Later in 2000, Erie County initiated an eight year project to develop an integrated technical infrastructure. The first step was to publish the Goals and Principles upon which the infrastructure would be constructed. This was agreed to by all department heads and then presented to over two hundred technology workers. Erie County then adopted a high level architecture which reflected a service oriented, integrated model. The next step was to create project teams tasked with reengineering the multiple infrastructure layers that would be required.
As of 2005, Erie County now has one integrated email system used by all departments and one directory service. More than 100 servers have been moved from decentralized departments and are now controlled by a central technology department and a standard workstation is in use. In addition, Phase 1 of a countywide ERP system has been implemented. As a result of the initiatives many benefits have accrued. Interdepartmental communication has taken significant steps forward now that all departments are electronically linked. Collaboration is facilitated through the use of common business processes. Significant reductions in technology expense have been realized with an enterprise approach. Technology risk has been reduced now that infrastructure diversity has been addressed and solved.
During the next three years Erie County will finish the eight year plan by concentrating on reengineering the business processes of two sets of departments; Human Services and Plant Management. The approach is to extend ERP into multiple departments that utilize similar business processes. For human services, processes such as enterprise case management, unified call center, client relationship management (CRM), balanced scorecard with outcome measurements, workflow and the like will be developed once and used by all relevant agencies. The plant management functions of asset management, resource scheduling, work orders, preventative maintenance, warehousing, citizen interaction, and more will form a common set of business processes for the Sewer, Public Works, Parks, and Fleet departments.
Erie County intends to continue along this path to streamline government operations. Recent global events suggest that the Federal, State and local governments must collaborate as they have never collaborated before. Local governments must understand the implications of such a change and insure that local technical infrastructures can support the processes required.
Reprinted from New York State's CIO Enterprise IT Newsletter.
