expose them to mentors and successful professionals. Training young people in the Digital Connectors program will help increase the technology adoption rate in low-income communities, provide greater opportunity for community engagement through technology, and cultivate students’ civic engagement in the community. Each Digital Connector commits fifty-six hours of community service and 150 hours of classroom instruction. One Economy is providing funds to train our first 60 Digital Connectors. We intend to sustain the program through 100 percent local support and offer higher levels of digital readiness, including Cisco Essentials training and certification. We aim to develop a sustainable program other communities can repeat.
The Information Technology Department collaborated with the city’s Parks and Recreation, Community Development and Community Services departments and provided an innovation technology room in the new Saint Monica Teen Center. Thanks to strategic partnerships with AT&T, AT&T Pioneers, Cisco Systems, MCNC, Microsoft and SAS Institute teens can participate in virtual field trips and engage with mentors, instructors and experts from the around the world. The interactive technology room serves as the home for Raleigh’s Digital Connectors training program.
Ponca City, OK: Ponca City, OK Deploys Wi-Fi Mesh Network with Great Success, Increasing Public Access and Safety
The City Council of Ponca City, Oklahoma wanted to use the city’s extensive network fiber backbone to better serve its city departments and emergency services. After five years of studying wireless mesh networks, a mini-pilot project with an IP mesh network was conducted and was so successful that the City Council decided unanimously to install a wireless mesh broadband network for the entire city. By leveraging a single network for consolidating city services, all city departments are now using the network including emergency services, building inspectors and maintenance crews. Over 75 percent of Ponca City personnel are in the field, working more efficiently because they can now upload and download reports onsite.
Operational costs are down as are crime rates, since police are now able to stay in the field longer by accessing reports, mug shots and critical information via laptops. Ponca City was one of the first cities in the nation to send real-time video from police dash-cams back to police headquarters where they are viewed live by other officers and 911 dispatchers. By watching live, dispatchers can be proactive and assess when an officer needs backup.
Due to the increased efficiency, Ponca City has expanded the network to cover over 150 miles and is able to offer its citizens free, city-wide internet access. Now, instead of paying DSL or cable companies, citizens have saved approximately $1.9 million and in turn are spending more in local stores. Ponca City’s sales tax revenue shows a steady increase since the network deployment.
Mesa, AZ: Using Kanban to Manage IT Operations and Development Work
By applying a Lean approach called Kanban, several work teams in the Information Technology Department (ITD) at the City of Mesa, Arizona have achieved gains in output, efficiency and workload visibility while improving quality. As applied, Kanban is a lightweight work management approach that has been modified from a method used in the Toyota Manufacturing System. Kanban is a "pull" process, where work is pulled into the system as the capacity to do work becomes available.
Kanban has been fairly simple for City of Mesa teams to understand and implement. The basic principles are: 1. Visualize everything (using a card wall or sticky notes), 2. Start with your present process (the "as-is," not the "should be"), 3. Reduce multi-tasking by limiting Work In Process (WIP), 4. If something isn’t working, make changes that make sense. Teams gather each morning for a 15 minute standup meeting to discuss the day’s work. The visual nature of Kanban lends itself well to the short daily meeting, quickly accommodates changes in priority, and serves as a platform for implementing continuous process improvement.
Currently, three teams are in full production—the Network Services team, Judicial Services team, and the Customer Information Systems team. Several other teams are in startup mode for implementing Kanban.
San Marcos, TX: City of San Marcos Virtual Desktop Integration
By leveraging new technology, the City of San Marcos resolved two problems: budget shortfall and outdated workstations. With over 400 desktops on five-year replacement schedules, the City averaged annual replacement of 80 workstations at $1,500 each, including CPU, monitor, keyboard and mouse. Over a five year period, the City would spend $600,000 to replace these 400 workstations. The City selected VMware View as the broker, due to the City’s current use of VMware vSphere for server virtualization, and Pano Logic’s Pano for the desktop device, due to its classification as a zero client and no requirement for patching or managing.
The City had an existing Storage Area Network (SAN), which was expanded to store the virtual machines. The results were almost instantaneous, including benefits of smaller size for City Council chambers, reduction in electricity, no noise and heat, and a reduction in deployment time for 14 devices from 10 hours to one hour. With this type of flexibility built into VMWare, IT is able to allocate resources to a particular virtual machine within minutes and have a satisfied user. Once the user has completed the project, the resources are unassigned and the virtual machine returned to the standard configuration.
Since the City implemented this technology three years ago, the City has saved $264,000 in desktop replacement cost (excluding additional savings from reduced electrical usage, deployment man hours and support hours and costs for storage, annual maintenance and onetime licensing. Currently, the City of San Marcos has deployed 255 virtual machines.
Johnson County, KS: Johnson County Information Technology Services Shared Services Program
Shared Services is a hot topic in many public sector circles right now and is found on nearly every agenda of any government conference. Many organizations see shared services as a way to cut costs while still maintaining service levels for their communities. Given the dire budget situations most local governments find themselves in, combining resources can sometimes provide a higher level of service than any single organization can provide on its own. Johnson County Information Technology Services (ITS) has stepped up to provide technology services and support for small cities in the County at a lower cost than the cities can obtain from the private sector. This shared services model has the promise to provide more value for County residents and lays the foundation for other collaborative efforts between Johnson County, cities, and other public entities.
The City of Mission is enjoying much lower costs for technology support with a higher level of service. The program allows city staff to focus on their primary areas of responsibility instead of technology. The City reports experiencing increased productivity and reliability as a result of the upgrades. This first effort with the City of Mission has been so successful that ITS has estimated services and produced quotes for three other small cities in the County and expects to begin providing services to them in 2012.
Muskegon County, MI: Transformative Technology Implementation
Muskegon County, Michigan, wanted to continue delivering exceptional services to its constituents but, to do so, its entire technological infrastructure needed to be updated. To tackle its aging network, phone, and server architectures, Muskegon County undertook its Transformative Technology Initiative, which aimed to make the county a leader in service provisioning. During the past nine months, Muskegon County has upgraded its fiber optic network, consolidated its 35 servers to five blade servers (one rack), and increased the ability of separate municipalities and county employees to collaborate.
Muskegon serves as an example to other local governments on how to efficiently deliver exceptional public services. It continues to drive efficiency in operations while keeping the end users—county constituents—as the drivers for all initiatives. Muskegon County truly exemplifies an innovative county government solutions program that has gone above and beyond.
Fort Worth, TX: My Property Tax Dollars
Problem: The City of Fort Worth was looking for ways to become more transparent to our taxpayers. There was also a desire to demonstrate to our citizen’s challenges elected officials face with delivering services by showing how tax monies are allocated. Response: The City of Fort Worth identified a web application that the City of Houston had created which allowed citizens to enter their appraised property value and whether they had a homestead exemption. They in turn would receive a breakdown of the estimated amount of taxes the City received from their property taxes and both a dollar and percentage breakdown of how that money was utilized to provide services. The breakdown is displayed in a pie chart as well as a grid that provides a more detailed description of the services provided from that portion of the tax monies. The City of Houston was nice enough to provide a copy of their code to the City of Fort Worth.
The City of Fort Worth wanted to further demonstrate how the entire property tax monies were distributed. In order to achieve this, the web site was enhanced to ask the citizens for the school district the property assessment is upon to determine their overall tax rate. With this additional piece of information, a new primary graph is displayed that depicts the total estimated property taxes and the amount and percentage each political entity receives. The City’s portion of the overall revenue is then broken down to show how it is allocated to fund services such as public safety and infrastructure.
Results: Citizens are able to enter their property value (if they know it – or they can click the link that directly connects them to the Appraisal District website to obtain this information), whether they have a homestead exemption, and select their taxing school district, and receive an estimated overall tax bill. From this they are provided a pie chart that breaks down the overall distribution of their tax monies in both dollars and percentages, clearly indicating that most school districts receive approximately half of all the property tax dollars while the City receives approximately 28% and other entities receive the balance.
City and County of Denver, CO: Contracting Automation Project
Automate the contracting process used by the City to improve efficiency and do more with less.
Scottsdale, AZ: Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) Changes Made To Improve Customer Services
Information Technology (IT) management at the City of Scottsdale recognized a need to improve the level of customer service that was provided to the City. Analysis concluded that if IT could improve the quality and timeliness of work requests, it would help to improve the workload and productivity of City employees. To make these changes, not only was a new software system required, but the processes and culture needed to be changed for how IT conducted its business.
An Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3 approach was adopted for process development and a flexible system from Cherwell Software was implemented that allowed the consolidation of multiple existing solutions. The Cherwell system also had the functionality to meet future needs as ITSM processes and needs mature within the City.
Chula Vista, CA: Create External Network for Public Entities with Offices On-site [1]
A number of public agencies such as a local District Attorney’s office housed in the Police Department or a Credit Union maintain offices on-site at the city. In the past, these agencies used separate cable modem connections to Internet. During the past year, the city created a separate external internet connection for these agencies and took on the role of ISP for them, providing internet access, anti-virus protection and web filtering. The city also acts as an ISP for a Nature Center, and also provides traditional computer support services for the Nature Center, such as Help Desk support, networking and E-mail services.
Chula Vista, CA: Create External Network for Public Entities with Offices On-site [2]
One of the city’s recreation centers recently partnered with a local charter school to provide the school with classroom space for their 8th grade students. This satellite classroom is known as the "Mueller Charter Leader Academy" and emphasizes community involvement and civic engagement. However, the charter school needed internet access for the students’ iPADs that was not through the city’s network but was compliant with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA).
Our network specialists created a separate network using the wired and wireless infrastructure of the city to create a new network for these classrooms that connects to the public library’s network that has CIPA-compliant web filtering and a firewall. The project partnered the Recreation and Information Technology departments with Mueller Charter School officials and the Chula Vista Elementary School District’s Information Technology department. The result is a network that allows teachers to use the power of the Internet to improve instructional quality for the 90 students that use the facility every week.
Chula Vista, CA: Departmental Merge to Create New In-house Service Department
Because of a budget shortfall during the FY 2011-2012 the City of Chula Vista’s Information and Technology Services department merged with the Human Resources department in order to reduce the administrative costs of the two in-house service departments. The immediate impact was an annual savings of $125,000. The long-term impact of this will be to meld the people-first focus of HR with the technology-first focus of IT into a customer service-oriented, technology-driven department that focuses on optimizing the strategic value of city departments while being a good steward of taxpayer dollars. Key participants in the merger included the Human Resources and Information technology departments.
Chula Vista, CA: Create Wi-Fi Hotspots for City Departments Serving the Public
Due to an increased demand by the public for Wi-Fi services, city leaders asked the IT department to install Wi-Fi at various locations: the city’s 8 recreation centers, the Senior Center, and the Development Services’ public information counter. The Recreation Wi-Fi hotspots make the centers more welcoming and more desirable for groups wishing to rent the facilities. Since the installation of the hotspots in late November, each of the Rec Centers now has dozens of Wi-Fi users throughout the day.
Another Wi-Fi hotspot at the Development Services front counter was created in response to citizens experiencing longer wait times as a result of staffing cutbacks and shortened hours of operation. The hotspot allows citizens needing building permits or inspections to continue to work while they wait for consultations with city staff, or to use the city’s Online Development Services Center to find information on forms, fee information, online permitting and research, zoning information, guides and more. An online Customer Service Survey is also available for citizens to allow them the opportunity to provide feedback to city staff.
Johnson County, KS: Johnson County Information Technology Services Client Liaison Program
The Johnson County Information Technology Services Client Liaison Program was created to focus on the delivery of excellent customer service to County departments. The objective of the program is to provide the best possible business and technical support services to County departments by identifying the scope of services, communication channels, and stating expectations explicitly.
Fort Wayne, IN: Performance Measurement and 311 Call Center – a Perfect Marriage!
Our 311 call center has recently created a performance scorecard that will be able to report our 311 department users service delivery times and our 311 call center performance metrics on a monthly basis. This achievement was made possible by working with our IT department to create interfaces between our Lagan software and the various software systems that were being used by other 311 departments. Now, our city leaders are able to see consolidated performance measures monthly and know that they are standardized and consistent across the board because they are generated from one source – our 311 system.
The scorecard is hosted on our internal intranet and shows 311 and city-wide department performance measures at a glance. In our six month test period, we have seen the percentage of 311 departments meeting their service delivery goals increase dramatically. In addition we also house benchmarking, best practices, and customer satisfaction data on our scorecard. City leaders are able to print out information upon demand if desired.
Miami-Dade County, FL: Miami-Dade GIS Oblique Imagery Implementation
With current economic constraints and a growing number of responsibilities, the Miami-Dade County Office of the Property Appraiser faces the challenge of re-inspecting every property at least once every 5 years (Florida Statute 193.023). For years, the Property Appraiser carried out this task with the only available solution: sending inspectors into the field to physically examine properties. Recent growth of Geographic Information System (GIS)-related technologies made it possible for the Property Appraiser (PA) to seek out a more cost effective and efficient alternative hence, the implementation of a GIS Oblique Imagery Solution.
The solution was to be implemented in partnership with the County’s Information Technology Department as a collaborative partnership in order to leverage the technology as an enterprise solution across the County. Since the beginning, both agencies recognized the importance of implementing this technology in an enterprise environment, making the benefits available to all county departments, leveraging costs for hardware, software and support staff as well as providing uninterrupted service on a 24/7 schedule.
This implementation has significantly reduced the cost of the PA re-inspection process in terms of man-hours required to complete an inspection, fuel consumption to mobilize crews, use of county vehicles; all of which makes the overall process much more efficient. The use of enterprise-level infrastructure solutions like Citrix XenApp servers has made the data and tools available to over 1300 users, reporting benefits to many departments.
Fort Worth, TX: Public CFW Project Website
As part of the City of Fort Worth’s initiative for a more accessible government for the citizens, residents and visitors. One of the items identified was the ability for the public to review the status/information of Capital Projects (progress, geographic area affected, and other important information). The ability for the City of Fort Worth to make the information about Capital Projects available via the internet would be a big step toward our initiative to be a more accessible government.
Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments: National Capital Region Geospatial Data Exchange (NCR GDX)
The use of geospatial information for emergency response has increased significantly due to the development of such regional initiatives as Virginia’s VIPER, Maryland’s OSPREY, MDOT’s CHART and RITIS systems. These systems use geospatial viewers of one type or another to aggregate reference data and live feeds to support improved situational awareness. Data sharing is the foundation – these systems rely almost exclusively on sharing arrangements with other government and commercial entities. Success depends on overcoming traditional political hurdles, technical issues of file formats and conversions, secure sharing pathways, and integration of external data into home systems.
This project explored these issues and resulted in the development of the National Capital Region’s Geospatial Data Exchange (NCR GDX), which was built on the Virtual USA (vUSA) foundation created by the Department of Homeland Security. The GDX includes role-based, organization-to-organization sharing of files and data feeds, a secure sharing solution that includes double-proxying of information links, and integration directly into ESRI’s Flex viewer. Additional tools have been developed in Esri’s ArcGIS Desktop environment to publish local datasets to the NCR GDX as well as consume shared data links already published in the NCR GDX portal.
Users can publish local datasets from their desktop environment to a NCR GDX ArcGIS Server “cloud” where map services are created on-the-fly and available to the NCR GDX portal for sharing. This allows jurisdictions without ArcGIS Server to participate in regional data sharing as well as provide a mechanism for fast publication of data during an emergency. Consumption tools promote the user to connect to the NCR GDX and consume jurisdictional data links directly in ArcGIS Desktop where analysts can perform additional analysis, create maps for publication or other GIS operations.
Montgomery County, MD: On-Line Bikeways Map Viewer
The Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Technology Services – Geographic Information Systems (DTS-GIS) team and Department of Transportation (DOT) have published a detailed County bicycling map application with several unique tools. Additionally, a similarly styled poster-sized paper map has also been offered to the public.
Los Angeles County, CA: Los Angeles County Location Management System
The Los Angeles County Location Management System (LMS) has developed a web-based tool to manage a single, comprehensive geographic database of locations countywide. The LMS enables jurisdictions to manage their own information, which eliminates duplicate maintenance activities, ensures information is up to date, and provides a single authoritative source for critical information.
Baltimore, MD: CityView: Where Community and Technology Meet
The mission of EGIS, under the Mayor’s Office of Information Technology (MOIT) is to collect, organize, manage, standardize, and distribute geospatial data and systems within an enterprise technology solution; providing cost savings and improving the quality of services provided by the City of Baltimore. EGIS leverages geographic technology along with associated tools and applications to support daily City operations, emergency response, data analysis, and policy making.
Philadelphia, PA: OpenDataPhilly Portal
Enterprise GIS has been a cornerstone of the City of Philadelphia’s IT infrastructure for well over two decades. While the City has made a sizeable investment in its spatial data infrastructure during this time, it has also seen a considerable return on that investment, particularly in the areas of service delivery, public safety, economic development, and operations. City leaders are now committed to increasing this benefit to both the City and the public by enhancing no-cost public access to data and transparency to government through OpenDataPhilly.
Available for use in 2011, OpenDataPhilly is a portal built by Azavea, a Philadelphia-based geographic information systems (GIS) software firm that makes municipal and non-municipal data searchable through an on-line catalog at http://opendataphilly.org. It is based on the idea that providing free and easy access to data information encourages better and more transparent government and a more engaged and knowledgeable citizenry.
The GIS Services Group at the City’s Office of Innovation and Technology is responsible for managing the City’s enterprise GIS data and has made over 100 of these enterprises spatial datasets available through the creation of a variety of web services and via file download, all searchable on OpenDataPhilly.
Chula Vista, CA: Mapping Site for Abandoned Properties
The City of Chula Vista, like many other cities has seen a decrease in housing permits issued and an increase in foreclosures during the past few years. To offset the negative effects of these distressed properties on the surrounding neighborhood, the City of Chula Vista passed an ordinance requiring that foreclosed properties be maintained. The Residential Abandonment Program (RAP) requires financial institutions foreclosing on a property to maintain the vacant house to neighborhood standards. The City’s Code Enforcement Division, responsible for maintaining the RAP data preferred a system that could visualize this data on an interactive GIS map. This would allow staff to see clusters of foreclosures and help determine where to focus their limited resources.
Working with Code Enforcement staff, Chula Vista’s GIS team built a web site utilizing ESRI’s ArcServer that displays the foreclosure locations on top of a Google Map. Property information is read from the city’s permitting database, mapped with a Google “balloon” and color coded based on inspection status. Users in the office or in the field can click on the balloon to retrieve the case number, status and case history for each property. Since the initial development of the mapping program, management in the Code Enforcement Division have noticed a significant increase in productivity. Officers report this is a result of having more time to process cases rather than spending time determining property locations or printing driving directions between locations.
Miami-Dade County, FL: Miami-Dade County Voter Viewer GIS Application
Miami-Dade County Elections Department (Elections) is responsible for overseeing voting related functions in a county of approximately 2.5 million citizens. Living in thirty-five municipalities and unincorporated areas, this large population makes Miami-Dade the eighth largest county in the United States. The department administers elections for over 1.2 million registered voters with twenty early voting locations and 828 precincts.
In 2011, the department oversaw four county-wide elections and seventeen municipal and special ballot elections. To track and allocate precincts and voters, Elections uses a tabular data voter registration system (VRS) called Voter Focus, from VR Systems, Inc. During the 2008 Presidential Election, Elections focused its efforts in improving the quality of their registration system and voter database. This was accomplished by leveraging Miami-Dade County’s technology tools and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) street and address data to correct discrepancies between their in-house tabular street database and voter precinct assignments. The hands-on review improved the data accuracy by 2.5%, which correlates to over 35,000 voters who were properly assigned a precinct. Since 2008, over 4.5 million voter records have been verified using GIS analysis. While these tools offered a great improvement in data accuracy, they were limited to a handful of staff with access to the raw files and software to view the GIS data.
To share and leverage the information with the entire department, including, planners and registration specialists, Miami-Dade County’s Information Technology Department (ITD) developed the Voter Viewer system (VV). The GIS application, deployed locally over the county’s intranet, allows the entire Elections staff to view map-based voter locations, streets, addresses, electoral boundaries and identify VRS discrepancies on the fly.
Miami-Dade County, FL: Miami-Dade County’s GIS Employee Locator
Miami-Dade County’s Employee Locator is an online system developed to assist County officials in directing resources and planning countywide emergency activations such as an approaching hurricane. The application uses GIS to display the geographic location of each County employee’s home on a map with photos, personal contact information and work profiles. The employee’s work location and associated division are also displayed.
While the majority of employees live within the boundaries of the County, many employees live in the three counties adjacent to Miami-Dade. Using available data from external providers, the map is seamless and includes adjacent counties. Every effort is made to place employees in the correct geographic location. The employee information is searchable by name, identification number, home address and work location and other criteria. Spatial Geographic selection tools such as selection using the mouse to define an area are also available.
Before, during and after a disaster, officials can identify the areas affected and use the information from the Employee Locator shifting resources as needed to provide the best response based on employees’ work responsibilities and proximity to the disaster. The Employee Locator can also be used to locate employees living in affected areas who might need assistance. The Employee Locator was deployed in December 2010 and was available for the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season.
Santa Monica, CA: Mobile Parking Website
Santa Monica has a large population of upscale, tech-savvy residents, visitors and businesses, all of whom expect to have online content delivered to their smart phones and tablets in mobile friendly formats. City staff has leveraged a web based parking application to create a set of real-time dynamic parking maps and web pages optimized for mobile use. Page requests sourcing from mobile devices are automatically redirected to the mobile version of the site.
The mobile parking maps apply the real-time XML parking data to Google maps. Colored push-pin icons represent parking structures and lots. A green pin indicates ample space available, yellow indicates that space is growing short, red means almost full, and purple pins are for lots where there is no occupancy data available. Touching one of the colored pins opens a pop-up window displaying the number of available spaces along with links to a more detailed map and to lot photos, directions, hours and rates. Residents and visitors coming to downtown are currently using the service to quickly and easily locate available parking and in return, reduce traffic congestion.
North Kingstown, RI: Connect to Rec – Online Parks and Recreation Portal
The Town of North Kingstown’s staff, residents and students voiced their concerns on the need for delivering a more efficient municipal Parks and Recreation registration process. The goals for this streamlined process were: 1) to enable better collaboration between the constituents of North Kingstown and the local government, 2) to deliver greater streamlined and transparent services for the citizens and 3) to improve the citizens ability to register, pay for and track all recreation activities.
The North Kingstown Department of Information Systems teamed with the Recreation Department and a private sector company to develop an online recreation portal. In March 2011, North Kingstown completed the implementation of an online Parks and Recreation Management system with ECLINK, a Cincinnati based e-government solutions provider for local governments. The Parks and Recreation solution was comprised of a front end system that includes online event /class registrations, membership sign-ups, Facility Reservations and a payment system. This system also includes the management system, which gave North Kingstown staff a comprehensive case management module to streamline program registrations, memberships, reservations, payments and to provide more proper and timely customer service. Furthermore, the municipality now has the ability to create analytic reports to identify potential trends or problem areas in parks and recreation programs that would not have been apparent previously.
At the time, North Kingstown was a pioneer in the State of RI to deploy a solution of this magnitude. The gains accomplished with the online parks and recreation management systems are unquestionable – improved communication with constituents, transparency, automated workflow and central repository, time and resource efficiencies, better control, increased revenues, improved 24x7 customer service, efficient workflow, and a complete tracking system. The success of our online registrations has prompted requests for expansion of our offerings. For the future North Kingstown would like to expand the facility registrations to not only our building registrations but our parks as well.
Philadelphia, PA: Business Services Center Website
The Business Services Center is a cross-departmental endeavor to make the process of starting or expanding a business easily understood. It is an interactive online tool that provides a single informational resource for operating a business in the City of Philadelphia.
Before this tool was created, businesses had no central point of information for City-related issues. Business owners voiced frustration because they had difficulty understanding what taxes and licenses are required for specific industries, and what services or financial incentives the City offered to help their business. Using an interactive wizard, entrepreneurs answer a series of questions about their business, and then receive a personalized dashboard directing them to licenses, taxes, financial incentives, and other regulations specific to their business. The site provides direct access to applications for appropriate licenses and permits, as well as all existing guides or instructions. The site also includes a calendar to highlight events from a variety of City departments and partner nonprofit events, as well as announcements, organizing relevant business information. The site was developed on a platform that allows for content management to happen at the department level, fostering nimble response to important information and changing regulations.
Scottsdale, AZ: Digital City Council Packets
Since their inception, the City Council packets produced by the City Clerk’s office have been paper based. In recent years, as building development and land cases became more complex, the packets grew in size. Some of the larger packets contained over 40 agenda items and were 1400 pages in length The manual process was costly, time consuming and resource intensive. Scottsdale’s Information Technology department worked with the City Clerk’s office to design and implement a new digital solution to streamline the process.
Guilford County, NC: New County Website
Guilford County is the third largest county in the state of North Carolina, with a population of approximately 488,000 citizens. Many of these citizens turn to the official Guilford County website to access services and information provided and maintained by the Guilford County government. This information can range from real estate data and statistics for County property owners to public health information and job openings within the County government. The County website received over 255,000 unique visits in 2010.
This entry examines how Web Applications staff in the Information Services (IS) Department salvaged a website development project by utilizing open source content management software for the build or re-construction of the official County Website with no funding for the project while reinforcing departmental ownership of featured content through project collaboration.
Cumberland County, PA: New County Website
Before the latest website overhaul, our community was in need of a new county website. The previous site was outdated, cluttered and difficult to navigate. There was a clear correlation between the lack of current information on the county website and the large amount of phone calls to our staff from citizens with common questions. The content management system (CMS) we were using did not support many functionality features and was just not meeting our growing online standards of the new digital age.
After evaluating the proposals sent to the city from various contractors, CivicPlus was chosen based on their affordability and reputation for developing award winning community websites. A project management team was formed with CivicPlus to plan out the site’s design, navigation layout and implementation timeline. We intended the site design to be centered on the community’s wants and needs for information. Since the website launched in April 2011, we have received substantial positive feedback from the regional community. Since coming online, the county website has received positive feedback from citizens for having a professional look and providing useful content.
Today our county’s Facebook page has nearly 700 likes and more than 300 Twitter followers. In August 2008 merely weeks after launching the new site, our website had generated approximately 13,000 site visits. A year later, in August of 2009, the website had garnered approximately 77,500 unique visits, indicating a 596% increase in website traffic in one calendar year.
Fort Worth, TX: eCouncil Speaker Card System
The City of Fort Worth wanted to expand conversion of business practices associated with council meetings into an electronic format to provide greater transparency, citizen involvement, and efficiencies. One area identified as an opportunity was the speaker cards that citizens filled out when they attended a council meeting and wanted to speak on an agenda item or give a presentation to council. Response: No COTS solution was identified that would allow citizens to sign up via the Internet to speaker at council meetings. A web based application was created that integrated into our web based council agenda. Citizens can review the agenda from the web via their computer, smart phone, or tablet.
Upon finding an agenda item they want to voice an opinion about, they can click on the speaker card icon under the agenda item. The application then allows them to enter a comment about the item or register to speak about the item at the council meeting. In addition, they can use the system to sign up to give a citizen’s presentation on a topic that is not included in the agenda. Upon signing up to speak at council, a citizen will be presented a confirmation that includes tips for making a successful presentation to the Council. The Speaker Card application was also built to support multiple languages and currently is available in both English and Spanish. The speaker card system also has a web based view that was specifically designed for the council members to access via their iPads to review the submitted cards. The interface lists agenda items in the order they are addressed in council and under each is a list of all the speaker cards for the agenda item. There is also a “Stats” button to the right of the agenda item; if clicked, a grid will be presented that provides tallies for the number of speaker and comment cards falling into the categories of for, against, and undecided that have been entered for that agenda item. In addition, there is a further breakdown that shows the same stats for cards entered from citizens within the council member’s district.
San Diego, CA: Web Development for San Diego Association Chapter
City of San Diego employees are members of the Chapter. Needed an easy-to-edit website for none programmers and a newsletter template developed for City of San Diego NMA Chapter (a non-profit entity) to be able to communicate leadership development, community programs, and volunteer opportunities.
Response: Rhonda Ciardetti volunteered and created a new budget friendly website (cost: $139 per year) and a newsletter using Microsoft Publisher. Results: Created a no-programming skills needed website so future NMA volunteers will be able to maintain the site. It provides event info, a calendar, and online document archive for sharing information on the Internet. This improved productivity and effectiveness, and accomplished greater efficiencies and cost savings, eliminating the need for technically skilled webmasters. Web analytics for traffic allow for easy to run reports.
Granbury, TX: Developer’s Guide: A Guide to Building and Development in the City of Granbury
The Developer’s Guide was created in-house by City Staff to assist citizens, real estate agents and land developers in understanding the processes and timelines involved in developing property within the City of Granbury. The Developer’s Guide is a comprehensive document with each section broken down into a summary, flowchart, and checklist, followed by frequently asked questions (FAQs) to better communicate the processes involved with development in the City of Granbury.
The City intentionally formatted the document to match that of a development project, moving from zoning approval to the issuance of the Certificate of Occupancy (C.O.). To make the document more user friendly, all applications and calendars within the Developer’s Guide have been hyperlinked to the appropriate pages on the City’s website to create a more interactive document. The Developer’s Guide has received a positive response since its recent adoption from Realtors, Economic Development and members of the City Council. The Guide streamlines multiple development related policies and combines them into a single interactive document.
Boston, MA: Boston About Results (BAR) – The City of Boston’s Performance Management Program
Mayor Menino believes that high quality city services are building blocks for healthy neighborhoods and a successful city. To this end, he has tasked Boston About Results (BAR) with answering three core questions about the performance of Boston’s municipal services: What is City government doing? How well are we doing it? How can we do it better?
To answer these questions the city has deployed of a state-of-the-art performance management system. All 45 departments in the City of Boston are required to participate in the system by building performance scorecards. These scorecards start by identifying the key program areas of the department, then list the specific strategic goals of each division, and then align key performance measures against each goal. Data is populated into the system by the staff members who own the measures and reviewed through a workflow process. All managers citywide have access to the system and can create dashboards or run advanced analytical reports to identify performance issues and ensure that they are meeting their goals.
Denver, CO: Customer Experience Improvement Program 311
The City and County of Denver in 2011 initiated a program to focus on increasing citizen engagement, improving service delivery, increasing collaboration and coordination between Technology Services, 311 and a multitude of agencies throughout the city.
The program is called Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP) and an objective in 2011 was to increase the online web presence of Denver 311 to allow citizens a self-service portal to report non-emergency issues to 311 and Denver agencies. In 2011, there were two implementations of the 311 software application.
An initial web application was deployed successfully in January 2011. In late November 2011, the City and County of Denver released an improved 311 product that included an iPhone application, mobile application for smart phones and a vastly improved 311 web application that provided the ability to report issues from location, increased automated case routing directly to agencies, and information links that provided citizens immediate access to specific agencies. We implemented a technical architecture utilizing a Model-View-Control design pattern that leverages reusable web services on our Oracle Enterprise Service Bus and integrates with our PeopleSoft Customer Relationship Management (CRM) System. It was a resounding success!
San Francisco, CA: A Mobile Solution for Greater Government Transparency
The City of San Francisco developed in-house a set of mobile solutions (Android and Apple iOS applications and a mobile site) using a low-cost platform with the goal of enabling greater government transparency and delivering residents better services.
These groundbreaking mobile products allowed us to achieve these goals mainly by building products that: 1) simplify access to key City information and services; 2) deliver, via mobile devices, audio and video streaming of legislative meetings and mayoral events; and 3) allow residents to connect via social media technologies directly with City agencies, rather than politicians, that are primarily responsible for delivering City services.
Boston, MA: Citizens Connect Live
The City of Boston is focused on understanding and engaging residents to build a better city both for and with them. That strategy is predicated on promoting citizen engagement at all levels of local government business, pursuing Open Government mandates, and providing improved online service capabilities to our users.
Citizens Connect is the City of Boston’s award-winning effort to empower Boston residents to be the City’s “eyes and ears” throughout our neighborhoods. Through this program, constituents can report issues to us via: Mobile App, SMS Text Message, Tweet (Twitter), Online Self-Service Form, Phone Call. As part of the City of Boston’s overall ‘Open Government’ strategy, we are continually looking for ways to increase transparency, participation, collaboration, and service delivery.
We are adding an additional channel to connect with the City, Citizens Connect Live. The online chat feature will increase accessibility and convenience for all site users. Visual tools, such as the ability to exchange screen shots and reference page links, along with the ability for operators to triage chats to other operators or run multiple chats concurrently, will allow for quicker, easier, and more accurate service delivery.
Fairfax County, VA: Government in the Palm of Your Hands
With the explosive growth in mobile technology and consumer use of smart devices, Fairfax County Government is beginning to reshape its public’s experience with use of governmental information and services on mobile devices like iPhone/iPad, Android and Blackberry. In enhancing the County’s long standing goal that citizens should access their government 24/7 without walls, door or clocks, Fairfax County now places government in the palm of their hands with the introduction of mobile apps. Fairfax County Government’s mobile app: Enable citizens instant connectivity to their government; Provide them the benefit of getting services and information from anywhere at anytime by delivering information in a more conveniently accessible platform; Enhances the adoption of online governmental services by citizens by reaching a larger and wider user base; Information and links on how citizens can download the county’s official app for emergency information, news headlines, one-touch calling through our contact directory, GPS maps, news headlines, social media links, transportation resources and more at this link.
Montgomery County, MD: Vehicle Accident Report Purchase System
The Montgomery County, Maryland, on-line Vehicle Accident Report Purchase System (VARPS), developed by the County’s Department of Technology Services (DTS) in collaboration with the Montgomery County Police Department (MCPD), enables users to quickly find and purchase non-fatal vehicle accident and personal injury reports.
VARPS allows users to search for reports by report number (CR#). An accident report or CR# is typically given to the driver(s) or to the pedestrians involved in the accident by a County Police Officer. Vehicle accident reports are typically published on-line within 5 to 7 business days after an accident has occurred. An administrative customer service portal was also built for MCPD staff to easily navigate to the VARPS Internet (Public Access) Home Page, the associated ZyImage Police Accident Report Document Management System, the Skipjack (ePayment administration) Web Site Home Page, and the MCPD web site. The administrative application enables designated staff to find reports by transaction date or keyword, so that staff can confirm purchases and resend reports to customers if necessary. VARPS may be accessed online.
Winston-Salem, NC: Paperless Public Meetings
Sustainability through E-Government is a priority for many local governments in the “new normal” operations of 2012 and paperless solutions can dramatically improve the efficiency of daily operations and provide green benefits to protect our future. The cost of printing paper agenda books has increased significantly while the price of mobile devices has remained constant over the last 18+ months. With the deployment of 20+ iPads and 170+ iPhones, digital agenda books have increased the efficiency of operations at the City of Winston-Salem.
Ann Arbor, MI: Interactive Website for Increased Financial Transparency
In the past, Ann Arbor citizens have had to rely on Freedom of Information Act requests or wait until the Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR) was completed to see how the City’s governmental units are spending taxpayer money. To address this issue, the City of Ann Arbor has created an interactive website, A2OpenBook designed to increase financial transparency by disclosing all expense, revenue, and vendor payment data in a simple and easy to use format.
This approach allows citizens to view this information in a variety of ways (alphabetic, amount, expense type) and in greater detail than is provided by traditional means. In addition, all datasets are available for download to allow consumers of the data even more flexibility to view the data how they see fit.
Indianapolis, IN: RequestIndy
The City of Indianapolis operates a Mayor’s Action Center (MAC). In 2008, newly elected Mayor Ballard challenged his team to improve customer service, create efficiencies, and provide cost saving initiatives. At that time, the MAC would print off emails sent to an account and distribute them amongst the Customer Service Representatives for entry into their CRM, Siebel.
Due to volume, turnaround time for processing requests was days. The MAC was first to participate in Mayor Ballard’s IndyStat (performance measures) program that led to many discussions about what we could accomplish to meet the Mayor’s challenges. It became clear that offering an online method to report services would help eliminate the backlog and increase the customer experience.
In June of 2010, RequestIndy was launched as an online portal. RequstIndy allows citizens to request services and report issues online 24/7/365. Citizens may access an aerial street level view of an area, allowing them to report an exact location of potholes, high weeds and grass and many other problems.
RequestIndy is user-friendly with requests arriving within moments to the correct agencies regardless of day or time. The citizen can even look up the status of requests they have submitted. It was then a natural extension of that project and platform to create mobile applications for reporting service requests. In July 2011, RequestIndy Mobile launched for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices followed by an Android version in November. RequestIndy Mobile and Portal offer convenient ways to connect with city government.
Chula Vista, CA: Point of Purchase Instant Appliance Rebate
The City of Chula Vista allocated $200,000 of its Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funding for development of the Point of Purchase Rebate program. The need was to administer the grant as efficiently as possible. The goal was to give citizens a convenient way to receive an instant rebate as well as provide an incentive to purchase appliances at merchants within the City of Chula Vista, therefore generating local sales tax revenues.
An E-Government custom application and web site was developed that merchant partners use at the point of sale to provide an instant rebate. It confirms product eligibility and gives merchant partners a rebate confirmation. Thus allowing the instant rebate to be applied to the purchase price at the point of sale. Results are 2400 instant rebates issued at merchant partner locations within the City of Chula Vista. These appliance purchases generated $3.8 million in gross sales. Partners include local Best Buy, Home Depot, Kmart, Pacific Sales, and Sears stores.
Asheville, NC: Green PC & Data Center Initiative
The City of Asheville’s Green PC and Data Center Initiative significantly contributed to City Council’s environmental objectives of significantly reducing the City’s energy use and carbon footprint. Through virtualization, cloud computing, and service catalog-enhanced PC rightsizing, this initiative employs new technologies to meet these goals while efficiently serving staff and citizen needs.
This initiative has downsized the City’s data center footprint, reduced energy consumption between 60 and 87% compared to prior energy use, and will reduce electronic material wastes in the affected areas by over 60%. Measurements of reductions in energy use have been tracked both in kilowatt hours consumed, as well as British Thermal Units (heat generated). The measurements from before to after the project reveal a significant achievement towards these goals.
Salt Lake City, UT: Mapping of Solar Potential in the City
Salt Lake City, (population 186,000), strives to be at the forefront of sustainable energy practices and proactively seeks way to make the use of alternative energy sources such as solar feasible for the public. Over the past two years, the City has developed a technology using standard GIS based tools that enables the user to identify the places in the City with the highest solar potential. This process takes into account the available sunlight on any given day of the year and shadows cast by surrounding buildings and landscaping.
The approach is completely unique and the City has applied for a patent on the process. It has garnered attention nationally. Using Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data of the City the process looks at factors such as the angle of the sun month by month, the historic number of sunny days in a given month, and the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings and landscaping to create a model that shows the solar potential of a specific address or section inside the City. The results are then displayed on a standard GIS-based map using color gradients to show those areas with higher solar potential.
Philadelphia, PA: Hara Environmental and Energy Management Software
Following a pledge to make Philadelphia the number one green city in America, newly elected Mayor Michael Nutter created the Office of Sustainability in 2008. Central to its core mission, the Office of Sustainability created the Greenworks Philadelphia initiative – an ambitious plan with 15 sustainability targets in the areas of energy, environment, equity, economy, and engagement. Among other efforts, the Greenworks initiative highlights the importance of energy efficiency in City-owned facilities.
In order to meet the aggressive Greenworks goal of 30% reduction in City energy consumption by 2015, the Office of Sustainability enlisted the services of the Hara Environmental and Energy Management Software (Hara EEM) in September 2010. Hara EEM gives the City of Philadelphia auditable transparency and control of the collective resources consumed and expended by the City, including energy, water, waste, carbon and other natural resources. Hara EEM enables Philadelphia city government to comprehensively and securely manage our environmental record and leverage best practices in order to improve efficiency, manage risk and maximize fiscal responsibility. Hara’s strategy to organize and understand energy consumption data, understand impact, change and track consumption habits, and create best-practices allows the Office of Sustainability to involve city planners, set target energy goals, reduce energy consumption to meet goals, and return capital savings to the City’s General Fund budget that are created from reduced energy consumption.
Guilford County, NC: Mobile and Electronic Inspection Process – Water Quality
Water Quality is one of the Service Groups in the Environmental Health Division of the Guilford County Department of Public Health. This group is responsible for overseeing the construction, repair and abandonment of water supply wells in Guilford County and provides services to the public, well contractors and pump installers. Services provided include the following: Water Supply Well Sampling, Issuance of Well Permits, Siting and Inspection of Well Repair, Regulating Well Abandonment.
Documentation of well inspection results required Guilford County Environmental Health (EH) inspectors to come into the office at least once per day to pick up and/or prepare paperwork. Paper file folders were kept of all the well inspections and required a large amount of space to store years of inspection data. In addition, inspection supervisors manually assigned well inspectors to inspections each day using a paper based scheduling process. This entry examines how the Water Quality group partnered with the Guilford County Information Services department to enable the transition from a manual paper based scheduling and inspection process by utilizing technology available in the County’s Accela inspection management system and mobile technology that enabled EH inspectors to spend more time in the field performing and documenting inspections and less time processing paper work in the office.
03-26-2012
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An independent panel of judges has identified the winners of PTI's 2011–2012 Technology Solutions Awards. Read on for a list of award winners and other recipients of recognition.