County IT staff, however, focused on issues such as the need to provide better service levels and accessibility -- highlighted by a recent survey -- and formulate strategies for improvement.
Topics covered at the workshop included a session on designing government Web sites to comply with accessibility guidelines, using mobile devices to stay connected to the office on the go, updates to the county's retirement benefit calculator, improvements to the county's electronic property-tax information site and the release of a customizable e-newsletter service the county plans to launch next month.
A highlight of the conference was a roundtable discussion with CIOs of three California counties to discuss the survey results.
| Patrick Groff | Satish Ajmani | Steve Monaghan |
The roundtable discussion included Patrick Groff (CIO of Sacramento County), Satish Ajmani (CIO of Santa Clara County) and Steve Monaghan (CIO of Nevada County, Calif.) The survey's top priorities for e-government revolved around new ways to make government more accessible, including:
- implementing online forms and a document management system
- finding new ways to disseminate information
- marketing e-government services
- training and retaining employees.
Groff said the county needs to be more intuitive about the information it displays on its Web site.
In Santa Clara, 90 percent of households are connected to the Internet, said Ajmani. The county originally had 55 separate Web sites for citizens to search. Then, two years ago, the county launched a single portal for all county government services. Ajmani agreed with the tech industry trend toward search as the preferred method of navigation through information. Thus, the new Web site allows citizens to get information on a topic just by knowing the event. Ajmani illustrated his point with the example of a couple who need to get a marriage license. If the user types in "wedding license," the search tool will return pages containing information on getting a "marriage license" making the search for information on government services more intuitive. "Search is the navigation of choice for the born-digital [people who have grown up with technology in their lives]," Ajmani said.
Santa Clara is automating more e-services. Sixty-five percent of campground, boating or group picnic space reservations are currently conducted online, work that was previously done by seven parks rangers. Fifteen thousand forms are currently available for electronic filing on Santa Clara County's Web site.
Another challenge that surfaced in the survey was the need to market e-government services. Ajmani said that there is a huge demand for e-services in Santa Clara where the number one complaint is "Why is this service not there?" Groff said that electronic government will not abolish
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traditional channels of service delivery, therefore officials need to constantly survey how constituents interact with government to obtain services.
According to Monaghan, customer service is more important than marketing, as high-value services market themselves. When done as customer service, e-government's return on investment comes from customer satisfaction.
Lack of resources was also high on surveyed priorities. Monaghan said the alignment of resources to a strategic plan is key. "We have a detailed enterprise architecture," he said, "and the county departments are all aligned to that architecture." If you have a plan and agreement, money will follow.
Groff concurred, saying "the key is to connect IT to the business."
How to attract, train and retain quality employees was a surveyed priority and a concern of the audience.
Groff called the need for better training of government IT personnel "not only a requirement, but a public safety issue." He also mentioned an initiative to enable mobile computing for employees and constituents.
Monaghan said that Nevada County was looking at utilizing telework to cut costs, but he cited the challenge of knowing how much time employees worked at home. "When you send someone home for two days, how do you know they did two days worth of work," he said.
The panel cited such strategies as providing employees variety, challenge and autonomy in their work, and providing leadership opportunities for all the members of IT project teams. Other ideas were training people to do many functions and finding ways that managers can manage without giving up their technical inclinations. Monaghan said that 80 percent of the staff use only 20 percent of the technology, so the IT governance structure, intranets and streaming media can be used to promote and conduct staff training.
