North Kingstown, RI A WINNER
The New Government Data Center - The Private Government Cloud: The Town of North Kingstown realized that it had outgrown its current location and that the existing facility could not support the business continuity, disaster recovery cooling or power needs required. The Town developed a plan to transition its entire data center operations by constructing a new Tier III Managed Service provider level Data Center co-located with the town's newly constructed Emergency Operations Center and Public Safety facility.
Santa Monica, CA A Significant Achievement
Advanced Broadband Initiative: The City created a telecommunications master plan and built a fiber optic network that connected 43 buildings used by the City, Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, and Santa Monica College. Savings realized by this project enabled the City to construct its own municipal fiber optic network, Santa Monica City Net, to add traffic cameras, security cameras, real-time parking advisory systems, a traffic signal management system, and road signage to a fiber network. The City also offered dark fiber (unlit or unused fiber optics) to local businesses for a modest lease cost.
The results of Santa Monica's advanced broadband initiative are a reduction in construction costs of new broadband service, an increase in purchasing power of connected local businesses, and a broadband market expansion for global Internet Service Providers that now may offer service to small and medium-sized commercial buildings previously lacking the ROI justification to build and offer service.
Scottsdale, AZ B WINNER
DBA Dashboard: In an effort to gain a better understanding of the City's database server needs, Scottsdale's Database Administration worked to develop a central, online tool that could provide them with a centralized view of all SQL Server databases in use throughout the City. The DBA Dashboard was created using SQL Server Reporting Services Business Intelligence solutions to design the dashboard and present the data, and used SQL Server Integration Services to gather the data from the servers, creating a central "support center" for the Database Administration team.
Corpus Christi, TX B Significant Achievement
Corpus Christi Successfully Deploys Wi-Fi Mesh Network, Increasing Efficiencies and Reducing Costs: The City of Corpus Christi was one of the first in the nation to deploy a fixed wireless broadband network for municipal services. Initially it planned to use the network as part of its automated meter reading (AMR) infrastructure for its 100,000 gas and water meters. AMR was being implemented as meter readers often had difficulty accessing a property, customers complained about bill accuracy, and manual meter reading was slow and costly.
The City found the network's capacity was not being fully utilized, and determined that it provided adequate bandwidth, security, and low-latency for a range of other city services which would increase operational efficiencies and reducing costs. Within a year of deployment, Corpus Christi was using the network for access by mobile municipal workers in a range of departments including: Animal Control, Public Works and Utilities, Public Safety, and Building Inspections.
Scottsdale, AZ B Significant Achievement
Open Source Two-Factor Authentication: In an effort to reduce overall costs of our existing two-factor authentication (2FA) solution, the City of Scottsdale decided to investigate open source alternatives. It was decided that a telephony-based open source solution would meet our needs at a very minimal cost. Cost was a prime consideration as we planned for pandemic preparedness and the likelihood of having large numbers of staff using our VPN to perform their job functions.
After a few months of part-time effort, a system utilizing several open source components was developed and tested. The system provides a simple and familiar user interface by using the telephone as an authentication factor. This allowed users to transition to the new system with little or no training required. The new system has met our expectations of providing easy and secure remote access authentication at very minimal cost. Those savings are being passed on to the operating divisions of the City.
Scottsdale, AZ B Honorable Mention
Universal Automated Phone Notification System: Faced with the need to provide notifications to a wide variety of customers at the lowest cost possible, the City of Scottsdale developed a Universal Automated Phone Notification System using the Voxeo Prophecy SIP IVR Self-Service Platform and Microsoft Visual Studio. The custom built platform provides for a wide range of outbound calling, for easy scaling, and is flexible enough to change as the needs change.
The system can be employed by any business unit in the City of Scottsdale to reach their customers with custom messages that can elicit feedback. The platform provides for a 30% savings per call over a commercial service which lacks the flexibility of the Scottsdale solution.
Fort Worth, TX C WINNER
Budget Exercise Application: The City of Fort Worth struggled to make ends meet when planning its fiscal year 2011 budget. Expenses were up and revenue down, resulting in an estimated $77 million budget shortfall. The City wanted an active way to involve citizens in the budget process that would provide both constructive usable feedback and involve citizens in the decision-making process. A budget exercise application was created. The web-based application presented the citizens with the budget gap along with options for reducing spending and increasing revenues.
Over 1,500 citizens participated in the budget exercise. The application provided valuable insight into citizens' views on how the budget should be balanced and provided enlightenment on the difficult decisions that their elected leaders must make to balance the budget.
Mesa, AZ C WINNER
Unified Computing System: Unified Computing System (UCS). The City of Mesa Information Technology Department has implemented a new data center system that brings together computing, network, storage access and virtualization into a single cohesive platform. This system integrates a low-latency, lossless 10 Gigabit Fiber Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) unified network fabric with enterprise-class, Intel-based, x86-architecture. It also provides for a single point of management. This allows the solution to scale without adding management complexity.
Montgomery County, MD D WINNER
MC311: Re-engineering Local Government Through Customer Relationship Management: The County's vision for MC311 was taken from the County Executive's vision to "Create greater responsiveness and accountability in meeting the needs of a very diverse county." Launching from the Executive's vision, MC311 develop a two-pronged mission statement - Single point-of-contact for enterprise customer service delivery and customer satisfaction; Improving functionality of existing systems and data quality across County Government.
MC311 recognized the need for a broad, cross-cutting mission to connect people, process and technology. MC311 will provide all customers greater quality service delivery, accountability, capacity and operational efficiencies. Literally, MC311 will become the "Face of Montgomery County Government".
Cincinnati, OH B WINNER
Regional Operations GIS Response Emergency Management System: Building upon early efforts to enhance situational awareness during emergencies, the Cincinnati Fire Department surveyed internal and external stakeholders from a host of first responder disciplines including the Fire Service, Law Enforcement, Emergency Management, Public Health and Hospitals with the goal of identifying critical infrastructure and key resources which were deemed integral to a daily and catastrophic emergency response.
Since that time, a number of these critical infrastructures and key resources have been transformed into GIS layers and subsequently integrated in to an electronic mapping system designed specifically for use by emergency response personnel.
Scottsdale, AZ B Significant Achievement
Prosecution Case Management & Electronic Document Management Integration: The City of Scottsdale Prosecution Division processes over 16,000 legal cases a year, and creates or edits hundreds of documents per day in paper form. This hard-copy documentation is time-consuming to develop, and the effort to file, distribute, route, track and purge these documents was extremely challenging and labor intensive.
Utilizing the City's enterprise document management system (EDM) proved to be a good solution for managing the movement and storage of paper, but there was no direct integration with the application that manages the City's legal cases. To address this issue the City's Application Development team worked with City's Prosecution Division to seamlessly integrate the two systems and the associated workflow.
Scottsdale, AZ B Honorable Mention
Police Training Request Automation: The goals of this project were to improve the overall approval process associated with PD staff training and travel requests and ensure compliance with existing City of Scottsdale policies related to training and travel. The existing paper-based process led to significant delays and errors in submitting training requests.
The City's Information Technology Division partnered with the Police and HR Departments to create a new form and process that collects the information from the employee, routes it via E-mail to the proper management for approval, submits it to PD's Training Unit Sergeant's for final processing and populates the City's existing training management system for historical tracking.
Fort Worth, TX C WINNER
Automated Network Access Provisioning in the Joint Emergency Operations Center: Once activated, Emergency Operations Centers (EOC) can be high pressure environments. By their very nature, the operations of a modern EOC are heavily dependent on fully functional data networks. The Joint Emergency Operations Center (JEOC), a newly built emergency operations facility geared towards interoperability among multiple jurisdictions such as the City of Fort Worth, Tarrant County and the Department of Public Safety, is not immune to these pressures. Since converging agencies and organizations during any given activation are largely event driven; granting appropriate, on the spot access through manual cable patching to internal and Internet based resources for different segments of the EOC population is resource intensive, prone to error and frustrating for EOC agents.
The City engineered a solution whose goal was to alleviate network access pressure during the JEOC activation by utilizing automation based in intelligent network access control. The method used to attain that goal was Automated Network Access Provisioning.
Mesa, AZ C WINNER
Electronic Patient Care Records (ePCR) System: The City of Mesa Fire Department has implemented a cloud-based Electronic Patient Care Records system that allows for real-time input of patient data at an incident scene. Rather than fill out paper forms, firefighter/paramedics input the data into ruggedized laptops at the scene. Patient information is instantly uploaded to a secure site and shared with destination hospitals if appropriate. The old system resulted in duplicate effort and was somewhat error-prone because of its reliance on legible handwriting and human memory for details.
Fort Worth, TX C Significant Achievement
Data Visualization and Discovery Applied to the Fire Service: The Fort Worth Fire Department tapped its investment in high quality data collection to implement data visualization and discovery software and to apply the software to decision support and performance measurement.
Mesa, AZ C Significant Achievement
City Video Conferencing: The City of Mesa has installed videoconferencing capabilities in several areas, taking advantage of the technology to enhance communications and reduce costs. Mesa Fire currently has 24 endpoints, including locations at each fire station and administrative facilities, IT has 2 endpoints and the City Court has several endpoints in support of in-custody Court operations. The system has already demonstrated its efficacy in training applications and all-hands meetings for the Fire Department, reduced travel between buildings for IT employees, and enhanced safety and comfort for crime victims in the Court.
The system can also be used for conferencing outside the City's network. The Police Department has active plans to add endpoints. Interest in deploying the technology continues to grow across the City.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
Joint Emergency Operations Center: In early 2010, the City of Fort Worth and Tarrant County collaborated to build a Joint Emergency Operations Center (JEOC) large enough to accommodate City staff, County staff, numerous outside agencies, and State of Texas staff. The goal was to be fully functional by Super Bowl 2011.
Mission Accomplished! The 18,000 square foot facility includes more than 50 workstations in the main coordination room, an incident command center, three breakout / conference rooms for special operations / team assignments, teleconferencing capability to connect with regional, State, and Federal agencies, upgrades to the telecommunications system to improve message routing, call recording, rollover management and system management, an updated fire alarm system to comply with City code, Radio Over Internet Protocol (ROIP) technology, and Soft Phone technology. The JEOC also houses the City of Fort Worth Traffic Management Center.
Miami-Dade County, FL D WINNER
Fire Hydrant Maintenance: Pursuant to state law, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue (MDFR) Department is responsible for annual inspection and maintenance of more than 39,000 fire hydrants within their Fire and Rescue Service District. These inspections ensure fire hydrant integrity and are therefore a critical component of public safety. After 40 years of using a paper-based system, MDFR recognized that GIS technology could streamline the processes, improve accountability, and ensure greater fire protection across their 2,252 square miles of responsibility.
The Enterprise Technology Services Department (ETSD) developed a web-based GIS application deployed on mobile devices. The application provides firefighters with a better tool to identify and edit fire hydrants, record maintenance information, and request repairs to sixteen different water departments.
Montgomery County, MD D WINNER
GIS Platform for Emergency Management & Response: Common Operational Pictures (COP): The Montgomery County, Maryland, Department of Technology Services - Geographic Information Systems (DTS-GIS) team developed an ArcGIS Server based map viewer that provides customized common operational pictures (COP) for enabling situational awareness associated with emergency management and planning. These intranet only web applications allow emergency managers to manage the assets, effectively share and manage mobile workforces, maintain operational awareness and foster communication across organizations.
Santa Monica, CA A WINNER
Electronic Plan Review System: The City of Santa Monica's electronic permitting system was not designed to handle the plan check process. Applicants were required to submit and re-submit several sets of drawings and make frequent trips to city hall for the initial drawing review and to respond to corrections and required modifications. The large number of proposed construction projects in the city made the management of drawing packages problematic, resulting in inefficiencies and additional costs. Final drawing packages were manually scanned and stored in an electronic document retrieval system as a permanent archive.
A new paperless electronic plan check submittal and review process offers a user-friendly and convenient way for applicants to submit plans over the Internet and assists staff to manage and review the process more quickly and efficiently.
Dayton, OH B WINNER
Implementing Automatic Meter Reading with a Meter Change Out Program: Dayton owns, maintains, and reads approximately 60,000 cold water meters of various sizes and makes. The water meters were last changed out in the late 1980s and are showing signs of wear that is leading to decreased water meter accuracy. In addition to meter inaccuracy, approximately 65% of the water meters are located within customer houses.
Timing was right to implement Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) technology with a meter change out program. Results include increased meter accuracy and revenues, improved customer service and fewer billing complaints, reduced labor to read meters and significant savings.
Fort Worth, TX C WINNER
Tracking Storm Water Asset Conditions: The City of Fort Worth's Transportation Public Works, Storm Water Management Division (SWMD), like many public works organizations faces the need to store large quantities of condition videos and reference this data as needed. In an effort to find a quick and affordable solution, a tool was created that links to the GIS database. This tool allows SWMD staff to catalog video, identify if the video has been reviewed and track the condition of the asset.
By using a spatially enabled database, users are able to easily look at a map and find out if the condition of a pipe has been assessed or if video has been done for a specific asset. An added benefit is the use of the video and the tool to do quality control on the City's asset database. The final result is a tool that continually improves our asset database while cataloging data and building accountability for condition assessment.
Mesa, AZ C Significant Achievement
Central Mesa Light Rail Extension: Addressing road construction proactively to help residents navigate around the city is always a challenge and even more so for business owners who are adversely affected by road construction. Adding in significant efforts such as Light Rail increases the complexity of that challenge. Using the Internet, Mesa combined upbeat information about the coming Light Rail with one-stop information for residents to navigate the changes ahead. In addition, a separate website is being developed for local businesses to promote the plans and how to get to the businesses even before the first construction work begins.
Philadelphia, PA D WINNER
Big Belly – Solar Powered Energy Improving Service: The Philadelphia Streets Department's Sanitation Division employs the latest innovative technology to track maximum capacity and disposal of trash in bins better known as BigBelly Solar, solar-powered trash receptacles. This system features a wireless monitoring and management capability which creates staff efficiency through better deployment of crews and better management of personnel when planning collection routes and work zones. Software solution tracks all compaction and collection activity, allowing collection crews to maintain high service levels.
Philadelphia, PA D Significant Achievement
Maximizing SwiftReach Results for Maximum Communication: The Philadelphia Streets Department employs the latest innovative technology to disseminate information about the department's services and programs to Philadelphia citizens. The service most frequently utilized is Swift911 by SwiftReach, a service similar to Reverse911. The service is used as a means of quickly and efficiently broadcasting recorded voice messages to citizens over the telephone simultaneously.
The department has utilized this service to distribute thousands of messages ranging from emergency road closures to trash collection delays/changes. This service can be activated by advanced technology users, but, most importantly, activation can be done by any technologically challenged person from any location with an Internet-connected computer using a web-based notification control panel and/or remotely by phone. A call/campaign can be scheduled with two simple components, a call list and message to citizens within mere minutes.
Miami-Dade County, FL D Significant Achievement
Animal Services Routing System: The Animal Services Department (ASD) recently sought to improve the efficiency of its service request process. It is charged with responding to over 37,000 citizen requests and complaints per year which require field visits by officers, investigators or technicians. The internal routing of requests had been a manual process whereby citizen requests were gathered, prioritized and filtered through dispatchers, and forwarded to the appropriate field personnel for manual routing and response.
Through careful analysis, the ASD and Enterprise Technology Services Department (ETSD) collaborated to restructure the service request workflow. It elected to implement ESRI's ArcLogistics software to meet the routing needs. Arclogistics provided a customized routing solution, assigning requests by specialties, scheduling based upon priorities and service times, while handling shifts, overtime, and days off. ETSD also developed an interface between the county's service request system and ArcLogistics, thus eliminating the time-consuming and error-prone manual processing. Since the ArcLogistics processing operates in the cloud, the county did not incur infrastructure costs. Efficiencies were also gained by eliminating the constraints of pre-defined work zones and by starting the inspectors' workdays from dispersed locations throughout the county.
Santa Monica, CA A WINNER
Workers' Compensation and General Liability Claims Management System: Recent legislation mandates electronic reporting of all workers' compensation and liability program medical settlements, judgments, awards or payments to claimants who are or could be Medicare beneficiaries. The claims management system that the City of Santa Monica had in place was not designed to support these requirements. The original system required client software installed on desktop computers, a practice which is inconsistent with the City's goal of using web browser clients for applications where feasible.
The City upgraded the existing claims management system to meet the new requirements. All work is performed using a web browser and the overall claims management process makes use of electronic documents. Claims documents move electronically within the City and between the City and outside agencies such as medical and attorney offices.
Arlington County, VA B WINNER
ACE – Arlington County's Assessment and Collection Enterprise System: The Assessment and Collection Enterprise (ACE) System was initiated to replace a dozen 25 year-old mainframe, Access, and Excel-based systems with a single integrated commercial off the shelf (COTS) software program and a new cashiering system. ACE supports the assessment and collection of ten County taxes and dozens of other County receivables such as utilities, parking tickets, and delinquent payments to various County agencies.
In addition, ACE includes automated interfaces to over fifty other County systems or external customers or service providers. The ACE program is driven by the innovative idea of a single, integrated system and standardized processes for the administration of all County taxes vs. the local government norm of a separate system and processes for each tax.
Boston, MA C WINNER
Technology Goes Home! Technology Goes Home provides Boston residents with the opportunity to become engaged in 21st century skill development by providing training, hardware, and assistance with Internet access. The goal of the program is to assist residents to be active users of Internet resources in an effort to improve the quality of their lives. An on-line portal and accompanying 15 hour training program takes participants to resources that will help them to Live, Learn, Earn, Work, and Play on-line as new members of the on-line community.
Guilford County, NC C WINNER
Workforce Management System Implementation: Guilford County is the third largest County in the state of North Carolina, has an annual budget of over $600 million and a workforce of approximately 2,600 employees. A monthly payroll process was in place for over 30 years and had not evolved to keep pace with the growing complexity of federal payroll regulations. County staff in the Information Services, Human Resources, and Finance departments, began work on a major project to implement a new payroll and time and attendance system with the goal of transitioning all County employees to automated time reporting, a new payroll system and a biweekly pay frequency by March, 2010.
This entry examines how new technology resulting from the implementation of workforce management systems was used to eliminate or significantly reduce inefficient, manual, paper based payroll and time reporting processes and incorrect application of County pay regulations.
Mesa, AZ C Significant Achievement
Falcon Field Airport Web Application: In 2009 Mesa's Falcon Field Airport was the fourth busiest general aviation airport in the US. Over $2.3 billion is generated annually in the local economy by its operations and affiliated businesses. As the airport grew so too did concern over aircraft noise, safety and general business impacts. The Falcon Field Airport Web Application allows residents/businesses to voice their concerns and receive communications from airport staff online.
Additionally, this project resulted in a web dashboard that provides airport staff interactive maps, robust searching of aircraft data, detailed citizen information of those who reported issues and 24x7 automated flight radio traffic recording data, all of which is used to better address citizen and business issues and improve internal operations.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
Google Search Engine: The City of Fort Worth selected a Google search appliance (GSA) as an integral part of the web services search solution. The Search Appliance has improved citizen engagement and transparency by giving quick and relevant search results.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
Joint Emergency Operation Center Intranet/Internet Portal: To provide a centralized portal to support and manage all content for any Joint Emergency Operation Center incidents for City of Fort Worth, Tarrant Count and all involved parties of JEOC, the City created an intranet site to act as a knowledgebase and content repository for all incident, media, and financial content generated during an event. The Sharepoint portal stores all the links to various emergency management agencies, public and local entities. It provides one central location to access software tools and any content necessary for all the participating entities during activation.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
Intranet/Internet Portal Presence: The City had a need for an immediate solution to quick content management sites for numerous project management engagements, as well as department sites for some of our larger divisions, like Police, Fire, Planning Development, IT, etc. to provide a low cost form of enterprise content management and pilot out collaborative and knowledge management options to any of the departments in the City of Fort Worth municipality.
In response the City deployed Sharepoint 2007 and WSS 3.0 to provide faster and user- friendly sites to meet the staff and departmental needs for a fairly easy content management solution that allows easy customization and easy learning curve for city staff.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
Electronic Council Packet: The objective of this effort was to eliminate the paper copies of the Council Packet delivered to Council Members and Senior Staff members prior to each Council meeting. All of the Council materials are now converted to PDF format where they are combined and bookmarked in the same manner that they were previously organized in the Council Books. The resulting PDF is then posted on the Internet where it can be downloaded.
The Apple iPad was selected as the hardware platform to deliver the Electronic Council Packet. iAnnotate from Aji was selected as the PDF application on the iPad due to its annotation features which affords Council Members and Senior Staff the ability to make notes on the Electronic Council Packet as they could with the paper Council materials. We have also posted the Electronic Council Packet on the City's website to facilitate greater transparency of Council materials to citizens of the City of Fort Worth.
Austin, TX D WINNER
Code Compliance Takes a Step in the Green Direction: On August 25, 2010, The Code Compliance Department implemented a new initiative that not only aligns with the City's Zero Waste and Carbon Footprint Reduction goal but will significantly improve the efficiency of the Building Standards Commission (BSC) hearings process. The (BSC) which convenes each month for a hearing regarding properties with alleged violations of the City's Housing and Dangerous Building Codes is the first commission to take advantage of emerging technology and conduct business by viewing case documents using the portable Apple iPAD tablet. Traditional hard-copy presentation for the commissioner packets were eliminated as the BSC presentation moved to an electronic format.
Montgomery County, MD D WINNER
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.
Montgomery County, MD D Honorable Mention
H1N1 Flu Vaccine On-line Appointment Booking System: This system, developed by the Montgomery County Department of Technology Services in close collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), enables County constituents to choose an H1N1 flu vaccine clinic location, select an appointment date/time, and submit essential information necessary to schedule an H1N1 flu vaccine appointment. The H1N1 system supplements an existing telephone based flu vaccination scheduling process.
Raleigh, NC A WINNER
iMAPS: Implementing an Enterprise Land Records Portal: The new iMAPS application interface represents the most recent in a long series of cooperative efforts by the City of Raleigh and Wake County GIS organizations. The purpose of the application interface is to provide the citizens of Wake County with a wide variety of geospatial and other land-records-related information in an easy-to-use, intuitive web portal.
Although the system is technically elegant, two other factors make it exemplary: 1) the collaborative nature of the development process, and 2) the true enterprise nature of the system, effectively combining access to data from multiple County, City and Town databases into a single application.
Scottsdale, AZ A Significant Achievement
Integrated Utility Mapping System: Since 1995, the City of Scottsdale's GIS Division has mapped over a half million features of water, wastewater and stormwater for the City's 185 square miles. The original mapping environment combined MicroStation CAD files with Intergraph MGE attribute data in a standard relational database. That process had reached end of life, become very time consuming to maintain, and was prone to errors since the graphic data and attribute data were stored in two separate databases.
The City's GIS staff developed a needs analysis and worked with a consulting company to develop a new ArcGIS-based UMS. The implementation of the new system has dramatically reduced data errors; eliminated staff time having to resolve those errors; introduced streamlined data maintenance workflow; and provides a customizable interface. In addition the new storage and data management system requires much less staff time to manage the information.
Fort Worth, TX C WINNER
GIS Historic Aerial Imagery Tool: The City of Fort Worth has an enterprise GIS system that serves over 400 users throughout the City. Aerial imagery, or orthophotography, is by far the largest dataset maintained by the enterprise in terms of hard disk space requirements. Several City departments including Code Compliance and Fire utilize historic imagery as part of their business processes. However, with five years of historic imagery being stored in our GIS database this was quickly becoming a drive space issue.
The storage issue is further exacerbated by the need to build different resolution layers, so that the end users can retrieve the imagery more expediently. In response to the growing drive space issue and anticipating the next imagery deliverable, the IT Solutions GIS group began to brainstorm ways to deliver the historic imagery without purchasing additional hardware. The solution needed to allow all users to utilize the historic imagery through a user-friendly interface that was well integrated into the existing software.
Boston, MA C Significant Achievement
Street and Address Management: The City of Boston, like most other cities of its size, struggles with addressing. Most City departments deal with addresses in some form in their daily business process. Most City departments maintain their own list of addresses which leads to duplication and confusion when locating addresses referred to in multiple ways. SAM (Street and Address Management) was created by the City as a master repository for all addresses in the City. SAM is not just a master address database but also a collection of tools designed to manage and maintain the address data.
Fort Worth, TX C Honorable Mention
GIS Pedestrian Needs Index for Sidewalk Requests: For years, the City of Fort Worth has managed a sidewalk program utilizing a SQL database to track citizen calls involving repair and installation but the data was not organized to facilitate map display, querying, and spatial analysis. Additionally, there were few facts or statistics to provide a basis for prioritizing, scheduling and funding sidewalk construction.
Management wanted a way to maximize the effect of funds, justify sidewalk construction based on greatest need, and document curb ramp locations. Fort Worth had standardized its GIS on ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop software and ArcSDE storage engine and in 2009 received planimetric data for sidewalks but sidewalk request data was not integrated with that system. An ArcMap template was developed with standardized symbology for bus stops, schools, parks, libraries and other pedestrian destinations. A data view was obtained for the sidewalk request SQL database and a file geodatabase was created on a network server accessible by those who would use the data.
Guilford County, NC C Honorable Mention
Developing Parcel Map Quality Metrics: Guilford County, in an effort to improve and measure the quality of our Parcel Basemap, has designed and begun implementation of the Parcel Map Accuracy Project (PMAP). The PMAP initiative calls for a way to measure parcel map accuracy and track improvement of the mapping from year to year. The first step in this process was to compare our parcel map to the similar parcel maps throughout the State. This step was called the External Parcel Rating System and was designed to review and rate randomly selected parcels for their aesthetic accuracy. The reviewed parcels would be given a pass/fail rating and then those numbers would be used to create an overall accuracy rating.
The second step was to develop a set of internal measures that would document how confident we were in the spatial accuracy of our individual parcels. Then, as parcels are remapped, the spatial accuracy of the individual parcels would increase and our overall internal rating will improve. As the accuracy of the individual parcels improves, so should our standing in the external accuracy rating measure.
Mesa, AZ C Honorable Mention
GIS Interactive Mapping: The City of Mesa Information Technology's Enterprise GIS Department has implemented a new GIS interactive mapping environment that encompasses a number of individual business mapping applications, both for internal and public consumption. This GIS framework integrates Adobe Flex based technologies, ESRI ArcGIS Server, Intel based 64-bit Windows servers, virtualization and a load-balanced architecture to provide a more robust and appealing user application experience. The design and solution provides for optimal performance and scalability to meet GIS business demands.
Philadelphia, PA D WINNER
Optimizing Traffic Signal LED Installation Using Mobile GIS Technology: In 2010, the City of Philadelphia Streets Department Traffic Division began replacing over 70,000 incandescent traffic signal bulbs with energy saving Light Emitting Diodes (LED) modules, with funding by the American Resource and Recovery Act. To help manage this enormous effort, a mobile GIS solution was developed and deployed to enable field personnel to accurately track the replacement of these inefficient and undependable incandescent bulbs using GIS-enabled mobile technology.
This project, funded by the American Resource and Recovery Act, also enabled field crews to track and maintain the City's street pole inventory using scanning technology and edit capabilities native to the GIS mobile environment. Based on ESRI's ArcGIS Server Mobile platform, this set of customized desktop tools also ensures data integrity as well as provides many advantages, including data standardization, GPS navigation, minimized paper use, and x/y coordinate locations with real-time efficiency.
Miami-Dade County, FL D Significant Achievement
GIS Layer Verification Process: The Geographic Information System (GIS) Layer Verification Process is a computer program developed to automate quality control (QC) checks of updates to existing GIS production layers housed in Miami-Dade County's GIS Central Data Repository. This data warehouse is comprised of hundreds of departmental GIS layers containing both tabular and spatial information in Feature Class (FC) format. The increased use of GIS software by County departments had resulted in greater data utilization as well as increased layer additions and updates. Checking layer updates manually for quality control was a time consuming and meticulous process and no longer feasible with current resources. In addition, errors missed during quality checks had serious ramifications, affecting Web and desktop applications, map projects and jobs county-wide.
However, this GIS Layer Verification Process handles large volumes of updates faster, accurately and efficiently in an automated and non-visual manner. At scheduled times, this computerized process checks departments' secure locations for updates. Layers found are imported into a pre-production area before going through a series of QC checks in an effort to preserve layer integrity and structure consistency. Data administrators are notified of updates and failures, and departments are notified of failures as well. As a result of this program, great efficiencies have been obtained in the GIS update process with increased data quality.
Charlotte, NC D WINNER
Virtual Charlotte Mobile: Virtual Charlotte Mobile is a mobile web-based GIS solution developed by the City of Charlotte to provide citizens with comprehensive access to the City's location-based information on mobile devices. The solution is designed for web browsers that run on the iPhone, iPad, Android as well as the latest Nokia Symbian and Blackberry devices.
Virtual Charlotte Mobile provides seamless access to the City's enterprise GIS map services, including base maps and, more importantly, a rich array of operational data such as service areas, zoning, inspection cases, and County Computer Aided Mass Appraisal (CAMA) information. The system has an easy to use user interface featuring a single search box, a smart map tab for access to detailed data and integration with Google Street View.
Charlotte, NC D WINNER
My Charlotte Mobile Application: The My Charlotte mobile application provides a comprehensive citizen service platform for the City of Charlotte residents to report graffiti, potholes, neighborhood nuisances to the CharMeck 311 Contact Center, ride public transit, get airport information, and other services. Allowing citizens to take a picture, use GPS for location awareness, GoogleMaps, and submit anonymously, My Charlotte is a single application for citizen service and engagement.
Key to this solution is the ability to operate across multiple communication platforms such as voice, email, web, text, and mobile while possessing the ability to include a customer relationship management (CRM) tool and Avatar capabilities that can provide a better citizen experience.
Corpus Christi, TX B WINNER
ccMobile: Smartphone Application to Report Problems: ccMobile enables residents to use their smartphones to quickly photograph issues, select a service category (e.g., pothole) and hit the send button. The service request, with a photo and physical address via GPS coordinates and date/time stamp goes directly into the City's WebQA knowledge base and is processed by the Customer Service Center. Residents are able to download the application free on iPhones, Androids and Blackberries. The instructions are available on the City's website.
Because of this integration, we see ccMobile as a useful tool for event management and damage assessment, as well as a citizen reporting tool. The ROI for ccMobile is 206 percent.
Miami-Dade County, FL D WINNER
311 Direct Smartphone App: The 311 Direct smartphone application allows constituents to report neighborhood problems and code enforcement violations using the built-in functions of iPhone and Blackberry devices. Residents can photograph an incident such as illegal dumping, or an infrastructure issue such as a pothole, enter a brief description and submit the information to the 311 Answer Center. This information is automatically routed to the appropriate County agency for resolution.
The app submits the data through a web service (based on the Open311 standard), which has been made available to other local public agencies (e.g. the City of Miami), who are pursuing the development of their own mobile apps for service intake, but who also record them in the central service request repository of the Miami-Dade multi-jurisdictional 3-1-1 Answer Center.