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
