WASHINGTON DC – Five Michigan Counties were lauded in the 2015 Digital Counties Survey for understanding the transformational value of technology and making the investments needed to improve services and efficiency across all facets of their organizations.
The winners include:
Population of 500,000 or more – Oakland County (3)
Population of 250,000 to 499,999 – Ottawa County (6)
Population 150,000 to 249,999 – Berrien County (5), Jackson County (10)
Population up to 150,000 – Allegan County (1)
The five were among 54 cited by the Center for Digital Government, sister organization to Government Technology, as the most innovative and pioneering counties in the nation.
“Counties are continually becoming more sophisticated in their approach to technology-based service delivery,” said Todd Sander, executive director of the Center for Digital Government. “We see this not only through the investment choices they are making in systems and tools, but also in their adding professional staff with specific expertise in security, data management and innovation. It is a constant challenge for government to keep up with the pace of technological change and of public expectation. This year’s survey clearly demonstrates that counties are up to that challenge, and they are actively embracing new technology that will help them make better decisions and operate more efficiently.”
This year’s survey, the 13th annual, revealed leading counties, as well as trends that span the nation. Respondents reported which technologies and innovations they believed would see more of next year, and the top 10 were:
Cybersecurity
Hire and retain competent IT personnel
Mobility/mobile applications
Open government/ transparency/open data
Disaster recovery/continuity of operations
Budget and cost control
Virtualization: server, desktop/client, storage, applications
Shared services
Portal/ e-government
Cloud computing
New concepts are beginning to take hold in county government too. More than half of respondents said they were considering Internet of Everything (IoE) technologies in their strategic plans. Twelve percent reported having a chief privacy officer on staff, 7 percent reported having a chief innovation officer, 5 percent a chief digital officer, 3 percent a chief performance officer, and 8 percent reported having a chief data officer. Business intelligence and data analytics systems are in use by more than one-quarter of respondents, with another 29 percent reporting plans to begin using those technologies in the next two years.
While innovative, counties are also slow in moving to the cloud, the survey showed. More than half of respondents reported that between 0 and 10 percent of their systems had been moved to the cloud, and another 25 percent reported that between 10 and 20 percent had been moved to the cloud. Many counties are stuck managing legacy systems that won’t ever be migrated to the cloud. A third of respondents reported that more than half their systems won’t make the leap to the cloud.
Cloud or no, this year’s winners found ways to make the most of their limited resources. Judges were impressed by projects around the areas of open data and transparency, cybersecurity, procurement, content resource management, emergency preparedness and business continuity, programs that support environmental tenants, and performance monitoring.
Allegan County took first place in the less than 150,000 population category for its involvement in a three-county procurement consortium, 27 online services including an online GIS data library, a centralized social media portal, and a dashboard that includes budget reports and key performance indicators.
The procurement system, which was developed by Kent County and which is also used by Ottawa County benefits the participants in several ways, said Robert Sarro, county administrator of Allegan County.
“The more we work together, the more purchasing opportunities there are and the better vendor base we get from having the three counties together,” Sarro explained.
The online system uses a reverse auction process that also saves the county time and lowers bids, he said. Procurement can sometimes take up to 90 days, but because their system only deals with non-custom orders, everything is simplified and vendors can try to outbid each other and finish the process quickly.
“For example, if we were hiring an architect for a project, we would want to interview that architect, we would want to do background checks, and this is really a commitment up front. When you post that bid package, you’re essentially committing to award it to the lowest bidder,” Sarro said. “It has taken processes which, in the past, could take easily 90 days to do, and we can do it now in three days, sometimes the same day.”
Allegan County didn’t develop the procurement system, but identifying those kinds of opportunities is the difference between success and mediocrity. Always looking for opportunities is what has enabled the county IT office to flourish as it has, Sarro said, adding that in Allegan, staff members call it their Continuous Improvement program. It’s why they entered an unofficial partnership with Haworth, a global furniture company with headquarters in the county.
“It’s about sharing information and training with each other. They have shared resources with us in the way of trainers and implementers to come help us build our continuous improvement culture. It’s about just continuing to improve and, as such, it’s really building transparency in the organization so we can really see everything that’s going on,” he said. “It’s kind of a unique thing for county government to do, to join up with a corporate partner to see where can we fit the things that are working for them in their corporate world and where we can learn from some of those things, but not necessarily duplicate it, but take that things that fit in a government environment.”
To read the full report, click on http://www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Digital-Counties-Survey-2015-Results.html
Author: Staff Writers
Source: 2015 Digital Counties Survey
Date: 7/9/2015
