The overall winner of the annual Excellence in Technology Awards Program (ETAP) was the NYC BigApps competition and supporting NYC DataMine website. The BigApps contest — now in its second iteration — offers prize money to software developer citizens who integrate data from the continually expanding DataMine into an open source smartphone or Web applications.
The awards were presented Thursday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) during the New York City Technology Forum held at the Brooklyn Marriott. The annual forum, convened by Government Technology, is an event for and about local government to foster discussion and dialog on best practices in the use of IT by managers, executives and policymakers.
“As IT leaders, each day our work helps make city government more open, responsive and accountable; in countless languages; across a network of offices and agencies across five boroughs; for 8.3 million New Yorkers and millions more businesses, employees and visitors,” said DoITT Commissioner Carole Post. “Under the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor [Stephen] Goldsmith, we’re now focusing on the next step in enhancing service delivery: taking the many things we do as a city and finding ways, using innovative ideas, to improve service delivery while stretching every dollar to the limit. The annual ETAP awards recognize projects and staff who help deliver on that goal.”
Other award winners are as follows:
Commissioner’s Award for Enabling the Connected City
311 Online and Mobile Application – 311 Customer Service Center & DoITT
311 Online is the city’s one-stop, searchable Web portal that provides residents, visitors and businesses access to thousands of city services. A free iPhone and iPad app for 311 Online uses GPS to recognize a user’s location, provides a menu of common quality-of-life conditions to select from and allows users to upload up to three pictures to accompany any complaint.
Steve Vigilante, deputy CIO – Department of Education
Over his more than two decades in city government service, currently as deputy CIO of Operations for the Department of Education (DOE), Steve Vigilante has enhanced the DOE infrastructure by infusing innovation, enabling learning environments for more than 1.1 million students, staff, and administrators, according to the DoITT. He manages the technology operations in 1,600 agency instructional and administrative sites, as well as the largest 802.11 wireless network deployed in the U.S.
Demonstrated Excellence in Project Management
Anna Stern, assistant deputy commissioner — Human Resource Administration
Anna Stern has managed the Human Resource Administration (HRA) enterprise data warehouse (EDW) since inception, giving the HRA access to the core data on its under-care population. The largest diversified social services data warehouse in American government, deployment of the EDW has enabled the HRA to realize cumulative savings of more than $400 million in its first five years of operation, according to the DoITT.
Best Application Serving an Agency’s Business Need
LUC Data Share Project — Administration for Children’s Services
The LUC Data Share Project is collaboration between the New York City Administration for Children’s Services and the New York state Office of Court Administration to more effectively share data. By drawing information from three different systems, the LUC Data Share Project replaces the manual procedure of entering data, creating petitions and taking them to court. The number of documents that need to be manually scanned has been reduced by about 70 percent.
Best Application Serving the Public
Restaurant Letter Grade Application — Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
All New York City restaurants are subject to regular inspections by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. Based on the number of violations, the inspector totals points and this number becomes the restaurant’s inspection score. The department has made this data available to New Yorkers through the Restaurant Letter Grade application on NYC.gov. The application provides inspection results for nearly 24,000 restaurants.
Best IT Collaboration Among Agencies
Address Assignment Application — Department of City Planning, DoITT, Bronx Borough President’s Office, Brooklyn Borough President’s Office, Manhattan Borough President’s Office, Staten Island Borough President’s Office
The Address Assignment Application (A4) is a secure Web-based application that enables Borough President Topographic Units to record new address and street assignments more effectively. In the past, different processes and procedures existed across the various borough president offices for making the address assignments and notifying city agencies. A4 streamlines and automate these previously manual and separate procedures for all key stakeholders by providing a standard user interface, set of basic validation rules, access to a central repository and automated workflow.
Best In-House Developed Application
Situational Awareness for Field Response System — Office of Emergency Management (OEM)
The Situational Awareness for Field Response System was designed to promote the Office of Emergency Management’s mission by quickly providing reliable data to decision-makers for optimal management of an emergency response. There are two components to the system: the Active Incident Dashboard, which displays all emergency incidents being monitored by the OEM at any one time on a map; and the Incident Data Packet Generator, which supports the OEM’s citywide incident commanders in the field.
Driving Digital Government Award
Asset Management Parks System — Department of Parks and Recreation
The Department of Parks and Recreation maintains 28,000 acres of park land and a myriad of park features. The agencywide asset management parks system is a holistic and centralized view of the agency’s productivity and assets, and achieves greater efficiency for the department’s business operations. Using the system, staff can use mobile devices to track daily assignments and plan for seasonal tasks and special events; they can also track the life of a work order and receive real-time updates.
Best Mobile or Wireless Project
Mobile Wireless Access Program — New York City Police Department
The mobile wireless access program allows New York City Police Department wireless routers installed in vehicles to sense the presence of new network nodes in close proximity to their locations, providing faster response times and remote access to data. Users can now view details of a call for service normally only available to the dispatcher, and police officers can search the history of prior calls for a particular address, access full-color mug shot photos for warrant checks, and receive real-time audible alerts to when they encounter stolen or potentially hazardous vehicles.
Green IT Award
Direct Order System — Department of Citywide Administration Services
The Direct Order System is a Web-based intranet application developed by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services that allows city agencies to process paperless purchase orders online while evaluating against the department’s requirement contracts. Direct Order is helping the city’s sustainability efforts by reducing paper and energy usage, as well as reducing costs associated with over 14,000 direct purchase orders processed by the department each year.
IT Futurist Award
Mark Montgomery — Office of Management and Budget
With 37 years of city service, most recently as associate director at the New York City Office of Management and Budget, Mark Montgomery combined a thorough command of technology with core business and operational insights to enable deployment of some of the largest-scale IT systems in New York City history. The projects Montgomery provided direction on include: the 311 Customer Service Center, Business Express, the New York City Automated Personnel System, the Building Information System, a number of handheld computing endeavors, and the financial management systems on which formulation of the city’s budget relies.
Excellence in IT Service and Support Awards
In addition, 58 individual staff members and managers from 30 different city agencies were presented with Excellence in IT Service and Support awards for their work on various foundational technology projects over the past year.
