Innovative New York Projects, Leaders Honored at 2015 Best of New York Awards

On Sept. 2, the Center for Digital Government (CDG), the research arm of Government Technology's parent company, e.Republic Inc., will present the 2015 Best of New York Awards at the 2015 New York Digital Government Summit in Albany, N.Y.

Demonstrated Excellence in Project Management
Steven Damsky, Deputy CIO and Chief Project Officer
New York City Department of Education

Steven Damsky, deputy chief information officer and chief project officer with the New York City Department of Education, is being recognized for his leadership and excellence in project management. In addition to providing technology services in line with the business initiatives of the organization, Damsky has a clear record of delivering projects on budget. The Division of Instructional and Information Technology has benefited through improved clarity, greater strategic focus and more efficient coordination of projects without disruptions to ongoing business. All projects were within their budgets for FY14 and FY15. More than 80 percent of projects are delivered on time, and project delivery capacity has increased by 50 percent with only a 10 percent increase in resources.

Best IT Collaboration Among Organizations
Universal Pre-Kindergarten Citywide Adoption in New York City
New York City Department of Education

Set in motion in May 2014, the Universal Pre-Kindergarten Initiative provided pre-kindergarten services for more than 53,000 children through Department of Education public schools and community-based early childhood centers. Through close coordination with multiple stakeholders including Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, various department development teams and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, the program was able to offer services by September 2014, the start of the new school year. The project team developed a customer relationship management (CRM) system for student registration, the ability to log parental information requests, a new Elementary School Directory Update system and enhanced the search and modification capabilities for pre-kindergarten registration. The program's successes have made it a national model for other pre-kindergarten programs.

Best Application Serving an Agency’s Business Needs
Revolutionizing New York State Back-Office Operations
New York State Office of Information Technology Services

The Spending and Government Efficiency (SAGE) Commission, established by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, was charged with finding cost efficiencies in New York state government. As a result of the commission's report, the Office of General Services/Business Service Center and the Office of Information Technology Services were asked to create and implement an enterprise application to support the functions of accounts payable, credit cards and purchase orders for the state’s 59 agencies. As if the challenge of developing a multi-agency application was not daunting enough, the project team had to contend with the fact that each organization was using its own software and manual protocols to perform these functions. In spite of the challenge, the team created a single enterprise business process in less than 10 months. The new process provides for a records repository, implements the enterprise standard imaging solution, increases accounts payable receiving, scanning and indexing capacity by 100 percent and consolidates all documents in one place. As a result, the state is estimated to have saved millions of dollars.

Best Application Serving the Public
Emergency Service Unit – Mobile CAD (Computer Assisted Dispatch)
New York City Police Department 

The NYPD now has the unique ability to self-dispatch specialized units through the Emergency Service Unit (ESU) – Mobile Computer Assisted Dispatch (CAD) system. The system offers a crucial head start in situations where minutes saved can mean the difference between life and death. Through the ESU Mobile CAD, emergency information is available to first responders in near real-time, just seconds after being entered into the 911 system. Features of the system include: near real-time delivery and display of information; a transport mechanism providing reliable data to responders despite intermittent connectivity; user choice of display criteria so that only incidents falling under a particular unit’s assigned geographical area are displayed; ability to plot incident locations on a map with driving directions; visual and audible indicators for specific types of incidents or for certain keywords and phrases (e.g., “barricaded” or “threatens to jump”). The application is utilized in every ESU vehicle and station throughout the city.

Best IT Collaboration Among Organizations
National Instant Criminal Background Check Application
New York State Office of Mental Health, Department of Health and Office of Information Technology Services

The collaborative efforts of the New York State Office of Mental Health, the Department of Health and the Office of Information Technology Services to improve public safety and data collection is being recognized as the 2015 Best IT Collaboration Among Organizations. The federally grant-funded, multi-stakeholder National Instant Criminal Background Check (NICS) Application is meant to streamline the process of data collection and sharing on individuals who are involuntarily admitted to hospitals for mental illness-related reasons. The application is meant to bolster the national system, which responds to background check requests made when an individual tries to purchase a firearm or explosives. The ultimate goal is to bring all New York state hospitals that are technically capable of doing so, onto reporting via automated file transfer, as this eliminates delay in submitting reports and eliminates data entry errors due to human error, as well as reduces the burden on facilities that have many NICS reportable admissions.   

Best In-House Developed Application
New Student START Appointment Self-Scheduling System
Tompkins Cortland Community College 

Participating in the START program, or Student Transition: Advisement, Registration and Testing program, is a requirement for degree-seeking students entering Tompkins Cortland Community College (TC3). To aid in the placement process, TC3 developed an application that allows prospective students to schedule enrollment appointments without the help of staff. The system also provides students with automatic email notifications and allows staff the opportunity to better manage their workload through an online portal. This application removes a critical bottleneck in the student advising appointment process, providing students with the benefits of a more transparent and convenient process and allowing TC3 to use fewer resources for the administrative process, enabling TC3 to allocate those resources to advising new students and getting them enrolled.

Most Innovative Use of Social Media/ Citizen Engagement
Crowdsourcing the Quality of Life Agenda
New York City Police Department

A new Web-based platform is helping the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to get a pulse on issues happening in community. Crowdsourcing the Quality of Life Agenda essentially allows the NYPD to identify the issues, like transiency and public consumption of alcohol. Whereas “walking a beat” would have been how officers connected with the public in the past, this platform allows officials to cover entire neighborhoods to identify issues, prioritize concerns and provide solutions. With citizen input, problems can be ranked, comments can be made and new issues can be nominated. Crowdsourcing has given the NYPD the ability to identify and resolve problems that were previously unknown to the department and has allowed for better utilization of police resources and preventative efforts.    

Most Innovative Use of Social Media/ Citizen Engagement
TreesCount! 2015 – New York City Street Tree Census
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

The mobile application TreesCount! 2015 was an integral part of the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation's tree census, which occurs every 10 years. By deploying the application, and relying on the neighborhood mapping events, the department was able to map and track the 600,000 street trees throughout the five boroughs. Through the combination of site-surveying methods, user-friendly mapping and geospatial technology, a high degree of accuracy was achieved in the census. The program is a prime example of the use of technology to drive collaboration between municipal government and the public.

Best Mobile/Wireless Project
New York State Department of Health Alert Mobile Application
New York State Department of Health and Office of Information Technology Services

The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) Health Alerts mobile application, designed to alert health-care facilities, providers and public health agencies to health-related notifications from federal, state and local health departments, is the 2015 Best Mobile/Wireless Project. An estimated 260,000 users have the ability to securely receive and access the notifications from their iOS and Android mobile devices. The application is another critical tool to allow health officials to effectively respond to infectious diseases and other health emergencies, such as H1N1 influenza (swine flu) and Ebola. The in-house application was developed using open source tools and technologies and is expected to save around $400,000 a year.

Janet Grenslitt from the Center for Digital Government contributed to this story.