Phoenix Receives National Recognition for Excellence in Technology

The Public Technology Institute (PTI), a national, non-profit technology organization that promotes the use of technology to achieve excellence in local governance and management, recently recognized the city of Phoenix with 2007-2008 Technology Solutions Awards.

These annual awards recognize local governments that best demonstrate how they apply technology to improve service delivery, reduce operating costs and create new revenue opportunities.

The city won top honors for two projects and honorable mentions for several others, in the 750,000+ population category.

Winner -- Aviation Department, Disaster Recovery Planning. This collaborative project of the airport's technology division, the city's central Information Technology Services (ITS) and VM-Ware technical support services resulted in an enhanced airport disaster recovery system to maintain uninterrupted airport operations. The project used site server clustering and disk mirroring technology to consolidate many diverse airport systems.

Significant Achievement -- Neighborhood Services Department (NSD), Neighborhood Revitalization Mobile Data Access. NSD implemented the use of laptops, docking ports and wireless printers for its housing rehabilitation specialists in the field to access permitting, utility and property information systems as they worked with contractors and homeowners to improve conditions of existing housing stock. This use of mobile technology increased productivity, improved customer service and furthered the department's mission to improve the quality of life in Phoenix neighborhoods.

The projects receiving honorable mention were:

Information Technology Center Disaster Recovery Planning -- ITS consolidated all recovery documentation and data storage systems into one centralized location for easy access in the event of a disaster, and implemented emergency event notification software to alert staff via voice, text and e-mail broadcasts of emergency work recalls. These improvements resulted in faster and more accurate recovery of systems and applications and better customer service.

Enterprise Project Management Services (EPMS) -- ITS created a center of excellence using "best practices" project management methodologies in order to manage nearly $100 million in city of Phoenix IT investments. Since its inception, EPMS has helped the Aviation, Public Transit, Water Services, Finance, Police and Fire departments achieve most of their goals and have avoided millions of dollars in potential cost overruns through careful project initiation, planning, management, organization and execution processes.

Water Emergency Line High Call Volume Overflow -- This collaborative project between ITS and the Water Services Department created a new business continuity process to address call volume threshold overloads to the water emergency dispatch center during a crisis. The new process involves the use of triggers and enhanced inter-department communications to set a workflow in motion that reroutes calls to a backup call center during times of unusually high call volume. The process is transparent, ensuring seamless contact with the water department during a crisis.

Incident Report Management Application (IRMA) -- The Parks and Recreation Department implemented a custom database application for staff to document incidents of vandalism, theft, vehicular accidents and missing equipment. The Web-based application allows staff to create, view, edit and print incident reports more easily than with the existing manual system, saving the department more than $82,000 in the first year of implementation.

Case Management Interface Project -- The Phoenix Police Department, Prosecutor's Office and Municipal Court collaborated on an interface between their respective crime case management systems to allow them to share basic case data. The project reduced duplicate data entry, improved business data integrity and accuracy and simplified business processes. As a result the departments were able to better allocate manpower and resources, and the collaboration has paved the way for the creation of a virtual file system and electronic filing of crime complaints.

Technology in the Courtroom -- The Prosecutor's Office implemented the use of laptop computers and created an electronic plea agreement application called "EPlea" for attorneys to use