Interest in economic vitality has benefited Springfield well over the centuries. In 1794, George Washington selected the city as the site for the nation's first arsenal, which gave rise to the Springfield Armory, the country's leading manufacturer of arms during the Civil War and World Wars I and II. The nation's first gasoline-powered automobile was built in Springfield in 1896. Twenty years later, the city was the home of the country's embryonic car manufacturing industry.
Fueled by economic growth, city government also flourished by building an infrastructure of roads, bridges and utility lines, and adding police, fire and library services to aid the growing populace. But by 1968, the federal government had shut down the out-of-date armory, the auto industry had long since migrated to Detroit, and manufacturing was no longer Springfield's economic engine.
Today, as the Industrial Age draws to a close, the city is trying to make the transition to the Information Age. But it isn't easy. Economically, Springfield still has a few jewels. It's the home of Mass Mutual, one of the largest insurance companies in the country. Other financial and insurance service companies have their offices in the city as well. The Basketball Hall of Fame is also based in Springfield and has recently announced plans for expansion.
Meanwhile, the city's population is declining, dropping five percent since 1990, shrinking the tax base, and making it harder for city government to make ends meet. Earlier this year, the city struggled to overcome a $30 million budget deficit. To close the gap, city officials put the municipal hospital up for sale and cut staff by nearly 100, a blow to a government that has been reeling since 1990 when nearly 850 city workers were laid off during the recession.
FEW RESOURCES
Resources at Springfield's Municipal Information Systems (MIS) Department certainly fit the former description. Authorized to staff 24 personnel, the department hasn't had that many employees since 1989. Today, 14 programmers, technicians, and managers put in long days to keep the city's computers and networks in operation. The senior MIS staff can count their years of work for the city in double digits and are well-versed in both mainframe programming languages and the latest PC software.
Ellen Angeli, the deputy director (there hasn't been a director of MIS for at least three years), diplomatically answered a question about her department's needs: "Because of budget constraints, the city is not too keen on adding people to the department," she said. "For example, we've been lobbying for another communications person, but nothing has happened yet."
Right now, a single new hire would hardly reduce the workload in MIS. The city's demands for computers and information processing have exploded in recent years. "We're busier than ever," remarked Angeli. "It's easier to buy the equipment than to run and support it."
Five years ago, local area networks were rare in Springfield. Today, there are 17 servers and over 500 PCs. According to Kevin Kane, project director for the city's PC/LAN development, MIS installed another five LANs in 1996. It adds up to a lot of computers and networks to support. "We discourage people from buying any low-end stuff because it breaks down and needs support," said Kane, who added that the proliferation of LANs is taxing in terms of keeping up with maintenance, standards and changes in technology.
Besides lacking resources to support the escalating number of city computers, MIS must struggle with a procurement system that can't keep pace with the constantly changing prices of technology.
Training is another weak area. High turnover among the city's clerical staff, most of whom now use computers, means MIS has to spend valuable time teaching new recruits the basics of Windows and various office automation software.
STICKING TO BASICS
If Springfield has any chance of keeping up with the changes and complexities of today's information technology, it will do so by sticking to the basics. One example is the mainframe computer. Called a "dinosaur" and "legacy computer," the mainframe has received a lot of abuse from the fast-paced computer industry, which doesn't like to see technology that's older than a couple of years. Yet in Springfield, the city's Unisys 2200/500 series mainframe is a government workhorse, running a total of 173 applications for 21 departments.
While PCs may crash and LANs slow to a crawl when network traffic peaks, Springfield's mainframe keeps cranking out everything from payroll checks and purchase orders to water bills and building permits. "We believe the trend will be to keep mainframes," said Kane. "LANs just aren't able to handle the volume of transactions. And with the overall costs of mainframe computing continuing to drop, we believe our legacy system will end up cheaper compared to having a client/server architecture, which has so many hidden costs."
Springfield's other piece of basic, reliable technology is its frame relay wide area network. Despite its modest 56Kbps bandwidth, frame relay has enabled the city's various departmental networks to communicate with each other via e-mail and with the mainframe, without having to pay for leased lines. Realizing that future city applications will probably require more capacity, MIS is considering the addition of higher- capacity lines.
Meanwhile, Angeli and her staff are investigating cable modems and ISDN connections to provide network access to the city's strong base of neighborhood councils and the growing community policing program.
STOP THE
DOWNWARD SPIRAL
The commercial sector's almost obsessive focus on improving services has whetted the appetite of taxpayers, who now expect the same from government. Unfortunately, for central cities with shrinking tax bases, it has become difficult to invest in the information infrastructure and to support the kind of service delivery taxpayers now expect.
"Information is really becoming a resource to be used -- like roads, bridges and utility lines," said Merv Forney, president of state and local government for EDS, "which means information certainly needs an infrastructure to support it." But many small to mid-sized cities just don't have the capital to improve their information infrastructure the way they would like, he added, and end up using their limited funds to support obsolete technology.
To help cities pull out of their technological downward spiral, Forney recommends a technology strategic plan, which states how the city is going to use technology in its business, what the necessary technology components will be and how its plan will evolve over time. Cities also need to attract good technology leaders, the same way they search for quality police chiefs and public works directors. And the technology leader should have a cabinet-level post in the administration to ensure that technology investments mesh well with policy directives.
As for funding new applications, Forney urges cities to think outside the traditional funding framework. "The classic approach is to identify an application the city needs and then design and develop the software from scratch. But that's become too expensive and risky," he said.
Instead, he recommends that medium-sized cities with minimal resources look for off-the-shelf software or form a partnership with a sister city, or consortiums with several jurisdictions, to develop a common application that can be shared. "That can drastically minimize the cost of entry to new processes and techniques, and it's quick," Forney explained.
Other application funding options include contracts that are totally funded by either the savings or the revenue generated by the technology solution. Forney called these arrangements "risk-sharing" or "risk-rewards."
MAPPING
SPRINGFIELD'S FUTURE
In one way, Springfield is beginning to build an infrastructure for its information resources. The city is implementing an enterprisewide geographic information system that will be used by the assessors, planning, public works, water and MIS departments. Under consideration since 1991 and delayed by years of budget constraints and worker layoffs, the GIS project is now under way, with the first phase completed.
Hardware has been purchased and a fly-over of the city was completed to collect aerial photography to aid in the digital conversion of city maps. MIS has installed Arc/Info software from ESRI and is running the system on a Windows NT platform. Data for geographic analysis will come from the city's mainframe databases that serve the five participating departments. Start-up funding for the project, totalling just under $700,000, came from a special state bond authorization that allows Massachusetts' cities to fund projects that create new tax maps for assessors.
For the city's Planning Department, GIS couldn't have arrived at a better time. Currently, the staff works laboriously to identify and notify nearby property owners of any zoning changes, according to Principal Planner Linda Petrella. But GIS will automate the entire process. What now takes hours or days to complete will be done in minutes with GIS. Departments that rely on maps will now be able to work off the same master set of geographic information.
"Our information will be much more accurate compared to the past," said Petrella. She added that the project has benefited the city in another way, by bringing together different departments, breaking down old departmental barriers that limit cooperation and establishing standards for sharing information.
Most experts agree that GIS is probably one of the best technologies in terms of leveling the silos of information that governments are notorious for maintaining. For Springfield, the GIS project not only speeds up the dissemination of information that's so crucial for running government and delivering services today, but it also provides the city with a pathway to the fast-moving information highway.
To bolster the city's information infrastructure, Springfield's Mayor Michael Albano has created the Springfield Technology Commission to help set the city's strategic direction for information technology. "This is the first time this has happened in the city," according to Richard Muise, the commission's chairperson. He added that the mayor is intrigued by the possibility of making a variety of city services computer-accessible.
As a start, the commission is surveying city departments to find out what records and datasets are already computerized. Whether Springfield can capitalize on its GIS program and maintain some forward movement with its technology remains to be seen. Barriers in the form of funding constraints, limited human resources, lack of technology leadership within the upper ranks of city management and a strategic vision that is still a work in progress stand in the way.
As the economy continues to improve, cities such as Springfield and dozens like it throughout the United States have a window of opportunity to build their information infrastructure before the next recession occurs. As William Pynchon realized more than 300 years ago, the economy is the key to every city's vitality.
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