Oakland County Emergency/Disaster Planning

Documents from the 2007 Michigan Digital Gov. Summit

Business Continuity of Operations and Recovery Plan Doc

Business Continuity of Operations and Recovery Plan Powerpoint

Project Management

Oakland County's Information Technology Project Management Office (PMO) is part of the Department's Administration/Internal Services Division reporting to the IT Director. This team is responsible for establishing and maintaining Project Management methods and standards for the organization. The Project Management Office provides a framework for the management of the County's IT portfolio. The framework includes customer prioritization through the Leadership Group process and a Return on Investment Analysis that assists with the prioritization. In addition, PMO supports and mentors Information Technology Project Managers who are responsible for the implementation of IT projects. The mentoring provides a structured process to Project Management in an effort to gain repeatable results.

Resources:
Oakland County PMO Summary Web page
Leadership Group Process Documents/IT Department Master Plan (includes Scope & Approach and ROI documentation, required for all IT projects)
Project Management Handbook (available upon request)

More info: Janette McKenna, Chief, IT Internal Services, 248-858-0893

Get a Google Account

https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount

Washtenaw County Website Redesign 2007

eWashtenaw has been a workhorse of a website. There was some grumbling about the site design not being refreshed in over 5 years. Data was telling a more detailed story:

• News dominated format was not yielding results we want: for 70% of real estate, we get 100-200 views per story per month - out of 45,000 site visitors.
• Many have pointed out the difficulty of getting to what they are looking for from the home page without going through Government, or clicking through Living, Working or Visiting.
• Living, Working, Visiting wasn't working and was difficult to maintain.

Before embarking on our redesign, we did quite a bit of research:

• Analyzing web statistics on our site to see what people are looking at and what they are looking for. We use both DeepMetrix and Google Analytics.
• We’ve looked for best practices on some of the best websites from across the country. City of San Francisco, Montgomery County, MD, Seminole, FL, Denver, CO; Oakland County, and the city of Ann Arbor.
• We looked at some best practices from http://www.usa.gov/ and http://www.webcontent.gov/
• We also used research on great government websites from our affiliation with the UM School of Information.
• We conducted simple usability testing with people outside the government to get feedback on design alternative to get a preferred functional layout without changes.
• We reviewed our results with stakeholders inside the organization: web content editors, department heads and elected officials.

In considering our design options, we put a priority on exposing more citizen services on the home page. We wanted to be sure that we still ended up with room to show our customers what we wanted them to see - our news, our events, our important information and links. We ended up with a top and bottom design. The top of the screen is mostly links to services. The bottom is events, news and important links.

We have also created RSS feeds for news and and will add RSS for our events and job postings by the end of the year.

Another top priority was to avoid moving things around on the site and breaking links from other sites. This redesign is a complete redesign of the home page and a facelift on all internal pages. There was no work required by our 100 web content editors to update content.

The site runs on our open source content management system based on Zope.

More Information: Andy Brush, brusha .at. ewashtenaw.org, Knowledge Manager, Support Services, 734.222.6517.

CLEMIS

CLEMIS is a Law Enforcement Consortium comprised of members spanning 8 counties that was launched by Oakland County. It provides data sharing and low-cost access to criminal information via cutting-edge computer technology to criminal justice and public safety agencies. It promotes communication and sharing of criminal justice information among agencies. The CLEMIS vision is to enhance law enforcement and fire operations as well as to provide the tools to perform comprehensive planning.

Resources:
CLEMIS Web site
CLEMIS Fact Sheet

More info: S. Joseph Sullivan, CLEMIS Manager, 248-858-5267

GIS

The Oakland County enterprise GIS is a multi-faceted program that supports and promotes coordinated “location-based” data development and access across jurisdictional and departmental boundaries. It exemplifies the definition of an “enterprise system” through a series of coordinated information gathering and sharing activities conducted by more than 10 County agencies and 62 local cities, villages or townships (CVTs). At the heart of Oakland County’s enterprise GIS implementation is a central service team that coordinates GIS development throughout the County. This team, called Land Management Technologies, is part of the Oakland County Department of Information Technology.

Resources:
Oakland County GIS Fact Sheet
Oakland County GIS Web site

More info: Scott Oppmann, Manager, Application Services, 248-452-9198

Video Conferencing (OakVideo)

The OakVideo (video arraignment) project involves installing video conferencing equipment that connects District and Circuit courts, the Prosecutor's office, jail booking facilities, law enforcement agencies and community corrections in order to: minimize offender transport and improve court security while mitigating law enforcement costs. This system is unique to any other arraignment system currently in use today. It is a multi-point system (able to connect to several sites simultaneously) where the signal will be switched over the OakNet network. The video arraignment system was designed to automate the paper flow that would otherwise occur via fax between law enforcement agencies, prosecutor and courts. It replaced the aged warrant teleconferencing equipment with state-of-the-art equipment using the fiber optic network of OakNet for higher quality, reliability and ease of use.

Resources:
OakVideo Fact Sheet
OakVideo Web site

More info: Charlie Covetz, project manager

Online Services/eCommerce

By providing “Online Services” rather than “in line” services, the County is able to reduce costs associated with service delivery, while at the same time improve customer satisfaction by enabling transactions that may be conducted entirely through the Web site. Rather than picking up the phone or coming in to the County Service Center, someone may go to the Web site to get what they need. A special customer service telephone number is also in place to provide technical support and assistance to those online “customers”. The services listed below are operated from information systems developed in-house, rather than out-sourced to a third party. Some of those services include:

• Pay delinquent and current property taxes
• Pay tickets
• Order birth, death & marriage certificates
• Order parks passes (vehicle permits)
• eHealth well and septic applications, food inspections, and well log

Online services we would like to have include:

• eRegistration
  This feature would allow citizens and employees of Oakland County to register for Oakland County offered services online (e.g. Register for classes/seminars offered by the Health Department or Planning and Economic Development.
• eReservations
  This feature would allow citizens and employees of Oakland to make reservations online for Oakland County Park’s, golf courses, etc.
• One Stop Shop/Decision Support Center (OSS-DSC)
  This system that will enable Oakland County's customers to access information about the County by a variety of different methods, including sophisticated inquiries over the County's Web site.

Resources:

Oakland County Online Services

More info: Jim Taylor, Chief, eGovernment, 248-858-4086

Portal

OakSource (PeopleSoft Portal) is County Employee gateway to job-related resources and information. Designed to replace the existing employee “Intranet” start page (static .html-based), OakSource allows employees to customize and personalize settings to make it a “virtual desktop”. Access to OakSource is secure and private. Employees are given a unique log-in to identify who they are and what information they need to access. Once OakSource knows who you are (through the log-in ID), it delivers the customized desktop, and enables employees to interact throughout the organization. A key feature of OakSource is the self-service capability delivered through Human Resources (“My HR Services”). This allows employees to access personal, benefit, compensation, training summaries, and payroll information online.

Resources:
Oakland County Portal Project ("OakSource") Fact Sheet

More Info: Jim Taylor, Chief, eGovernment, 248-858-4086

Wireless Oakland

Wireless Oakland is an initiative launched by County Executive L. Brooks Patterson that consists blanketing the County’s 910 square miles with wireless internet service and provide free high speed internet access to every resident, business, and visitor in the County. A wireless internet blanket throughout Oakland County will provide seamless access to the internet, email, and other internet services anywhere in the County. Secondly, one of the goals is to address the “digital–divide” that exists within Oakland County and provide low-cost or no-cost PCs and technology training to vulnerable population groups. Thirdly, we will develop a Telecommunication and Technology Planning Toolkit for Local Governments that supports continued high-tech investments in local government and promotes the integration of those investments with local community character and quality of life.

Resources:
Oakland County's Wireless Oakland Web site
Wireless Oakland Fact Sheet

More Info: Scott Oppmann, Manager, Application Services, 248-452-9198