HomeMy WebLinkAboutAgenda - 12-11-2008 - 7a lateORANGE COUNTY
BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS
ACTION AGENDA ITEM ABSTRACT
Meeting Date: Dec 11, 2008
Action Agenda
Item No. ~ - q
SUBJECT: Information Technolo Strategic Plan
DEPARTMENT: Information Technologies PUBLIC HEARING: (Y/N) No
ATTACHMENT(S): INFORMATION CONTACT:
Strategic Technology Plan Todd Jones, 245-2285
PURPOSE: To provide the Board with an update on the work of the Information Technologies
Advisory Committee, provide the Board the latest approved version of the Information
Technologies Strategic Plan and to receive feedback and direction the Board might wish to
provide in the ongoing evolution of this document.
BACKGROUND: The establishment of the Information Technologies Advisory Committee in
1997 served as an extension of the Board of County Commissioners to provide strategic
oversight of technology initiatives in the County. One of the primary mechanisms for articulating
this strategic oversight is the Information Technologies Strategic Plan document. This
document is reviewed and revised at least every two~years.
With the rapid pace of technology evolution, the Strategic Plan seeks to define only broad
technology goals projecting 5 years into the future. The current release of this document
focuses on enterprise technology, while future releases will include more detailed strategic goals
at the individual departmental level.
FINANCIAL IMPACT: While the strategic goals will require capital to implement and ongoing
operating monies to sustain, there is no financial impact with the Board's receiving of this report.
RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends that the Board receive the Information
Technologies Strategic Plan and provide any feedback to the County's Chief Information Officer
and Information Technologies Advisory Committee.
Orange County Information Technologies Strategic Plan
Orange County Information Technologies
Strategic
Technology
Plan
November 2008
Todd E. Jones
Chief Information Officer
Orange County Information Technologies
VN'~th consultation from
the Orange County Information Technologies Advisory Committee
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Orange County Information Technologies Strategic Plan
Revision History
Original version -August 2004
Established basic strategic direction for County. Approved by ITAC
1St major update -March 2006
Updated to remove accomplished goals and to include new web
goals, new networking goals and security initiatives. Approved by
ITAC
2"d major update -April 2008
Updated to remove accomplished goals and to include new
networking goals and application initiatives.
3rd update -November 2008
Updated to include GIS strategic plans
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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES ..........................................
5
...................
Public benefits ................................................................................................... 5
Customer service .............................................................................................. 5
Cost containment .............................................................................................. 5
Inter-departmental synergies ............................................................................ 6
Data retention ................................................................................................... 6
Business continuity ........................................................................................... 6
CURRENT STATE ................................................... 7
.........................
Physical Infrastructure .......................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Network ....................................................................................................... .. 7
Servers ........................................................................................................ .. 7
Desktops ..................................................................................................... .. 8
Operations Support ......................................................................................... .. 8
Applications Development .............................................................................. .. 8
Business Analysis ........................................................................................... 10
County Website ............................................................................................... 10
OCIT Strategic Requirements ....................................................... 11
Operations Support ......................................................................................... 11
Application Development ................................................................................ 11
Business Analysis ........................................................................................... 12
CUSTOMER/CONSTITUENT SERVICES ....................................... 13
Website Redevelopment ................................................................................. 13
E-Democracy Initiatives .................................................................................. 13
Deeds Web Information ..................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Animal Shelter Adoptions ...............................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Credit Card Transactions ............................................................................ 14
Rec and Parks Registration ......................................................................... 14
Integrated Address Based Information Center ............................................ 14
Subscription Services ..................................................................................... 15
INFRASTRUCTURE APPLICATIONS ............................................ 15
Network Modernization Project ....................................................................... 15
Southern Human Services Center .....................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Public Works ................................................................................................... 16
Desktop Replacement Project ........................................................................ 17
Server Replacement Projects ......................................................................... 18
Data Retention ..................•----------•--................................................................ 19
Security Initiatives ........................................................................................... 19
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity ................................................... 19
Enterprise Wide OCIT Standards .................................................................... 20
Enterprise E-mail ............................................................................................ 21
Infrastructure Total Costs ...................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
Infrastructure Benefits ........................................Error! Bookmark not defined.
FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING ............................. 22
MUNIS System Update ..................•-----..................---........................-------....... 22
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Property Information Management System ..................................................... 22
Cost/Benefit analysis of OCIT ......................................................................... 23
Budget methodologies for IT project justification ............................................ 25
CRITICAL FUTURE USER APPLICATIONS .................................. 25
Constituent Request Tracking System ............................................................ 25
Applicant Tracking System Upgrade ............................................................... 25
EMS Communication System ......................................................................... 25
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GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
Orange County Information Technologies (OCIT)'s Mission
Statement: To serve Orange County citizens by creating,
configuring and maintaining reliable and cost-effective technical
solutions for the provision of public service and the protection of
County information.
Public benefits
Public benefit is ultimately our only goal. OCIT must be
able to justify all IT efforts and expenditures in terms of
advancing public benefit. This element of the strategic plan
must serve as the core of the plan, upon which all other
efforts are based.
Customer service
While our immediate customers are the Orange County
government departments' staffs, the citizens of Orange
County are our ultimate customers. By providing direct and
efficient service to the various County departments, we
serve the public's interest. In addition to quick and thorough
response to departmental staff needs, we want to ensure
that customers receive timely feedback on our progress
and have a firm idea of what they can expect from IT.
Cost containment
A critical element in ensuring public benefits is our
containment of cost and leveraging benefts of
technologies. This includes the following points:
• All major applications should be chosen through a
formal, yet scaleable selection process. This process
includes formal proposals and thoroughly vetted
requirements analysis of proposed technologies.
• OCIT must adhere to prevailing technology
architecture standards from which efficiencies of
scale for support and maintenance can be realized.
• OCIT must reduce opportunities for malicious
intrusion (viruses, worms, spyware, hackers) to
adversely affect operations and threaten the integrity
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of County information. Concomitant with this cost
containment for OCIT resources is the need to
ensure constituent departments are not also
adversely affected by these threats.
• OCIT must adopt Total Cost of Ownership as a
critical part of the cost/benefit analysis for all
expenditures
Inter-departmental synergies
By maintaining a broad view of Orange County technology
interests, OCIT can identify:
• Technology redundancies between departments
• Opportunities for data sharing to enrich public
service
• Areas of diverging technical architectures that would
be costly to integrate
OCIT should work with the County Manager and BOCC to
formalize technology roles within departments and adopt a
"dotted-line" or secondary reporting relationship for these
roles in the OCIT department
Data retention
The OCIT organization. plays an essential role in ensuring
County information is preserved and accessible. The OCIT
organization must standardize on the following practices:
• Well managed data backup procedures
• Off-site storage of data
• Regular data restore audits to measure
effectiveness of data retention
• Align retention schedules with public needs and
prevailing records retention laws
Business continuity
OCIT has a significant role in preventing disasters, and in
helping Orange County recover from disasters as quickly
and efficiently as possible. Components of this role
include:
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• Network security from intruders
• Disaster planning in coordination with EMS and other
departments
• Identifying, cost justifying and eliminating single points
of failure in critical systems and articulating needs to
decision makers
• Exploring arrangements with peer governments and
private sector vendors for restoring essential services
and data on temporary equipment
The OCIT organization will work with the. Emergency
Management organization to develop a Business Continuity
and Disaster Recovery Plan. This plan must cover short term
crises that temporarily interrupt the County's access to
computing resources, as well as long-term interruptions to
County facilities requiring relocation of County operations.
CURRENT STATE
Network
Approximately two thirds of our network is high speed
fiber (100Mb) while the remaining third is a combination
of Frame Relay, DSL, Cable and some dialup. The high
speed portions of our network enable centralization of
servers, which in turn provides economies of scale for
environmental protection, centralized backups, security
and maintenance. There is a clear trend of reliability
where we have been able to take advantage of
centralization.
Servers
Our servers are a combination of Dell, IBM and Compaq
hardware, depending on the vintage of procurement.
These servers are configured to a variety of operating
systems, including Windows, a legacy AIX server and
two Linux servers. The average age of servers is
approximately 3 years, with a few critical servers
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working beyond their expected lifespan, posing a risk to
customer services.
Desktops
Desktops are predominantly P4 or better computers
running Win2000 and WinXP. They range in age from 6
years to new. Older computers are beyond their
expected lifespan and are no longer vendor supported.
Further, these older computers are often incapable of
supporting newer security software and additional
enterprise applications.
Operations Support
The OCIT Operations staff provides the following services:
• Server maintenance, troubleshooting, upgrading
and replacement
• Network maintenance, troubleshooting, upgrading
and replacement
• Email system maintenance, troubleshooting,
upgrading and replacement
• Desktop maintenance, troubleshooting, upgrading
and replacement
• Help Desk function
Geographic Information Systems
Now a part of Information Technologies, the Geographic .
Information Systems component of Orange County needs to be
evolved to meet the analytical needs of our constituents, our
fellow departments and our elected officials.
Long term needs for GIS are to develop a richly detailed
address-driven information center on the website. This tool
could .provide myriad data points in response to a single
address. Crime statistics, school and political districts,
recreational proximities and many other data points could be
provided.
Other capabilities to be developed include:
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• Ability to search by sales specified by amounts, dates,
and locations (subdivision, etc. )
• Parcel linkages to a property record card
• Parcel selection based on a manually defined buffer with
the capability to export the selected attributes to an Excel
spreadsheet
• Integrated multiple year orthophotography
• Selectable GIS view scale
• Oblique imagery integration
• Integration with NCOneMap (http://www.nconemap.com/)
• Full integration with Register of Deeds and Tax
Collections
• Query, view, and get directions to Elections polling sites
• Correlate description of confiscated animals with location
• Crime reporting graphics (date, location, and types of
offenses)
• Zoning information
• Custom queries to locate desirable properties for
economic development.
Applications Development
The OCIT organization is also responsible for providing
applications for all Orange County departments.
Historically, this has emphasized in-house development
of applications to meet specific needs of Orange County
departments. However, the recent industry trend is
toward implementing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS)
software. This direction is predicated on greater
efficiencies and more powerful capabilities derived from
COTS software.
Currently, the specific duties of the applications analysts
include:
• In house application development, support and
enhancement
• Integration of commercial off the shelf products
within current business processes and
technology architecture
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• Assisting operations staff with nettlesome
troubleshooting issues.
Some departments outside of IT have staff that
program applications or customize COTS applications
to meet business needs. These development activities
typically do not follow standard development
methodologies and are highly dependent on the
ongoing availability of the specific individual resource
who performs the coding. Efforts to provide technical
backup to these individuals are not always practical
due to the lack of formal development practices.
Business Analysis
In 2004, OCIT hired a system analyst to advance the
business analysis capability in OCIT. The duties of the
business analyst role includes:
• Applying formal project management disciplines
to major system implementations and large-scale
enhancement requests, focusing on
requirements management and scheduling.
• Consulting with departments to properly align
their business practices with available and
potential technology solutions.
• Contract consulting with purchasing and legal
departments, to ensure vendor performance is
measurable and contractually enforceable.
• Oversight of vendor and consultant activities
County Website
Orange County's current website is currently undergoing a
major transition. The original mid 90's design originally
intended to accommodate a modest amount of content. Over
time, the amount of web content increased dramatically, now
including over 17,000 files and 2.2 Gigabytes of data.
With this increase in content and services, the design not
evolved. The site is in the final stages of providing some
level of accessibility to non-English speakers or the disabled.
Additionally, changes have been made to provide powerful
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search mechanisms for helping the public locate information
easily and find related services.
The site has been updated to largely eliminate individual
departmental webpage design, which had historically
confounded attempt to portray Orange County as a holistic
set of public services. As the web information has grown in
volume and sophistication, Orange County Information
Technologies has worked with departments to evolve the
website to accommodate this growth, resulting in significant
opportunities for advancing customer satisfaction.
OCIT STRATEGIC REQUIREMENTS
Operations Support
In order to increase overall system reliability, OCIT
should strengthen the operations area, in the following
areas:
• Continued improvements to detailed metrics of
support activities, including tracking of uptime for
critical services
• Continuously improved resolution times to issues
• Evolving controls on the use of desktop
computers, so as to prevent security exploits.
These controls include the demotion of user
accounts from admin privileges, periodic audits
of desktop-resident applications and global patch
management.
• Continued use of email filters for reduction of
spam~without eliminating legitimate public inquiry
• Tracking the results of initiatives designed to
prevent maintenance issues, to gauge their
effectiveness.
Application Development
The IT organization should continue its evolution from in-
house application development to managing the
evaluation and implementation. of third party solutions.
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These commercial offerings, sometimes known as
Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) programs are mature,
fully featured and offer strong vendor support.
In order to address this shift, OCIT needs to continue to
evolve its expertise for project management, including
requirements analysis, contract evaluation, and vendor
management.
Some remaining enhancement and small-scale
development will persist. These enhancement activities
should focus on current technologies, such as the
Microsoft .net environment, Java and Python.
Orange County needs to address application
development that is performed by departments outside of
IT. The current lack of formal development methodology
creates a significant exposure for the County. This ad hoc
approach to software development produces application
code that is difficult to maintain and troubleshoot by
persons other than the original developer. Should that
singular resource become unavailable, departmental
processes could be adversely affected, recovery time
lengthy and cost of recovery significant.
Orange County must ensure that all development
activities are conducted within a framework of proven
formal software development methodologies, including full
design documentation, regression testing, code review,
release management and a full life cycle support plan.
With such a development context in place, Orange
County can ensure these business critical applications
are supportable beyond the availability of a single
resource.
Business Analysis
Because of the recommended emphasis on implementing
COTS applications, there is a need for business analysis
within OCIT. This business analysis requires the adoption
of new skillsets, which will become the underlying
methodology by which new technologies are researched
and deployed.
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Business Analysis methodologies should be formally
established for major system implementations and large-
scale enhancement requests. Business consultation skills
should be developed within the applications team so that
departments' business practices can be properly aligned
with available and potential technology solutions.
Formal partnerships should be developed between IT,
purchasing and legal departments, to ensure vendor
performance is measurable and contractually
enforceable.
CUSTOMER/CONSTITUENT SERVICES
Website Redevelopment
There is a strong need to redevelop the site to address the
issues outlined in the section entitled, County Website.
Orange County IT is leading the effort to perform a
comprehensive redevelopment of the site. This effort must
include creating a new site which is more efficient for the
public to find services, more efficient for departments to
manage their information, and should include instituting
mechanisms, such as Content Management Systems, to
ensure ongoing information growth is managed gracefully.
E-Government Initiatives
Along with the overall redevelopment of the Orange
County Website, new public services should be made
available on-line. There is a notable demographic trend of
Orange County as acomputer-literate and computer
accessible community. Additionally there is a unique
geographic separation between the County seat and
major population centers. This has meant a historical
frustration for the majority of Orange County citizens in
conducting County business.
Web technologies present an opportunity to address this
long unmet need of the citizenry. Web-based services
enable the public to transact with Orange County
government at their convenience. It allows citizens to
choose when and where they conduct business with
Orange County. At the same time, it reduces staff time
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normally dedicated to directly interacting with the public.
In turn, this gives the staff more time to address complex
issues in response to citizen needs.
Credit Card Transactions
There is a growing need to accept credit card
payments for Orange County services. Given the
prevalence of fee-based services, many requests for
governmental services could be completed on-line.
One critical dependency for all such fee-based
services is the acceptance of credit cards.
It is strongly recommended that OC implement a
generic mechanism for processing credit card
payments through the web. The generic aspect is
critical so that new services can be brought on-line
quickly and so that processing through the finance
department is efficient.
Rec and Parks Registration
According to industry research, on-line registration for
rec and parks classes and leagues provides a
significant boost in enrollment. It is strongly
recommended that OC implement on-line registration
for rec and parks programming. As with other e-
Democracy services, it should rely on the generic
credit card processing services.
Integrated Address Based Information Center
On-line land records functions have expanded
significantly over the past few years. The public can
now obtain a wide variety of information directly
associated with land parcels. Still, there remain
additional opportunities for citizen information that
can ultimately be tied to an address. For. example
1. School districts
2. voting precincts
3. crime statistics
4. recycling service days
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5. nearby parks
6. nearby public transportation
Subscription Services
Rather than rely solely on the public coming to our
website for information, Orange County IT wants to
look at mechanisms for targeting audiences and
pushing information out as a service. Specifically,
members of the public may wish to have the County
contact them with new developments in their areas of
interest, through aself-enrolling subscription service.
For example, realtors could subscribe to updates on
zoning and land use planning; contractors could
subscribe to updates on inspection information;
physicians could subscribe to information on breaking
health department issues.
Orange County IT recommends developing
subscription service technologies to enhance citizen
services. To control costs of producing content,
ongoing web content updates could be categorized
and delivered to the public via email.
INFRASTRUCTURE APPLICATIONS
There are important upgrades that must be made to Orange
County's technical infrastructure in order to ensure customer
needs are consistently met.
Network Modernization Project
The high speed fiber that interconnects all of the major
downtown Hillsborough facilities, as outlined in the
section titled "Network" on page 7, Network, has enabled
significant efficiencies of operation and flexibility in
serving the public. The benefits accrued by these
initiatives include:
• Ability to serve public needs from a variety of locations,
each interconnected to a common database through
high-speed fiber networking
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• Flexibility to move County operations to and from
various locations in the event of an emergency
• Ability to share data across departments and locations,
previously only supported through cumbersome and
time-consuming manual data transfer
• Overall increase in Internet access, access to state
systems and other systems beyond the user's current
physical location
• Ability to centralize server equipment, thus increasing
our ability to protect equipment from intrusion, disaster
and environmental hazards
• Ability to leverage centralized data backup methods,
thus increasing data retention for archival information
Orange County has pressing needs for further network
upgrades. Specifically:
Public Works
the current network connection to the Public Works facility
is Frame Relay. Support of their equipment is problematic
due to environmental conditions. Their servers are
susceptible to lightening strikes and power outages far
more often than the more vigilantly protected central
server facility Also, without high speed fiber, we cannot
deploy an enterprise SQL server to run their applications
with other SQL applications, thus saving costs, increasing
reliability and freeing up IT resources to reduce the need
for additional positions in IT
Wireless Access Points
The increased use of mobile technology has provided
significant efficiencies for many Orange County
departments. However, the lack of reliable network
connectivity from the field finds the County not fully able
to realize the benefits of this technology. Many field
workers currently gather information in the field and
upload back into County servers when they return to the
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office, creating time lags in the information's accuracy.
Some field workers use mobile data technology that
interfaces with County servers through cell phone circuits,
but these solutions are costly, slow and impractical for
many critical County applications.
Information Technologies needs to investigate the
deployment of Wireless Access Points in the County.
These points would allow mobile workers to reconnect
with the County servers to upload and download data
throughout their work day without having to come back
into the office. These Wireless Access Points would be in
specific geographic locations, requiring mobile workers to
come into a designated parking areas for this
synchronization.
Desktop Replacement Project
This program has been very well received by the Orange
County staff, and it has enabled OCIT to standardize on
desktop computing environments.
The oldest machines in service are approximately 5.5
year old Pentium IV machines. They are capable of
running most County applications, however their vintage
prevents them from running the latest security programs,
thus exposing the entire Orange County network to
malicious attacks. In some cases, they can run security
programs, but at the expense of slowing the computer
down for other work. Additionally, the older machines are
beyond their life expectancy. As such, we will see a
marked increase in equipment failures, some of which
can be addressed only through the purchase of used
spare parts available on auction sites on the Internet.
It is important that Orange County adhere to the 4 year
PC Replacement cycle that has been suspended for two
out of the past five years.
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Server Replacement Projects
Significant strides have been made in addressing the
County's server equipment. The average age of our
servers is now 3 years. This upgrade of our server
equipment has resulted in more reliable infrastructure,
increased availability of critical programs and better
performance of server programs. Recommendations for
servers include:
• Server replacement
It is critical that Orange County continue to follow its
server replacement. program, for reasons similar to the
PC replacement program. Server replacements are
perhaps even more critical than for desktops, as server
outages can have profound adverse affects that would
be largely avoided by a regular schedule of retirement.
• Server consolidation
Some of the newer releases of software allow for
greater consolidation of users onto a single server. In
the case of email, past restrictions on the numbers of
supported users per server no longer exist. It is
imperative that OCIT pursue server consolidations.
These provide for greater efficiency of support as well
as freeing up useful server hardware that can be used
to replace aging equipment
• SAN expansion
• The County's implementation of a Storage Area
Network has yielded significant benefits in
managing the County's Browning data needs.
The SAN is an enterprise level data respository
that many of the County operations use to store
and maintain data. The SAN allows the County
to respond to storage needs on a more timely
basis, while reducing costs of server
implementation.
The County should continue to expand the SAN as
storage needs warrant.
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Data Retention
See "Data retention" for information on data backup and
recovery.
Security Initiatives
Orange County IT needs to develop a comprehensive
network security plan. While critical components are
already in place, including:
• Firewall protection against intruders and inappropriate
use
• Secure login policies with enforcement
• Spam filtering
• Email filtering of viruses
• Desktop virus protection
• Desktop controls and monitoring
• Secure off-site storage of backup media
• Server-level virus protection
These components have been developed in ad hoc
response to various emerging threats. The need for an
overarching security plan is acute.
Orange County IT must evolve its security policy which
accommodates growth of applications, access and user
needs, while anticipating the growing sophistication of
threats.
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
While several initiatives have been undertaken to react to
a variety of disasters (see section titled, Business
continuity on page 6), there is no comprehensive plan for
ensuring critical technology systems are available during
and after disasters.
The IT organization must continue work with the
Emergency Services department to:
• conduct an audit of critical systems
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• determine current exposure for ensuring availability
of critical systems during:
o short and long-term electrical failure
o short and long-term interruptions in Internet
availability
o relocation of services to emergency facilities
• determine plan for remote storage and retrieval of
critical County information
• evaluate methods for addressing the above
findings, including:
o cost information
o partnerships with peer governments for
support during localized emergencies
o partnerships with vendors capable of
providing interim solutions during
emergencies
Information Technologies should bring in an external
security auditing firm, as well as security consultants to
enact network changes and policies to ensure the
evolution of security in proportion to growing security
threats.
Enterprise Wide OCIT Standards.
With the exception of the PC Replacement Program,
Orange County's historical approach to upgrading
technology has been largely reactive. In addition,
application selections have involved IT as a final step in
the purchasing process, providing little influence other
than an approval/disapproval for even large scale
applications.
This has resulted in a de facto architecture which has
confounded efforts to standardize on specific
technologies, which in turn results in:
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o A wide range of technologies for which OCIT must
support, thus expanding the scope of expertise
(consequently diluting the depth of expertise) to be
covered by asize-constrained organization
o Few economies of scale in purchasing,
maintenance and shared componentry
o Few opportunities to architect cross-departmental
data solutions
o Inability to pro-actively develop an over-arching
technology plan
Orange County IT has effectively adopted a partner
relationship with Purchasing and Budget departments to
develop a technology approval process that requires
forethought, planning and comprehensive analysis in
order to most efficiently manage County computing
budgets and most effectively meet public needs. This has
required significant changes in the way departments
investigate technology solutions to their business
challenges. It has also required that departments change
the way they plan for evolving business needs.
The results of this partnership have been technology
purchases which are consistent, more supportable, more
aligned to enterprise needs and ultimately less costly to
the County.
Enterprise E-mail
Email has evolved from a useful communication option to
the single most critical technology to County operations.
As such, its continuous availability is a top priority for
OCIT
The County's transition from Novell Groupwise to
Microsoft Exchange/Outlook now finds us in a more
supportable, fully functioning environment. Information
Technologies will continue to manage and evolve the
email system as a top priority application.
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FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING AND REPORTING
MUNIS System Update
The Munis system has been successfully implemented
within the Finance, Budgeting, Payroll and Purchasing
processes. The implementation into the Personnel
department continues, with future enhancements underway
to address functional gaps.
Munis also has proven to be easily integrated into other
processes. For example, financial transactions from various
departmental applications can be fed into Munis for fully
automated financial processing.
We are currently using a 5 year old server for Munis that is
running the Informix database system. That server and
database are in need of upgrading in order for the County to
be able to implement the newer versions of Munis and take
advantage of important new functionalities.
Information Technologies must upgrade the Munis
environment to SQL and install it on a newer faster server.
Property Information Management System
The County has relied on an internally developed software
system for tracking and managing land records, property
valuation and payment data for 29 years. This system has
been modified and enhanced over the years to meet the
County's needs and has played an important role in ensuring
the Assessor's office maintains accurate valuations while
helping the Revenue office maintain a high collection rate.
The legacy system, however, has been developed on what
has become, over time, a fundamentally antiquated
computing platform. The underlying architecture makes it
difficult to integrate with more modern software, an
increasingly important requirement as the County moves
toward enterprise systems for greater efFciencies. Further,
the expertise for maintaining the legacy system is
increasingly difficult to find and develop.
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In order to prevent critical and revenue affecting disruptions
to the County's taxation system, the County must implement
a modern tax assessment and collections system. Work
between the tax offices, Land Records, GIS, Planning and IT
is underway. It is critical the County complete this work and
implement a new system in 2010.
Central Permitting
The OCIT department is working with Planning/Inspections,
Environmental Health and the Fire Marshal to develop
requirements for a system in which all permits relating to a
single development activities would be centrally reported and
managed.
This initiative has potential to greatly streamline the myriad
permitting steps that builders currently have to go through.
New software would also give the County the opportunity to
migrate from a version of permitting software that is no
longer current, but highly customized. New software would
be able to adhere to our model of application support and
sustainability from. which the current system is out of
alignment.
Cost/Benefit analysis of OCIT
The OCIT organization has begun developing processes
with Purchasing and Budget departments to establish a
broader and consequently, more accurate view of
technology expenditures.
We will evaluate the costs of technologies in terms of:
i. hardware costs
ii. software costs
iii. maintenance costs
iv. training costs
v. support costs
vi. training costs for users
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vii. training costs for IT support
viii. supplies
ix. data storage and management costs
x. conversion costs
xi. downtime costs
xii. security costs
xiii. data retention and backup costs
xiv. network costs
xv. :costs of generating and analyzing .reports
We also work more closely with departments requesting
funding to ensure they can clearly articulate benefits for
technologies. These benefits should be verifiable costs and
should be validated after the technology is in production.
These benefits can include:
i. Personnel savings -how many fewer human
resources can be dedicated to the same tasks
ii. New service offerings -what kind of new public
services are available with technology?
iii. Cost avoidance -what inevitable costs will be borne
by not implementing technologies?
iv. Public transparency -what kind of public access to
public records is promoted with technology?
v. Customer service volume -how many more citizens
can be served?
vi. Customer service responsiveness -how much
quicker can we respond to citizen needs?
vii. Customer service breadth -how can we provide
new ways to provide customers service?
viii. Statutory compliance -what legal parameters can
now be satisfied with the use of the technology?
ix. Information synergies -what public benefits can be
gained through information sharing across
departments?
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Budget methodologies for IT project justification
The IT organization should work closely with the Budget
department to ensure IT Projects are properly scoped from a
financial viewpoint. Further, follow-up audits should be
performed to ensure perceived costs and benefits are
reviewed against actual data. This will ensure the process is
working correctly.
CRITICAL FUTURE USER APPLICATIONS
Constituent Request Tracking System
Orange County has no procedural mechanisms for
tracking public requests for services or information.
Orange County's growth has outpaced our ability to serve
the public on an informal basis. OCIT will work with the
County Managers' office to implement a formal request
tracking system.
Applicant Tracking System Upgrade
The Personnel department still relies heavily on page
based (some paper, some electronic) methods for
advertising job openings and processing applications.
OCIT will work closely with the Personnel office to
integrate a new system into existing processes and
technologies
EMS Communication System
As the EMS organization moves forward with its pursuit of
a holistic communications system, OCIT will work closely
to ensure electronic data sharing is a strong consideration
for any system. The County has historically viewed such
communication systems as voiced-based. However, with
voice moving toward a data model, the distinctions
between voice and data have become irrelevant. OCIT
will work to ensure the investigation evaluates the broad
spectrum of communication needs.
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