Kirkland, WA, Shows Some Love For EnerGov

Change doesn’t always come easy — especially when it comes to overhauling a computer system that a city has supported for over 20 years.

Kirkland, WA, along with many other eCityGov customers in the Puget Sound area of Washington state, realized it was time to update their legacy technologies with a state-of-the-art “enterprise” land management platform (EnerGov 9) in order to more efficiently and accurately manage the city’s regulatory business processes — even if it required taking the necessary time, effort, and resources to achieve the city’s goals.

“The EnerGov software is quite a bit more advanced than other permit systems that primarily just track data,” said Chuck Newberry, west coast regional manager for EnerGov. “Implementing an enterprise business process management software system is not a simple task and change management can often times be one of the most difficult parts of the process.” said Chuck. “A lot of the workflows and processes that were disconnected and in silos within the legacy environment is now being managed and automated centrally and concurrently — that’s a big change for these agencies.”

Working closely with EnerGov’s onsite project team, Kirkland employees dedicated countless hours through the assessment, workflow configuration, data migration, integrations, and testing stages of the EnerGov implementation. Recently the city geared up for the training and production stages of the EnerGov implementation by hosting a training kick-off event aimed at bringing excitement to the training and roll out of the new system. The city understands that investing in the implementation of the new enterprise system, by facilitating and enabling change, increases the overall adoption rate and success factor.

EnerGov’s very own Stephen Remminger and Patrick Chapman (aka P-Town) worked with the city of Kirkland to provide a 60s-themed training kick-off event replete with giveaways, games, cakes, and costumes.  The excitement of training and going live with EnerGov was “euphoric” much like the 60’s!!!

 

 

Kirkland has definitely set the bar for software training kick-offs events.  Change management at it’s finest!!!!

City Spotlight: Ventura, California

Known for its beautiful harbors, parks, and beaches, the City of Ventura still lives up to its 18^th century nickname as “the City of good fortune.”  This vibrant beach town of over 100,000 lies in between Malibu and Santa Barbara and overlooks the Santa Cruz Islands.

Behind every healthy city are good community development practices and efficient public services.  To this end, the City has overhauled its legacy land management system with the EnerGov system.  Since deployment, the City continues to increase efficiencies by centralizing data, streamlining processes, and improving inter-Departmental cooperation.  Significant returns on investment with this deployment include:

Improving Reporting Requirements: The City has improved upon its reporting abilities by leveraging the EnerGov enterprise data access model to ensure the proper information can be retrieved for informed decision making processes internally and constituent involvement externally.  One such benefit is for the building records disclosure report process within the City.  The current law mandates real estate sellers to request building records disclosure reports and provide this disclosure to respective buyers.  Today, these requests are managed as a case within EnerGov’s workflow model and citizens are now engaging City Hall from home, work, or any other remote location via fax or the internet.

Improving Processes:  EnerGov’s cross-departmental workflow model has enabled the City to incorporate all relative departments throughout the review cycle process.  For example, Ventura’s Water Department can easily access their distributed reviews, process the review, and quickly link to case attribute information, if needed, via a simplified, user-intuitive “My Reviews” dashboard.   Andrew Stuffler, the City’s Chief Building Official stated “The department is now able to confirm, with proper documentation, the sanitary and water utilities in new and altered buildings.  Additionally, all other departments have access to verify these updates and to perform their reviews concurrently.  Linear workflow models are being replaced with more efficient concurrent review models with the EnerGov system.”

Improving Citizen Engagement:   The City launched its first Citizen Access GIS based web portal, allowing constituents to spatially search and retrieve information regarding planning, building & safety, business licensing, and code enforcement cases from one common user interface.  With the convenience of these services, the city not only increases efficiencies but strengthens citizen participation and collaboration.  “Pairing Esri’s geographical information products with EnerGov system creates an effective tool for efficiency,” says Andrew Stuffler.  “Providing constituents and interested parties the necessary information without draining internal resources is a win-win for the City and the public. City GIS staff are making the most of this pairing by providing current deployment and business data in a user-friendly map-based interface that updates data automatically.” The maps that are currently available can be viewed here:  http://maps.cityofventura.net/menu/index.htm

The City of Ventura continues to build upon its historical foundation by implementing the EnerGov system.  Streamlining processes, creating transparency and citizen engagement are key initiatives for ensuring the City of Ventura remains sustainable, livable, safe and vibrant.

Register Today For EnerGov’s 2012 User Conference

Take advantage of early registration for EnerGov’s 2012 User Conference and save 25% before March 31, 2012.  Last year end users, administrators, managers and other key decision makers from more than 20 states and Canada learned about the newest features and latest products, including the iG Workforce mobile platform for the iPad.

This year EnerGov will continue to provide hands-on training sessions and innovation showcases that will help attendees leverage the EnerGov system to improve business processes and reach operational goals. Attendees will also have time to network and learn how other agencies are using the EnerGov system to work more efficiently and improve public services.

Consider participating in conference sessions and sharing your success and ROI stories with EnerGov.  Participating agencies will receive complementary passes to this year’s conference.   For more details, go to http://www.energov.com/user-conference.html.

Enterprise Automation Enables Effective Citizen Engagement

Long waits, confusion, and red tape are images that come to mind when dealing with many government agencies but with new technologies and enhanced automation, these stereotypes will soon disappear. By advocating and adopting web and mobile technology, government agencies are improving public service through increased access and transparency.

Unbeknownst to the average citizen,  the regulatory process of issuing permits and licenses can be extremely complex and layered.  Historically, most government agencies have required paperwork to be filled out on premise or delivered via mail through a courier. Subsequently, the completed application would pass through dozens (if not hundreds) of checks in order to meet required regulatory standards and conditions. This process often involves a multitude of departments and individuals each of whom are operating on disparate databases, and/or have separate “forms” for each department, with no central process workflow. Because of this, agencies end up wasting significant amounts of time and introduce significant errors – not to mention it may be weeks before the applicant hears back from the agency.

This scenario was typical to the licensing and permitting process in Charleston County, South Carolina. To help manage the process more efficiently and improve citizen engagement, the county implemented the EnerGov 9 enterprise government software platform (Land Management and Licensing & Regulatory Suites) thereby enabling constituents to perform a variety of tasks from the convenience of their home or on the go — all managed within one centralized enterprise database that help the agency run smarter and more efficient.

Through an easy-to-use citizen access website, customers and contractors can pay for, apply for, and monitor the status of permits in addition to paying for and renewing licenses (over 13 billion dollars of gross reported revenues) . Other services include scheduling, searching and cancelling inspections and submitting citizen requests.

Within the first 10 months of deployment, the county issued over 44,000 permits and processed over 8,000 plan reviews, saving time and money for applicants working with the agency. By centralizing data, improving cross-departmental collaboration, and enforcing regulatory workflow, the county is able to process applications more quickly and accurately. Furthermore, within the first six months of deployment, the county collected over $150,000 in revenue that had slipped through the cracks under the previous software system.

Charleston County is a prime example of how, through investments in automation, government agencies can better connect with citizens and increase efficiencies within the permitting and licensing process.

Automating and Improving Data and Process Quality Control with GIS and EnerGov 9

One of the many ways a government agency can increase efficiencies in their permitting, licensing and asset management process is to leverage their geographic information system (GIS).  The EnerGov 9 Enterprise Server  platform was specifically built to be seamlessly integrated with GIS,  allowing government agencies to accurately manage and analyze data from a spatial standpoint— enabling well-informed decisions about land use or assets.

One simple but effective feature in EnerGov 9 that allows the leveraging of geographical data is the ability to initiate events, such as a case, permit or license application process, directly from GIS.  Code enforcement officials can accurately locate an address, parcel or even a vacant lot and initiate an inspection case or permitting process right from the map, allowing for case histories to be queried spatially in the future.   Parcel attribute information, such as the size of the parcel, can be automated and streamlined within the regulatory process.  Furthermore, EnerGov’s  “Georules Engine” can be configured a variety of ways in order to automate notification processes related to any conditions or alerts related to the property.

In addition to addresses and parcels, GIS tools allow any type of irregular area to be tracked and managed.  With refined editing capabilities, points, lines and polygon features can be drawn and tracked for a parade route permit or an irregular-shaped area of an engineering encroachment permit.  Agencies can also improve managing their public assets by tracking any object with spatial relevance, such as hydrants, water drains, or trees.

EnerGov’s integration of a government agency’s GIS allows for powerful automation of business functions, ensures the uniformity and verification of the case location, improves accessibility of information between different departments and helps to visualize and analyze regulatory cases and records. As GIS continues to rapidly advance with other technologies including 3D and building information modeling, it will become an indispensable and foundational technology utilized within the regulatory and asset management processes.

Leveraging GIS to Improve an Agency’s Infrastructure Asset Management Process

Without a good management or budgeting process, a healthy infrastructure will often be left to the wayside to deteoriorate more rapidly according to Alex Marshall in Governing. The number of public assets a government agency manages is enormous. Bridges, sidewalks, sewers, fire hydrants and traffic lights all have to be monitored and maintained for wear and tear and repair. Even the paint on every stop sign needs to be accounted for should it become too dull for visibility. By keeping an accurate inventory of assets and up-to-date information on their conditions, government agencies can better evaluate, plan and budget for operating and maintenance costs.

GIS helps improve asset management by providing spatial information related to each asset. Within the infrastructure asset management world, managing this geographic data is important in order to efficiently schedule and dispatch work for routine maintenance work, repairs, collect information or do a major overhaul of upgrading assets as Philadelphia did when the city replaced 87,000 incandescent traffic lights with LED bulbs, with projected savings of $1 million per year.

GIS also helps to centralize, analyze and visualize geographic data to use resources more efficiently and understand the impact assets may have on each other. For instance, geospatial awareness can help an agency’s project when growing trees obscure traffic signs or power lines, and potential flooding zones can be calculated if a particular pipe was to burst. With an enterprise GIS, different departments can also access the same geographical data and strategically coordinate together or ensure that differing projects do not interfere with each other.

Even with dwindling resources and budget cuts, government agencies cannot afford to mismanage their public assets and infrastucture which will be more costly in the long run. An enterprise system tightly integrated with GIS can prove to be a cost-effective solution that helps government agencies to efficiently and effectively manage their assets.

To learn more about EnerGov’s Asset Management suite, click here: http://www.energov.com/asset-management.html

Engaging Citizens with Social Media and Spatial Data using EnerGov Social IO’s

 

The advancement of automated technologies and social media has enabled government agencies to become more transparent and engaging with their constituents more than ever before.   First Lady Michelle Obama created her official Twitter account earlier this month and Vice President Joe Biden held his first Twitter interview yesterday.

State and local governments are also actively using Twitter to communicate with the public as well. Whether it’s to communicate emergency alerts, road conditions, or job opportunities, government agencies can effectively keep citizens updated and well-informed in real-time.

For instance, the City of Marco Island, Florida, one of the east coast’s most popular vacationing spots, uses EnerGov’s Social Intelligent Object Engine, or “Social IO’s”, with Esri Geographic Information System (GIS)  to proactively deliver real-time alerts related to community development through social media platforms as part of their automated business workflow.  Through EnerGov’s social media automation, a tweet from the city’s Building Services Division Twitter account, @Marcoisland_FL, is automatically generated to inform citizens of a new permit with links to additional permit information as well as a map or spatial view of the activity. By using social media as part of the permitting & development process, the city has taken transparency and constituent engagement to a new level.

Utilizing the EnerGov 9 platform, agencies can configure EnerGov’s social intelligent object engine as a way for government agencies to effectively communicate important news and alerts to the citizen they serve. Informing the public of road closures, traffic jams, parade routes, and construction projects are just some ways for government agencies to connect and effectively engage with the public utilizing this exciting new technology.

Read more about EnerGov’s other tools that help governments improve public services and citizen collaboration here:  http://www.energov.com/citizen-access.html

Government field inspectors take full advantage of the iPad with iG Workforce

There are a number of factors to consider when choosing a media tablet to mobilize your workforce. Industry experts believe that the iPad will continue to be the preferred tablet for some time because of its overall design, strong ecosystem, and Apple’s trusted brand name.   The iPad has become the gold standard in the marketplace backed by its amazing iOS and its 170,000 tablet-specific apps.

Another critical factor to consider is the ability to take advantage of many of the tablet’s features to perform required tasks — a key reason why the iPad was the best choice to run iG Workforce, a powerful mobile platform designed to help government workers do their job more efficiently in the field.  The iPad’s native functions were easily integrated with the iG Workforce platform to help field workers carry out tasks more quickly and efficiently. Here’s a look at four of iPad’s features that are useful tools for the field worker:

Location Services

The Esri GIS map that comes standard with iG Workforce is integrated with the iPad’s GPS to leverage geographic data and provide location-based services.  For instance, you can optimize the best travel route for a daily inspections list and get step-by-step directions from your current location to the next inspection site on the list.

Built-in Camera

Rather than carrying a separate camera to take photos of code issues or violations, an inspector can use the built-in camera in the iPad.  The photo can instantly be attached to the inspection record, reducing the time it would take to go to a computer to download and then upload the photo from a separate camera.

Digital Signature

The iPad comes with a digital signature capability, allowing contractors and inspectors on site to sign off on inspections and instantly submit them to the back-office system without the hassle of scans or faxes — a quick and seamless process.

Reporting and Printing

Instead of waiting to get back to the office to print reports, they can instantly be generated and printed to give to those who need it on-site.

These are just a few of the native iPad functions that work seamlessly with iG Workforce to increase productivity of field workers.  Users have found the iPad coupled with iG Workforce to be an intuitive, and an overall cost-effective mobile solution when considering the amazing increase in efficiencies the solution can bring.  To see other benefits iG Workforce can extend your mobile workers, click here or go to www.iGWorkforce.com.

Mobilizing Your Workforce in 2012

Mobile technology was the number two priority for CIOs surveyed by Gartner in 2011 and continues to be  the number two priority for CIOs in 2012.  The federal government also took initiative this year to formulate a mobile strategy of its own to reduce costs, increase productivity of employees and improve the accessibility and efficiency of its services.

Many state and local governments can also benefit from mobile technologies but may often be slower to embrace them due to a variety of factors: tight IT budgets, a long and political due process to overhaul legacy back office systems and software, or simply an uneasiness to change to what is new.

Rather than revamping an entire legacy system all at once, government agencies can implement a mobile strategy relatively quickly and in staggered steps, starting with one department or even one process at a time. Field inspection processes are a great place to implement a mobile strategy as enabling research, checklists, comments, printouts and other processes in the field on tablet devices often can provide significant efficiencies and high ROI with relative ease.

With the iG Workforce platform, mobile workers can easily and quickly manage all aspects of the inspection process from the iPad.  The native app works seamlessly with the iPad to instantly access, manage and sync data with any back-office system via an open API and if required, cloud-based hosted environment.  Here are three simple ways the iG Workforce platform can help inspections be processed more efficiently:

• Prioritize inspections:  the iG Inspect app includes an Esri GIS mapping technology to optimize the best route to take for the day’s inspections, in addition to other functions to help analyze inspections geographically.

• Standardized the Process:  iG Inspect streamlines all the items that need to be reviewed for a particular inspection with the choice to pass or fail the item and add any comments or notes.

• Sync and normalize data – iG Inspect was the first mobile government platform designed specifically for the iPad that utilizes an API and cloud-based architecture to manage your data centrally allowing for integration with multiple back office system.  The mobile environment allows field inspectors to store and forward data when they’re out of range of the Internet.

For government agencies looking to mobilize their field staff, the iG Workforce platform provides an easy transition to a mobile solution with its superior interface and intuitive features.  The advancements in mobile technologies just within the last few years is staggering as shopping and banking on the phone or media tablets have become the norm.  For government agencies looking to leverage these advancements in mobile to help increase work productivity and improve public services in their regulatory processes, iG Workforce is the first step to take for a long-term mobile solution.

For more information, go to www.iGWorkforce.com and follow us on Twitter: @iGWorkforce1.

2012 EnerGov Certification Courses – Registration Now Open

If you haven’t already, register to become a certified EnerGov professional in 2012. The EnerGov certification courses are held within EnerGov’s state-of-the-art training facilities within EnerGov’s corporate headquarters (greater Atlanta area). These courses will provide an in-depth overview on how to administer and configure particular modules and components of the EnerGov platform.  These certifications are essential in ensuring your agency has the know-how to fully leverage the investment made in the EnerGov system.

Additionally, in response to Gov 2.0 initiatives, EnerGov will also be offering a seminar on Citizen Engagement, which will offer insight on how to utilize the EnerGov platform in addition to using social media and other technologies to better engage the public. This seminar is open to all government agencies (EnerGov and non-EnerGov clients) and will be held in the greater Atlanta area.

Please note that EnerGov customers with certified EnerGov professionals receive a discount on their support plans as well as discounts on user conferences and other events on an annual basis. Professional certifications must be kept up to date annually.

For more details and the full listing of certifications courses, click here.