Click here to see our full coverage of the 2024 Digital Counties Survey.
1st Jefferson County, Colo.
Jefferson County’s Enterprise Innovation and Expertise division embraces a philosophy of partnership, searching for to help and advance the federal government enterprise not simply in expertise, however in course of as nicely. That is evident in a lot of its work prior to now 12 months, however nowhere extra clearly than in its new Enterprise Relationship Administration program: The division despatched out enterprise analysts to different workplaces, enlisting most county departments and fascinating them within the creation of 80 concepts that are actually progressing into strategic initiatives. Equally, the Jeffco Innovation Lab has labored to coach county employees on strategies to get rid of course of ache factors, saving time and assets whereas enhancing service supply. In the meantime, specialised groups work with different departments to help within the creation of information dashboards, functions and chatbots.
One main endeavor prior to now 12 months was the improve of the Amanda case administration platform, which enabled the creation of the brand new Amanda Citizen Portal. The portal permits for data lookup — for constructing permits, planning and zoning, setting well being information and retail meals inspections — in addition to direct service for allowing exercise equivalent to inspection scheduling, charge estimation and criticism submitting. The mission allowed for the retirement of a customized utility, migrated providers from on-premises to cloud and logs about 29,000 classes per thirty days.
On high of this core IT work and partnership philosophy, BIT has devoted time towards understanding the longer term, utilizing internships, fellowships and assets to determine AI protected utilization protocols for county workers, holding studying classes for greater than 200 workers to study generative AI and conducting a pilot mission to reveal the feasibility of biometric logins.
2nd Snohomish County, Wash.
Snohomish County, Wash., rises to second place in its inhabitants class this 12 months on the energy of key finest practices and future planning, utilizing expertise to succeed in residents the place they’re and simplify complicated processes. Leaders launched an initiative that may consider and analyze residents’ digital expertise throughout environments, from net pages to social media, to generate a extra holistic method to providers. The IT strategic plan has been up to date to mirror this, with a objective set round resident expertise through an omni-channel method. Work is underway on a ground-up redesign for all 4 county web sites.
Officers prioritized innovation, securing $300,000 in particular funding to drive improvement of contemporary options. Launched in June 2023, the pilot Innovation Fund logged 17 requests for funding in 9 months, with greater than half yielding new options for crucial enterprise wants as officers work to make the group acquainted with rising tech like Azure information lakes, cell gadget administration, and the usage of synthetic intelligence and machine studying options.
The county is working with the state IT company to face up a Safety Operations Heart. Officers additionally reconfigured Snohomish’s safety data and occasion administration software, freed up assets, and are mirroring the state in adopting a brand new answer for prolonged risk detection and response.
Snohomish created and stuffed a knowledge stewardship and privateness supervisor publish with oversight of all types of information. Officers have additionally reinvigorated their Information Governance Steering Committee, infusing it with three layers of oversight that features illustration from all departments. Execs allotted $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding towards enhancing digital fairness by enhancing broadband infrastructure. Plus, a broadband service hole evaluation is underway, and a Public Growth Authority is being created to spearhead protection improvement.
third New Fort County, Del.
New Fort County as soon as once more took third place in its inhabitants class for its continued excellence in utilizing expertise to enhance authorities providers. Upgrades to the county website improved accessibility, usability and efficiency, attaining WCAG2.2 compliance and an accessibility rating of 96 p.c. The county additionally applied SeeClickFix for residents to report upkeep points at county parks. And in an effort to extend transparency and centralize providers, the county launched the Neighborhood Affiliation Portal as a one-stop store for governing paperwork and assets for frequent curiosity communities.
New Fort County additionally earned its place among the many high finishers for efforts to enhance its cybersecurity posture. Multifactor authentication was applied countywide in simply two months for all workers, contractors and distributors. Moreover, a brand new evaluation toolkit led to revised safety settings that improved endpoint lockdown on 1000’s of telework units from 36 p.c to 90 p.c. The county additionally performed tabletop workouts that resulted in improved plans and playbooks for incident response, in addition to constructing credibility and consciousness with management about easy methods to collaborate throughout a cyber assault.
Like many jurisdictions, New Fort County has acknowledged the rising curiosity in synthetic intelligence and the necessity for presidency to contemplate easy methods to use it appropriately. The county is planning to work with stakeholders and county management to develop insurance policies to make sure accountable use of AI. It is usually in search of a high-value, low-risk alternative for an AI pilot mission to reveal the chances of this rising expertise.
third Westchester County, N.Y.
Westchester County, N.Y., climbed the ranks to 3rd place in its inhabitants class this 12 months due to the Division of Data Expertise’s (DoIT) continued dedication to enhancing digital fairness and exploring rising applied sciences.
In collaboration with Westchester County’s Workplace of Financial Growth, DoIT launched Join Westchester, which affords key digital assets, coaching and education schemes, and entry to reasonably priced Web to low-income residents. This system, established in October 2023, companions with numerous nonprofit organizations just like the STEM Alliance and the Westchester Library System to make all of it occur. The IT staff’s crucial position in supporting this initiative brings Westchester County one step nearer to creating digital fairness a actuality for its residents.
With path from the county’s CIO and assistant CIO for governance, a brand new committee that focuses on all issues associated to rising expertise was established in June 2023. Made up of DoIT representatives and referred to as the Strategic Expertise Structure Roundtable (STAR), the committee drafted Westchester County’s first coverage on applicable AI utilization. This is just one instance that displays the county’s dedication to utilizing new applied sciences in a accountable and clear manner. STAR additionally up to date consumer interface requirements for the county’s functions and affords finest practices in areas like cell apps and consumer expertise. Past creating pointers, STAR checks and paperwork use circumstances of AI. Additional, the group explores rising expertise use circumstances for crucial wants like fortifying cybersecurity.
4th DeKalb County, Ga.
DeKalb County, Ga., is making a cloud push, shifting functions like its public security and judicial methods administration to a software-as-a-service answer. This spares IT employees from dealing with the upkeep and upgrades, makes budgeting extra predictable and reduces the necessity to handle, preserve and change loads of servers, databases and the like. The county requires new software program to be SaaS or vendor managed. To scale back third-party dangers, DeKalb seems to be for distributors who’ve FedRAMP or different resiliency certifications, and it additionally accomplished a vendor danger diversification evaluation to know the place its instruments and distributors might depend on the identical providers or infrastructure.
To higher safe workers’ units towards loss or improper entry, the county adopted a cell gadget administration system. All newly bought units now require workers to make use of face-based identification to unlock them and workers should reauthorize themselves after a interval of inactivity. Plus, units might be remotely wiped if misplaced. This 12 months, the county goals to conduct no less than one dwell catastrophe restoration state of affairs with manufacturing methods in a cloud setting. It additionally completed segmenting its networks, an essential cybersecurity measure.
DeKalb is utilizing new tech-enabled approaches to entice and retain extra IT employees. It adopted a brand new platform and workflows that speed up the hiring course of and assist with conducting inside fairness critiques, which regularly result in elevating current workers’ salaries.
fifth Cobb County, Ga.
To extend their potential to interact with the almost 772,000 residents of Cobb County, Ga., officers have launched the usage of Sprout Social to reinforce neighborhood engagement talents. The county additionally revamped its 911 website to higher talk with residents, in addition to enhance its recruitment posture. Confronted with staffing shortages, the county’s redesigned web site goals to showcase its tradition, values and alternatives.
A 30-year-old information middle was retired as Cobb County moved into a brand new facility, full with new applied sciences, enhancing resiliency, computing, storage and safety. The brand new information middle will allow the county to develop its IT infrastructure — or shrink it — as extra functions migrate to the cloud. Third-party cost processors can now be discovered throughout various the county’s on-line service platforms, enabling residents to buy bus passes, pay their water utility invoice and property taxes, and extra, saving time for each the residents and employees. Residents can even share footage from their house video safety methods with the Cobb County Police Division through the Citizen Camera Registry program, a voluntary program the place legislation enforcement can request footage from residents when a criminal offense happens within the space.
Distributors hoping to do enterprise with Cobb County have a brand new procurement system to work together with, referred to as the EProcurement and Contract Lifecycle Administration System, a completely digital and streamlined platform. An upcoming mission contains AI-enabled expertise to assist in property assessments, eradicating various guide steps within the valuation course of. The county’s cybersecurity construction has been enhanced with added multifactor authentication to incorporate delicate file and server entry.
sixth Macomb County, Mich.
Taking sixth place in its inhabitants class is Macomb County, Mich., whose strategic plan, created in 2018 and most just lately up to date earlier this 12 months, goals to prioritize enhancing digital authorities providers and cybersecurity. The county redesigned and launched its web site in November utilizing a Drupal 10 platform for improved search and repair performance. Net visitors originating from search engines like google has elevated for the reason that new web site launch. And in October, the county began utilizing Workday for hiring; over 5,000 individuals have utilized for positions by means of the portal because it went dwell, and greater than 200 new workers have been employed utilizing this modernized course of.
In 2023, Macomb County completed automating and digitizing its public works on-line portal, a mission begun in 2020. The platform permits a spread of individuals, from land builders to householders, to request and handle permits effectively. This workplace doesn’t shrink back from implementing expertise, together with the recent implementation of drones and AI.
In cybersecurity, the county launched a phishing consciousness marketing campaign in January 2023, aiming to supply instructional interactive workouts. Macomb additionally applied a brand new catastrophe restoration plan in mid-2023.
seventh San Mateo County, Calif.
San Mateo County, Calif., is utilizing dashboards to spice up its on-line presence and enhance transparency. The county’s tech professionals have collaborated with the Division of Housing to create what officers name a sequence of interactive dashboards that helps residents hold tabs on native reasonably priced housing — one of many key factors related to poverty avoidance and wealth accumulation. Since early 2023, the dashboard, which resides on the housing division’s web site, has attracted greater than 10,000 views, serving to to deliver extra transparency to the difficulty whereas additionally figuring out the areas with the best want for reasonably priced and accessible residing quarters.
As that effort continues, the county is utilizing tech to higher tie collectively numerous departments.
Through its use of the GovDelivery platform, as an example, San Mateo County has boosted communication amongst its workforce and constituents through electronic mail and textual content message, which in flip helps officers present faster updates on providers, neighborhood occasions and emergencies. The platform now has greater than 274,000 distinctive subscribers and affords greater than 100 subjects to an viewers unfold throughout all county departments. The interactions performed through such an effort additionally present useful information and insights to county officers as they proceed to suggest and work on coverage.
eighth Polk County, Fla.
In Polk County, Fla., the IT division is utilizing expertise to bridge the hole between innovation and answer supply. For instance, within the final 12 months, the county has accomplished a mission emigrate its public-facing web site to a cloud supplier, permitting IT employees to deal with utility improvement and constructing an accessible, fashionable web site. Different notable efforts embrace making a extra clear, public-facing funds dashboard to enhance its general funds course of and piloting a mission to exchange legacy PBX cellphone methods with a brand new call-center-as-a-service platform. The latter mission was a migration of all on-premises name facilities to a cloud-hosted answer, leading to a collaboration between the Board of County Commissioners, tax collector’s workplace, sheriff’s workplace, state lawyer’s workplace, public defender’s workplace and the clerk of the courts.
Amongst its challenges, Polk County cites implementing state-mandated cybersecurity insurance policies and coaching together with understanding easy methods to govern cloud-based software program agreements successfully. To handle the previous, the county just lately met with its present cyber insurance coverage supplier, danger administration division, lawyer’s workplace and IT leads for different constitutional workplaces to higher perceive what roles these teams would play throughout a possible occasion and the way cyber insurance coverage protects the county altogether. Notable efforts in cloud computing governance embrace making a framework to offer a safe, supported operational setting for the county and including governance to the county’s strategic plan to higher execute software program agreements.
ninth Ventura County, Calif.
Ventura County, Calif., positioned ninth in its inhabitants class with various big-lift IT initiatives. For starters, the Data Expertise Companies Division migrated from a legacy property tax system to a brand new, extra automated system. The division has additionally developed a web-based mapping utility for the Public Works Company, referred to as PWA GIS Viewer, which mixes greater than twenty years of spatial information from a number of departments to trace watershed, sanitation, land improvement and extra.
Equally, the county has additionally applied data-driven expertise in public security to determine identified drug offenders coming into county jails. The replace to the Ventura County Built-in Justice Data System (VCIJIS) utility permits jail employees to determine inmates that could possibly be smuggling medicine into jail amenities whereas additionally serving to to stem the potential for inmate overdoses. In the identical spirit, information mining and analytics capabilities constructed into the VCIJIS now permit officers to inform home violence victims of an offender’s handle and/or neighborhood of residence.
IT Companies has additionally rolled out an answer to reinforce safety throughout workstations, servers and electronic mail methods, and endpoint safety has been added to all workstations and servers. Efforts to construct the primary leg of a countywide municipal broadband community are within the grant phases.
tenth Chester County, Pa.
In Chester County, Pa., the Division of Computing and Data Companies (DCIS) is tough at work overcoming some staffing challenges whereas persevering with to ship sturdy digital providers for residents. DCIS cites its current employees struggling to adapt to new expertise and problem competing with the personal sector amongst its points. To that finish, the company is updating job descriptions and upskilling current employees, in addition to giving them new alternatives for innovation. They’ve additionally began outsourcing some duties they can not employees internally, like AI improvement and cybersecurity monitoring. To bridge some extra workforce gaps, the county courts will likely be launching AI-powered kiosks in a number of places this summer season to provide customers entry to court-related data. DCIS additionally has two chatbot pilots, one for a assist desk database and one for the division of human assets, to assist workers discover details about advantages.
DCIS performs an essential position within the funds and procurement course of countywide, in order that they’re concerned in any expertise selections, which has helped with higher spending oversight and improved cost-effectiveness. An “ambassador” program polls county departments quarterly to determine challenges and the place tech options will help, and DCIS management meets weekly with heads of all different businesses to ensure priorities are aligned. A redesigned county web site is deliberate for 2024 with new branding, and efforts are underway to ensure all digital varieties are ADA-compliant.
Click here to see our full coverage of the 2024 Digital Counties Survey.
