2009-2010 Technology Solutions Award Winners

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An independent panel of judges has identified the winners of PTI’s 2009-2010 Technology Solutions Awards.

"The entries show that PTI member governments continue to be at the forefront when it comes to deploying technology at the local level," said PTI Executive Director Alan R. Shark. "As government services come under increasing scrutiny during these difficult budget times, cities and counties must continue to invest in sound technology tools and practices. In the entries that PTI received I think you will see where those investments definitely paid off."

Winners received their awards at the 2010 PTI Technology Solutions and Innovations Conference, March 24-25 in Washington, DC.

Read on for a list of winners and other recipients of recognition. Thank You to all entrants!

Population Categories: A. 1-99,999 B. 100,000-349,999 C. 350,000-749,999 D. 750,000+

Sustainability

WINNERS

Santa Monica, CA [A] PC Power Management
Washtenaw County, MI [B] Healthy Home Portal
Scottsdale, AZ [B] The BIG Map
Mesa, AZ [C] Green IT Strategies
San Diego, CA [D] Enterprise Asset Management

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT

Santa Monica, CA [A] Beach Parking Automated Payment System
Scottsdale, AZ [B] Tax Audit Lead Finder
Fort Worth, TX [C] Storm Water Inlet Cleaning

Public Safety Technology

WINNERS

Corpus Christi, TX [B] IP Soft Phones
Fort Worth, TX [C] Special Needs Assistance Program/CAD Interface

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT

Scottsdale, AZ [B] eSubpoena: Creating Efficiencies in the Criminal and Civil Subpoena Process
Fort Worth, TX [C] Disaster Recovery Planning of GIS Databases Through Automation

Geospatial Information Systems (GIS)

WINNERS

Santa Monica, CA [A] GIS Tools for Homeless Counting
Corpus Christi, TX [B] Mapping People to Services
Scottsdale, AZ [B] GIS Disaster Recovery Implementation
Boston, MA [C] GIS Data Hub
Montgomery County, MD [D] Mapping School Absenteeism for Managing H1N1 Influenza Outbreak

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT

Los Alamos County, NM [A] Orthophotomosaic Map Series
Guilford County, NC [C] In-house Collection of Street Level Photographs
Philadelphia, PA [D] Automating Philly311 Reporting and Dispatching of Citizen Service Requests

Telecommunications & IT

WINNERS

Altamonte Springs, FL [A] Building A World-Class IT Organization
Washtenaw County, MI [B] Data Center Collaboration
Johnson County, KS [C] Wise Path Cyber Security Awareness Campaign
San Diego, CA [D] OneSD Program

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT

North Kingstown, RI [A] Government Efficiency Through IT Shared Services and Consolidation
Fort Worth, TX [C] CodeOPS – ITSM Solid Waste Interface

Web & E-Government Services

WINNERS

North Kingstown, RI [A] Serving the Community by Streamlining the Permitting Process
Montrose, CO [A] Mega-Menus and Robust Site Search Connect Five Montrose, Colorado Websites to Community Portal
Scottsdale, AZ [B] Employee Self Service Portal
Boston, MA [C] Boston Citizens Connect iPhone App
Mesa, AZ [C] Citizen Dashboard for Bond and Capital Improvement Projects
Fairfax County, VA [D] Public Engagement on Fairfax County’s FY 2010 Budget
New York, NY [D] NYCStat Stimulus Tracker

SIGNIFICANT ACHIEVEMENT

Scottsdale, AZ [B] QuickPay Utilities Application
Johnson County, KS [C] Line Management Program

Abstracts

Santa Monica, CA: PC Power Management

Personal computers tend to be left on all day and sometimes all night regardless of whether they are being used or not. This results in significant levels of unnecessary energy consumption which drives up costs and increases the generation of greenhouse gasses. Individual power management schemes, available through Windows, have proven ineffective.

A centralized power management system pushes power management policies to workstations through the city network. This has resulted in a 30.8% drop in power consumption, a calculated annual savings of $28,568.39, and 137,890 fewer calculated pounds of greenhouse gases produced each year.

Washtenaw County, MI: Healthy Home Portal

Like many governments, Washtenaw County’s departmental and service delivery structure doesn’t map perfectly to the way citizens think of their needs. Like many governments, we have attempted different organizational structures to better match citizen expectations.

Like many governments, we have tried different approaches to present services and information in a way that is easy to navigate and that feels less bureaucratic. After various attempts at “A to Z” lists, three columns, four columns, uber departments and more, a team from eight departments was looking at a list of dozens of overlapping services and departments, scratching their heads, when a cartoonist appeared. The response: The Washtenaw County Health Home Portal is an approachable, easy to use, easy to market conglomeration of services and information related to environmental issues around the home.

Scottsdale, AZ: The BIG Map

Objective: Georeference City Documents and provide a search vehicle for them. The BIG Map integrates nine different systems that are all geographically based. These systems include the Community Development System (CDS), Building Inspection and Permitting system (BIPs), Land Information System, Scottsdale Business License System, Case History, Hummingbird Document Management, Development Agreements and Subdivisions.

CDS and BIPs contain information for zoning and development public hearing cases, plan review, construction permits and inspections since 1989. The BIG Map allows the user to search by an address or intersection. The result is a map that allows the user to select a single parcel or all the parcels displayed on the map. The results can include plans, permits, right-of-way permits, from 1989 to present, public hearing cases since the City of Scottsdale was established in 1951, business licenses and development agreements.

Mesa, AZ: Green IT Strategies

Mesa’s progress continues in successfully finding ways to incorporate green IT with very limited capital investment. Successes this past year include power conservation in an aging Data Center and in-house developed PC power management.

San Diego, CA Enterprise Asset Management

The City of San Diego developed an enterprise asset management (EAM) system that has improved its ability to account for and maintain its infrastructure.

As an example of how the system works, consider the notification of an inoperable streetlight. When the call is received, a call center employee asks for the address, then accesses a GIS map showing the streetlights at that location. Using this map, the exact streetlight is identified and its location verified prior to dispatching a technician. While the GIS provides visual information for the streetlight, the ERP provides reporting functionality and documentation capability to the system.

After selecting the streetlight in GIS, the ERP provides detailed data including component schematics, work history, and other calls received. After getting all necessary information, the call center employee issues a work order and assigns a technician. Job status and completion information is tracked in ERP.

Several years after implementation, Project SYNERGY’s first major enhancement was online customer service for citizens. This advanced system gives citizens another means (other than telephone) to submit repair requests.

Project SYNERGY was further enhanced with addition of GPS devices to street sweepers. This effort has allowed sweeper operations to be managed by Project SYNERGY. Today, with implementation of field computers, mobile infrastructure module and GIS mobile software, the City is able to complete management activities from the field.

Santa Monica, CA: Beach Parking Automated Payment System

The management of beach parking lots in Santa Monica has been problematic for many years. Full time parking attendants can mitigate some of the issues, but they are expensive and can create their own problems. The introduction of a special purpose beach facility and its parking lot introduced an additional set if issues and requirements into the mix.

The city has implemented a fully automated multi-bay parking meter (pay station) with a World Wide Web interface as a pilot project. The system, which allows pre-paid parking reservations and provides real time credit card reconciliation, monitoring, and reports, has proven more effective at helping to manage its beach lot than any previous solution. The city has plans to deploy an additional 14 systems in beach parking lots in the near future.

Scottsdale, AZ: Tax Audit Lead Finder

In the current economic climate it is important for our city to use its human capital as efficiently as possible and to ensure the tax payers are remitting the proper amount Transaction Privilege, Use and Bed tax according to the city’s tax ordinance. We wanted to ensure our Tax Audit team was maximizing their time performing audits and minimal time researching businesses to audit.

The City of Scottsdale’s Database Administrator worked with the Financial Management’s technology staff to build a Data Cube based on business’s tax return filings to automatically find anomalies in returns and flag those businesses for audits or further research.

Fort Worth, TX: GIS and Storm Water Inlet Cleaning

The City of Fort Worth is integrating GIS with inlet cleaning to create a public works program that helps safeguard our citizens and their property from harmful storm water runoff. Clogged or congested inlets can lead to poor drainage and potential flooding hazards. GIS allows field crews to proactively clean inlets while improving internal operations and reducing the unit cost of maintenance.

Corpus Christi, TX: IP Soft Phones

The Corpus Christi Police Department had a need for telephone service in the patrol cars assigned to the uniform division supervisors. The budget does not allow for purchase and or lease of cellular phone service for the uniformed patrol division. Supervisors contact parties that are complaining on officers actions or contacting others within the department on a daily basis.

Police supervisors in other divisions are given cellular phones and those are paid for by the department. All of the supervisors in the Uniform Patrol Division have been using personal cell phones and the city was not covering any of the costs, this was resulting in out of pocket expenses by the supervisors and civilians having access to the supervisors personal number.

Corpus Christi uses a Cisco IP telephone system and just recently upgraded the phone system at the Police Department. All Mobile Data Computers used in Public Safety are connected to our domain via air card and NetMotion.

In an attempt to provide phone service for the patrol supervisors we installed Cisco soft phone software on a test car. The phone administrator created a test number for the vehicle. On the first test of the equipment we used a stereo headset with boom microphone and it worked. To our amazement we did not have a big lag in the conversation that is sometimes found over VoIP phone conversations. Calls were made internal to the city and to long distance numbers and all calls were clear. We then decided that the patrol supervisors would not and cannot use a standard headset for the phone use in the patrol cars due to officer safety and found that the IPP200 Internet Power phone was ideal for our application.

Fort Worth, TX: Special Needs Assistance Program / CAD Interface

The Special Needs Assistance Program (SNAP) is a program designed to provide the Fort Worth - Tarrant County Office of Emergency Management with vital information on Tarrant County residents with permanent disabilities.

The implementation of an interactive Internet application for SNAP, designed and coded in-house, has enabled individuals and social service organizations to easily enter and modify information online about residents who may require special attention during times of emergency.

Scottsdale AZ: eSubpoena: Creating Efficiencies in the Criminal and Civil Subpoena Process

Both the Scottsdale City Court and Scottsdale Prosecution Division had a manual officer subpoena process whereby both areas created an Outlook meeting request to the desired City of Scottsdale Police Officers or other City employees. There was no integration with either the Court’s or Prosecution’s case management systems, thus the subpoena information was being created twice, once in the respective case management system, and then in the Outlook meeting request.

An integrated electronic subpoena method was proposed to automate the subpoena process and provide one central location for accessing, viewing and tracking subpoena information for the Court, Prosecution Division and Police Department.

Fort Worth, TX: Disaster Recovery Planning of GIS Databases Through Automation

The City of Fort Worth has a centralized GIS database maintained by the IT Solutions Department, which is utilized by over 400 users throughout the city. In the event of a disaster, if this database were completely immobilized or destroyed the effects would be extremely detrimental. It would hinder not only the departments that utilize this data, but the Emergency Management Office’s analysis and recovery efforts as well.

The result of this project needed to create a functional GIS database that could be used quickly in an enterprise fashion, and was in a format that existing GIS users at the City of Fort Worth were comfortable using.

Santa Monica, CA: GIS Tools for Homeless Counting

Counting the homeless is so difficult that obtaining an accurate count was considered impossible until recently. Statistics on the homeless are used to determine Federal, State, County, and City funding levels, to formulate new service programs, to measure the success of service programs, and as part of the U.S. Census. So, it is important to obtain statistics that are as accurate as possible.

Every year the city organizes a group of over 250 volunteers who walk an assigned neighborhood on a specific night, counting the homeless individually, recording locations, demographics, and the nature of their shelter. A county agency gathers similar data in local shelters, jail, motels, and hospitals. This data is input to the city’s GIS where it is used to produce maps and reports that provide detailed and accurate statistics on Santa Monica’s homeless population.

Corpus Christi, TX: Mapping People to Services

In an effort to educate the organization on the importance of the staff within the MIS Department and the intricate web between the communications of various software applications an existing software application was leveraged to compile a graphical representation of that data.

The Police Department has a tool named i2 Analyst Notebook that is used to graphically layout crime scenes. Data can be fed into the application by manual entry or uploaded from spreadsheets. The MIS Department created spreadsheets for each information systems division listing the services that each employee provides. That data was then uploaded into i2 Analyst Notebook and a graphical representation of the department’s support functions was born.

Scottsdale, AZ: GIS Disaster Recovery Implementation

Scottsdale’s enterprise Geographic Information System (GIS) is considered mission critical to the City. This is due to the multitude of city applications that connect to and utilize the data stored there for daily business decisions. Examples include water infrastructure, public safety response and the ability to respond to emergencies that span large geographic areas.

In the event of an outage or problem, the GIS database server has been designated as being one that needs to be recovered as soon as possible. Because of this determination, IT needed to define a strategy to implement an effective disaster recovery solution.

Disaster Recovery plans often involve housing a “hot” or “cold” server at an offsite location selected to be a redundant site. For the most part, this means that the spare or secondary server will be sitting idle at the alternative site.

The City of Scottsdale utilizes a five-year replacement schedule for all server hardware, which is funded by the City through annual installments. The GIS production database server and its test database server were both due for their five-year replacements. The database administration team used this opportunity to re-architect these two servers so that the replacements would greatly enhance the systems recoverability in the case of disaster.

By purchasing identical hardware, utilizing the city’s existing SAN and through the careful configuration of the test and production servers, the team was able to provide a level of coverage very close to that of a dedicated spare without the additional cost. The Production GIS database server now resides at the city’s primary data center and the test GIS database server resides at an alternate site. As part of a previous project the SAN storage was also replicated to the alternate site. In the event that the primary server becomes unavailable, the test server can be quickly reconfigured to provide production services.

Boston MA: GIS Data Hub

The GIS Data Hub was designed to meet two important goals. First, we wanted to improve the way we fulfilled requests from City employees for GIS data and second, we wanted to make GIS data available to the public so that residents and researchers could have easy access to a host of useful information. The GIS Data Hub was launched in August 2009 on the City’s website and has achieved both goals.

City employees use the GIS Data Hub as a self-serve tool to view and download data that helps them improve services and communicate information to Mayor Thomas Menino and his leadership team. In the past, requests for this data were fulfilled personally by the GIS Team and required a significant amount of time and effort. By freeing up those resources, we have been able to improve the service we offer and expand the amount of data available in the Hub, including enhancements that will launch this quarter (stimulus funding spend and crime information)

Constituents can use the GIS Data Hub to view and download data about our city. For example, through this application, residents can see what service issues neighbors have reported in their community; mapmakers can download GIS layers; and anyone can browse through and print out maps from the city’s map gallery.

Montgomery County, MD: Mapping School Absenteeism for Managing H1N1 Influenza Outbreak

The Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Technology Services - Geographic Information Systems (DTS-GIS) team, in cooperation with the County s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), Public Health Services (PHS), developed an ArcGIS based Mapping School Absenteeism Application (MSAA) to provide the Public Health Emergency Planning and Response team from the DHHS (staff) with useful geographic and attribute data information and to improve Public Health staff efficiency for obtaining information about absenteeism in schools and student exclusions due to flu-like symptoms in school during the H1N1 influenza pandemic.

The MSAA application functionality includes geographical data display, and information from Public Health Services databases, including School Service Areas, High School Clusters, all school locations, number of excluded students from the school due to flu-like illness symptoms, and percentages of individual school absences.

Staff need only call up the application to develop daily maps that can update to depict the school absenteeism patterns across the county, provide delineations by school enrollment area, and update the percent absent for each reporting school excluding schools with no submitted absenteeism rates. The Montgomery County (MC) geographic information data presented in the MSAA reflects information downloaded daily by a DTS-GIS staff member.

Los Alamos County, NM: Orthophotomosaic Map Series

The Los Alamos County Orthophotomosaic Map book is a product of the Information Technology Division, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Services. It is a compilation of six of the county’s geospatial data layers such as the county’s Parcel Cadastral layer, 10 foot contour layer, trails layer, the streets and address annotation layer, and the September 2008 orthophoto imagery.

The map book is for use by the public to enhance community awareness in a spatial context and by those departments that have direct public contact to help in displaying spatial relationships.

Guilford County, NC: In-house Collection of Street Level Photographs

Guilford County’s property appraisal staff is preparing for a 2012 countywide real property reappraisal. As part of the research for this project, it was decided that street level photos of each improved parcel would enhance the accuracy of the project and provide the taxpayer with additional confidence in the process. Due to other ongoing initiatives within the County, this project had to be accomplished using existing internal resources.

The initial goal was to acquire as many street level photos as possible in preparation for the March 2010, rollout of the new tax system. In May 2009, Tax Department staff, using common digital cameras, began taking photographs of single-family residential structures. The project began simply, with the image names being manually edited on a daily basis.

It quickly became evident that if any substantial progress was to be made a more sophisticated workflow was needed. This entry examines the evolution of this project from the partnership between the Tax and GIS Departments to how GIS and GPS technologies were used to increase productivity and create a more efficient and effective workflow.

Philadelphia, PA: Automating Philly 311 Reporting and Dispatching of Citizen Service Requests

Philly311, the City of Philadelphia’s new customer service center launched in late 2008, has already received over 1.2 million customer calls and over 60,000 city department service requests. Due to budget constraints and a tight timeline during implementation, it was decided that the core support system used in the Center would be implemented and managed by an external ASP provider. This presented many challenges in how the city would access, store and manage data generated in the center and how those data and results would be mapped. Initially paper maps and spreadsheet reports were generated by dedicated GIS Staff at the central technology office.

The solution included a data management system that can be operated through a web-interface solely by Philly311 staff and that automatically generates error feedback and adds service request / incident data to the central GIS data warehouse. Simultaneously, an online-mapping application allows city users to dynamically generate maps based on a combination of criteria such as incident time and status, handling department, and geopolitical division.

This solution presented the most cost-effective way to address two of the most pressing challenges, namely, how to generate on-line maps of service requests in a way that could be administered by Philly311 staff without any dedicated GIS resources; and how to efficiently organize and store data as well as clean and verify addresses before those addresses enter a City work-order management system.

Altamonte Springs, FL: Build a World-Class I.T. Organization

During the summer of 2004 we were hit hard by three hurricanes. Since our data center in City Hall provided only Category 1 protection, each time a major hurricane approached, we would literally dismantle the entire data center, pack it up, and move it across the parking lot to a safer location. It was hard work, and we were out of business for several hours during each move.

These events led the City to enact a multi-year plan to build a World-Class I.T. organization with Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity plans that would ensure reliability and availability of critical systems, which facilitates the city in providing information and services to its employees and residents.

Washtenaw County, MI: Data Center Collaboration

Washtenaw County’s former data center was located in the lower level of a 100 year old building. The infrastructure had significant problems with water leakage as well as coolant, mechanical & electrical problems. Additionally, there were mold issues which posed health concerns among staff.

The county evaluated purchasing or retrofitting alternative buildings however the cost was between 1.3 and 1.6 million dollars.

Washtenaw County partnered with the City of Ann Arbor and consolidated data centers. Washtenaw County was able to save approximately one million dollars in cost avoidance by relocating to the City of Ann Arbor data center. The combined data center now serves all of Washtenaw County and City of Ann Arbor staff and citizens.

Johnson County, KS: Wise Path Cyber Security Awareness Campaign

The vast majority of people who work in the computer industry are well aware of the threat from cyber criminals. The Johnson County Information Technology Services department provides multiple levels of protection from cyber security risks including, desktop and server virus scanning, spam blocking, and intrusion detection for example. However, the most vulnerable component of the network is the County’s staff. Information Technology Services felt a responsibility to address potential security issues arising from county employees’ use of the county computer systems.

This campaign is specifically designed to reach the County’s nearly 3700 employees, and make them aware of their responsibility and role in cyber security matters.

San Diego, CA: OneSD Program

As late as 2006, the City of San Diego was experiencing a tremendous financial and management crisis that was preventing the City from issuing financial statements, obtaining favorable credit ratings, obtaining debt and grant funding, and effectively funding city operations and long term liabilities.

Mayor Jerry Sanders took office in 2006 and established an aggressive action plan that was put in place to address these fundamental operations deficiencies and replace the city’s administrative operations systems within 30 months. The OneSD project became the centerpiece for reform and was initiated to implement SAP as the city’s core ERP system.

North Kingstown, RI: Government Efficiency Through IT Shared Services and Consolidation

In April of 2009 the North Kingstown Department of Information Systems had successfully completed the consolidation of all North Kingstown municipal IT and Telecommunications infrastructure and management under a single centralized IT governance model. These departments include Tax Assessor, Board of Canvassers, Code Enforcement/Building, Finance, Fire, North Kingstown Free Library, North Kingstown Golf Course, NK School District (ERP system, compliance system, and video streaming system), Police, Public Works, Senior and Human Services, Town Clerk, Town Manager’s Office, Recreation/Leisure Services, and Water Department.

Taking the Consolidation/Shared Services model one step further North Kingstown Department of Information Systems began working with neighboring communities on an inter-municipal Information Technology shared services program.

Working with the North Kingstown Town Manager, Town Council and the Town Council of the neighboring community of Exeter, RI, the Department of Information Systems was able to develop a plan to provide Information Technology support and management as a service. The town of Exeter historically, as did many North Kingstown Departments, relied on consulting services for their technical support and IT services.

In November of 2009 the Town Councils of the Towns of North Kingstown Exeter Rhode Island signed an inter-municipal IT shared services agreement, which was the first of its kind in the state of Rhode Island.

The gains accomplished with the IT Consolidation and Shared Services model are unquestionable. In the months since North Kingstown has completed its internal consolidation and partnered with a neighboring municipality on an inter-municipal Information Technology shared services program, IT services have significantly improved, and the Consolidation and Shared Services model has allowed the organizations involved to realize noteworthy cost savings through economies of scale.

Fort Worth, TX: CodeOPS – ITSM Solid Waste Interface

The implementation of the CodeOps – ITSM Solid Waste Interface has made it easy and convenient for CSRs and other city employees in both departments to easily track the status of any solid waste issue regardless of which department is currently working on it.

The major benefit of the interface implementation, however, is the savings of hours of weekly data entry by the understaffed Customer Service Representative area in the Code Compliance Department. These savings are estimated to be the equivalent of 20 hours a week for a Senior Customer Service Representative, or approximately $16,567 a year.

North Kingstown, RI: Serving the Community by Streamlining the Permitting Process

In September 2009, North Kingstown completed a permitting and complaint tracking system implementation project with a Milford, Massachusetts based company named HawkeyeGS, and the Town of Westford Massachusetts in a Public/Private partnership. The FBGov permitting solution included a front end system that includes an online permit application and violation reporting module that allows the applicants and reporters to track the status of their requests.

This system also includes the back end system, which gave North Kingstown staff a comprehensive case management module to streamline permit approvals, investigations and to provide proper and timelier closure to all cases. Furthermore, the municipality now has the ability to create analytic reports to identify potential trends or problem areas that would not have been apparent previously.

At the time, North Kingstown was the pioneer in the state of Rhode Island to deploy a solution of this magnitude.

Montrose, CO: Mega-Menus and Robust Site Search Connect Five Montrose, Colorado Websites to Community Portal

A ground-breaking online Community Portal has been unveiled by five Montrose, Colorado entities – the City of Montrose, Montrose County, the Montrose Economic Development Corporation, the Montrose Visitors and Convention Bureau and the Montrose Recreation District.

The Montrose Community Portal was created to provide a convenient mechanism for accessing all community information resources while providing a coordinated Web presence for the Montrose area. What is truly unique about this portal is the unified “mega-menus” under the “Explore Montrose” tab. By using this tab on each of the five websites, visitors can find the information they need without knowing which organization it falls under. The “mega-menu” also allows users to navigate to the other partner sites as well as the portal itself.

Another innovative feature of the Montrose Community Portal is the site search function provided by CivicPlus. If a site visitor searches for a specific service, the portal’s search function quickly searches all of the partnered sites.

Each partner agreed to a monochromatic theme across all of the websites so that visitors notice a distinct fluidity that is accentuated by each site’s cohesive design. This concept has maximized usability as the end user always knows they are within the Montrose Community Portal.

Through the use of “mega-menus,” a robust internal search engine and cohesive designs, the Montrose Community Portal project has taken the online citizen-government experience to new heights. Now, citizens, tourists and potential businesses can access a central hub for information about the Montrose area.

Scottsdale, AZ: Employee Self Service Portal

Application Development consistently received complaints from various user groups about not being able to find City of Scottsdale custom software solutions. In some cases, some customers were close to purchasing 3rd party software because they weren’t aware that the City had custom developed solutions available.

The City of Scottsdale Financial Services Division initiated a project with Application Development called Employee Self Service (ESS) for City of Scottsdale employees to view and update payroll information, as well as contact information.

After several preliminary meetings together, Application Development, with approval from Financial Services, decided to turn this particular project into a City-wide, custom- developed software services portal for all City employees.

What this means is this particular portal will be the hub for custom developed City services for employees. Every City of Scottsdale employee can access this site for a variety of things to do to manage everything about themselves, as well as find resources to communicate with other employees across the city.

Boston, MA: Boston Citizens Connect iPhone App

In October 2009, the City of Boston expanded the Citizens Connect suite of online services to include an iPhone application as part of our strategy to promote Citizen-to-City transactions. The Citizens Connect iPhone app enables residents and visitors to gather information about the physical state of the city and send that information directly to the appropriate city operation department.

Constituents can report issues or concerns such as accumulated trash or snow by uploading salient information directly into our Citizens Connect CRM (Constituent Relationship Management) system where it can be addressed efficiently and effectively by workers. Key features include the ability to attach a photo, capture system-generated GIS coordinates, edit GIS coordinates to improve accuracy and follow the service request with end-to-end tracking because the system is fully integrated with the back-end work order management system.

Mesa, AZ: Citizen Dashboard for Bond and Capital Improvement Projects

Tracking the information associated with bond projects, their funding and the status of the efforts and providing a useful and transparent method for citizens to follow these projects has always been a challenge. Increasing the transparency for citizens and providing wider education about the efforts that public funding supports is critical to ongoing support of such funding.

Mesa is providing various methods to keep citizens apprised of the results of their bond votes to enhance public confidence by providing project and financial data, and visual engaging interactive updates.

Significant improvements to the appeal and use of interactive mapping capabilities led to a dashboard web application for citizens that is easy to use. It provides a catchy and easy way for citizens to follow the status of bond packages and the projects that they fund. The bond program is outlined with easy to follow views for fire, law enforcement and streets. Citizens can follow by category to the next level of projects whether it is a new fire station or road reconstruction projects. Each project outlines the intended work with either pictures of the actual state of construction or the initial design documents and concept.

Interactive maps are available to drill down by region of the city to understand the variety of efforts and navigate to the specific project of interest. Information is updated automatically from city CIP financial programs as the efforts move from design to construction and to completion – with both a project status and funds spent to date financial update.

Fairfax County, VA: Public Engagement on Fairfax County’s FY 2010 Budget

Fairfax County faces the challenge of eliminating a projected revenue shortfall of $650 million for the 2010 fiscal year, which began July 1, 2009, the county turned to its citizens for help. The public was encouraged to participate through face-to-face meetings, an extensive media campaign, an outreach program with extensive use of social media and a one-stop shop on the county’s revamped website. The goal was to create a budget that included the appropriate level of services that, in light of the projected shortfall, were both sustainable and acceptable to the community.

The county held 20 face-to-face community dialogue sessions, with 718 members of the public attending; and five employee brownbag lunch sessions, with 197 employees attending. Concurrently, the county used online and telephone (integrated voice response) technology for public questions, comments and suggestions. More than 1,497 distinct comments were recorded electronically.

An extensive media campaign for the effort included news releases, newspaper advertisements, 1,900 fliers to school and community groups, 200 posters in county and school facilities, video segments broadcasted on the county’s television station, and information and videos posted on the county’s Facebook and YouTube sites.

New York, NY: NYCStat Stimulus Tracker

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) requires government entities receiving funds to provide citizens and public officials with the ability to track how federal stimulus funds are received and spent. New York City needed to meet this mandate in an aggressive time frame soon after funds were first announced in early March 2009.

In response, the New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) and the New York City Mayor’s Office of Operations teamed with Accenture to create the NYCStat Stimulus Tracker, an online capability to help the City of New York track federal stimulus funds. NYCStat Stimulus Tracker was initially developed and launched on a highly accelerated basis, roughly six weeks from start to completion. The team accelerated results by leveraging a flexible business intelligence platform they had implemented earlier to support citywide performance reporting.

Public officials and government publications have recognized NYCStat Stimulus Tracker as best-in-class because it enables New Yorkers to follow stimulus funding progress at a project, contract, and payment level and ties public outcomes to money spent. Individuals can also use a mapping capability to view the work happening in various locations around the city.

Not only was NYCStat Stimulus Tracker created rapidly, but it also went beyond the federal requirements in terms of the detail provided. The solution sets an example for government transparency and accountability, and has drawn serious interest by other city and state governments and other public entities as an exemplary solution to apply.

Scottsdale, AZ: QuickPay Utilities Application

In joint efforts with Information Technology and Financial Management, an online application was developed that affords our utility customers with the ability to make a quick payment towards a utility account, using a credit card. The application allows our customers to make payments by providing an account number and house number or PIN (personal identification number).

This application has several different validation checks and formatting restrictions in place. These include: account/customer number lookup, service address lookup, account balance, credit card algorithms, expiration date and E-mail formatting, We also prevent accounts that have been flagged as fraudulent or cash-only payments from being processed using this application.

Johnson County, KS: Line Management Program

The Line Management Program is an innovative concept utilizing text messaging, online reservations and self check-in touch screens to enhance customer service and operational capabilities for our Motor Vehicle Division. The Treasurer’s Department views technology as a driver for transforming change, while increasing our organizational effectiveness, thus creating a better customer experience and providing statistical measures used for trend analysis and future forecasting.

The Line Management Program is a partnership between county government and the private sector providing options to waiting in line in our offices by utilizing several points of entry for customers; self check-in touch screens, text messaging, calling our 1-888-9-JOCO-KS number, and online reservations via the Internet.

The main feature of the program, which is an entirely new technological approach for the public sector, is the ability for customers to “place themselves in line” by providing their cell phone number either in the office, online or by phone. This feature enables a customer to receive text or voice message updates regarding their place in line while waiting for service.

03-29-2010