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Cornering the IT Market

The Regional Computer Center earns its place in Cincinnatis IT field.

The Regional Computer Center earns its place in Cincinnatis IT field.
By Bryan Gold

About the only thing that hasnt changed in the last 30 years in the Cincinnati region is the operation of the Regional Computer Center (RCC), which serves the city, Hamilton County and law enforcement agencies countywide. The former Greater Cincinnati Airport was renamed to honor its location in northern Kentucky, and Riverfront Stadium,
appropriately located along the river separating Ohio and Kentucky, was renamed Synergy Field after an Internet advertising solutions company flashed some cash.

The Regional Computer Center still operates on virtually a
privatesector model, and it brings stability to Hamilton Countys 850,000 residents. Created to provide police agencies in the county with systems that allowed data to be shared county- wide, the center today has provided Cincinnati and Hamilton County with a jointly funded
geographic information systems application, a shared permit application system and an enterprise e-mail system available to all city and county employees.

Yet, despite the stability, the Regional Computer Center isnt the only provider of IT services in the region.

Unlike the arrangement in Nebraska between the city of Lincoln and Lancaster County with one operation as the lone provider of IT services to the two government jurisdictions, Cincinnati and Hamilton County agencies have the right, which they have exercised in the past, to seek an outside "vendor" of IT services.

"As technology has evolved from mainframes and green screens to client/server architecture and, of course, now the Web, departments had the opportunity to go their own way and do their own thing," said Regional Computer Center Manager Ralph Renneker, adding that neither the city nor county administration has chosen to force agencies to use
the operation.

"Some people want more direct, hands-on control of things that directly affect their operations," Renneker added. "So we have to sell our services. We have to compete for our business."

The Regional Computer Center has been in operation for more than 30 years, so the business has been there. And there is currently enough business to the point that the centers management hasnt had to engage in a full-scale marketing plan. Thats in part because Renneker doesnt want to incur the added expense, one that could leave the Regional
Computer Center in the red and cause the taxpayers to fund the deficit through a levied assessment. Another aspect is that the center cant take its eyes off the prize of providing services to its key jurisdictions.

"We dont want to lose focus on our primary customers, which are departments in the city and county," said Renneker, who has been the operations managers for four years, the first 18 months of which were spent as a contract employee until becoming a city employee in 1997.

Private-Sector Model

While Renneker and his staff are city employees, the Regional Computer Centers service area includes the courts, the jail and the police departments among the 63 cities and towns in Hamilton County.

But unlike many IT departments at the local government level, the center operates more like a company in the private sector.

The Regional Computer Center bills for the services it provides. The rates are set up to recover costs, Renneker said. The centers management goes through a rate-setting process, then budgets are established based on those rates. At the end of the year, there is a reconciliation of revenues against expenses. If revenues exceed expenses, the centers Board of Directors will tell management how to
use those funds. If expenses exceed revenues, then an assessment is levied to bring the Regional Computer Center back to a zero balance.

In 1999, for example, revenues exceeded expenses by $1,283,550. So the centers Board of Directors had the pleasant task of deciding how to disburse the money, looking at whats best for all jurisdictions.

Some of the Regional Computer Centers best customers, in fact, are agencies that extend beyond just one jurisdiction. That includes the city-run regional water utility Cincinnati Water Works and the Hamilton County Planning and Zoning Department, which features the Cincinnati Area Geographic Information System (CAGIS), which sits inside the offices of the Regional Computer Center.

"When were working with CAGIS, I dont even realize that were working with RCC. CAGIS has basically changed the way this office and every office in the city and county do business. It now enables us to do almost all of our permitting and tracking in a digital fashion, whereas it was all in a manual and paper fashion," said Ron Miller, executive director of the Hamilton County Planning and Zoning Department. "That cycle of change is not totally complete yet, and some of our processes we ... are still maintaining some of the paper systems, so its still somewhat of a burden in some cases.

"But, overall, its just changed things dramatically," Miller said. "Maps, for instance, for the entire county that may take half a day to do now may have taken us a year of labor because we would have had to do it with field surveys, driving around, making marks on maps and then
converting them in the office to colored maps. Now its all done through the geographic information systems."

Millers department has IT personnel including a systems administrator and a webmaster to help in the work. Many other departments also have IT staff that work solely on technology for that department. That allows Renneker and the Regional Computer Center to look at the big picture in Cincinnati and Hamilton County.