Finding
ways to
do things
better
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| Working within our organization, across
departmental lines, is what e-Gov
is all about.
They call this “breaking down
stovepipes”, and this year much work has been done
collaboratively as we have found ways to work
together on improvements. |
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In partnership with FIU, a new course offering is
available to county staff on
e-Government Advising and Consulting. |
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An Innovations Lab is now available to all county
IT staff, serving as a place where innovation
and collaboration can take place.
This facility is located in the Stephen
P. Clark Center, 17th floor. |
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All county employees are invited to learn more
about the services and information available
on the county’s web portal, miamidade.gov,
by enrolling in a free
training course. |
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On November 19, 2003,
Miami-Dade County held its annual GIS Day
Event in the lobby of the SPCC. This event allowed us to open our
doors to County Staff, businesses, and the
general public to showcase real-world
applications of GIS technology. |
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Collaboration was the operative word in the
development of a countywide system for
Contract Monitoring.
A system already in use by Transit was
modified by e-Gov staff, under the direction
of the Procurement Department, and is now
utilized countywide to generate reports for
the Board of County Commissioners. |
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The Building Department and e-Gov have worked
closely, across many departmental lines, to
streamline processes associated with building
permits.
County experts, vendors, customers and
technicians locked themselves in a room for
several days and began to analyze existing
processes. The result: Seven plan review periods and five points of payment have
been streamlined
to only three plan review periods with two
points of payment. |
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We’re not all work and no play.
This year’s holiday party, hosted by
e-Gov, ITD and the CIO office, was open to IT
Team leaders across the county. |
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A source of frustration is our current processes
for billing for services.
Astonishingly, we’ve learned that at
least ten people’s worth of time is spent on
billing activities each month…not
administrative staff but rather our highly
trained and capable IT staff in e-Gov.
Armed with this information, we are
working with the Budget Office and county
departments to find a better way to fund our
services. |
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Leadership is essential in leading the change. |
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Next
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| The
Word of the Year |
| What
is the key word or phrase that characterizes
the past year? Linguistic experts from around
the country gather each December to identify
that key word or phrase that characterizes us
for the year. In 2001 the Word of the Year
was: “9-1-1”. It was an easy choice. For
2002, consensus was more difficult to reach,
but the group finally agreed upon “weapons
of mass destruction.” Had the experts been
asked to select the word for Miami-Dade
County, they probably would have chosen
“e-lections.” It was clearly the word that
topped the list for e-Government in its first
year as a new county department.
The
November 5th Election commanded
support and expertise from every corner of the
Department – Geographical Information
Systems (GIS), database application
development, online services – as well as
the commitment of hundreds of e-Gov employees
who lent their technical know-how to the
Election Day process to insure smooth
operations at the polling places and help
desks.
With
barely a month until the Election, the call to
action resulted in the development of several
applications to plan for and monitor critical
Election functions.
Specifically: |
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An
Election Resource Assignment database, created
to extract employee information from the
payroll files, merge pollworker information
kept in elections, and track assignments and
payroll for employees and pollworkers.
The database used the power of the web
to provide employees, Quality Assurance
Managers and Department Directors with up to
the minute Election
Day assignments and information. The
elections staffing team was able to assign
precinct staff and monitor staffing overages
and shortages as changes were made. Elections
timesheets, data entry and reports were
incorporated into the database to insure that
payroll records for pollworkers and County
employees would reflect the correct hours
worked for the elections.
The system was envisioned, developed
and implemented within a mere two weeks and,
during the course of the elections planning
process, received over 1.1 million hits! |
|
A
website designed to inform county employees of
important details related to the elections
process.
Many questions were posed regarding
Election Day preparations -- parking, food,
compensation, etc. The information was updated
many times a day.
Without the website, there was no way
to ensure that a consistent message reached
everyone. |
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An
animated
tutorial developed with Flash technology
to teach voters how to use the iVotronics
voting machines. Users were given a virtual
training, then prompted to “try their
hand” at interactive touch screen voting. |
|
The
‘In Command” system, an interactive
mapping system developed with GIS technology
to monitor the status of precincts on Election
Day. The
system was deployed via the county’s
Intranet to three command posts: MDPD
Headquarters, WASD Technical Help Desk and
Elections Central.
Arrangements were made with Nextel to
provide Quality Assurance Managers with
instant two-way messaging telephones to
automatically update their precinct status.
As each polling place was successfully
opened at 7 a.m., section by section the
computerized map of county precincts turned
from white to green!
|
| To
top it off, more than 85 percent of
e-Government’s staff participated directly
in the Election Day process. A dedicated few
stayed behind to enable the County to conduct
“business as usual”.
Both on the front lines and behind the
scenes, the “e-lection”
effort represented an accomplishment
unprecedented within the Department and
unmatched countywide since Hurricane Andrew.
Any
speculations on the 2003 Word of the Year?
Perhaps it is a little early, but as
you ponder the possibilities, also ponder
this. 2003 is still young, untarnished and full of potential. Each
of us has an opportunity “to forge the
creativity … and mold a new reality” or,
through habit, to mold this year into the
shape of years past.
The challenge and choice is ours. |
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Next
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