cityofboston.gov - Official Web Site of the City of Boston - Thomas M. Menino, Mayor

Excellence in Technology & Development Program

In October 2010, the City of Boston established a partnership with the University of Massachusetts, Boston Campus offering professional development opportunities for City employees.  The City’s Excellence in Technology and Innovation Program (ETIP) offers employees an opportunity to expand both their technical and business skills in a collaborative and challenging environment.  As of September 2011, EDIP has offered 18 workshops and hosted over 300 participants.  Workshops in the program have been widely praised by attendees as informative, motivational and fostering team building and collaboration.  Future plans include expanding the course offerings and extending the opportunity for employees to earn an Excellence in Technology and Innovation Certificate.

Course notifications, enrollments and reminders for ETIP are processed using MyLearningPlan, a web-based professional development solution.  Participants are kept up to date on new course offerings and receive approvals from supervisors, as well as reminders about upcoming events for which they have registered.  MyLearningPlan also affords course participants the ability to meet in virtual team rooms and share documents related to course offerings.  The ease of use and robust notifications contained in MyLearningPlan enhance the registration process, participant experience and ability to track employee activities.

IT Portfolio Management & ‘Project Central’

Boston’s citywide Program Management Office (PMO) centralizes, oversees and coordinates the management of IT projects.  The office developed and implemented a common project management methodology that establishes a consistent, repeatable approach to managing projects that focuses on operational efficiencies and provides a common language for City agencies. We are using CA Clarity as the project portfolio management software to review, manage and prioritize projects. It provides a consistent platform which aggregates the work and the opportunity for optimizing resources and enhancing accountability.

To assure effective and productive project management we need to also assure that project teams have the necessary communications vehicles available. Part of that communication is the informal day to day contact and the space to meet in small and large groups. Since the inception of the PMO the number of projects and their complexities has grown.

This year Boston opened a ‘Project Central’ building which houses 61 staff/consultants for large projects through the project life cycle.  Project Central provides our department with a physical space to manage our myriad IT projects.  By centralizing our project teams in a single location, we are better able to manage large-scale IT projects and the staff needed to work on them. Through the innovative use of an existing city building, teams and their resources now co-exist in one space.  Our Financial Upgrade and Public Safety Project Teams will occupy the Kirstein Library as they work on citywide IT projects designed to improve their current business processes.  Budget-conscious planning is a staple of Project Central, as the centralization of projects will allow for better alignment between project budgets and management. In addition, by increasing visibility of the projects and our PMO staff, the focus initiated by Project Central necessitates increased awareness, discipline, and personal responsibility for both the team member and the managing division.

Document Management System

DoIT is actively pursuing the establishment of an enterprise wide document management system. The system provides the ability to index and manage multiple types of documents as well as perform searches across these documents. These features allow for greater efficiency within a department, as the department users can quickly search for and access the documents they need to perform their jobs. We have successfully implemented the system for the Inspectional Services and for the Public Improvement Commission’s street plans. We are currently in talks with the Administration and Finance Cabinet about how a document management system could benefit their business processes and improve their workflows.

Internal IT Process Improvements

Our department utilized independent financial, procurement and IT asset management systems to develop a dynamic software asset management system. This system helps the City manage its extensive software portfolio by influencing informed decisions regarding license requirements and allocations. It also reduces potential liability by ensuring the City remains compliant within all its license agreements.

We have also updated department metrics to provide accurate and meaningful indicators of performance. This is part of the City’s overall efforts (Boston About Results Performance Management initiative) to show the public how city agencies are performing, how well they are doing, and where they can improve. 

Vendor Management
DoIT has begun an annual portfolio review with its largest vendors. This process allows the City to reevaluate its portfolio of products for the upcoming fiscal year, ensures that vendors are familiar with City policies and procedures and also discuss new products that may be of interest to the City.

Desktop Refresh Efforts
DoIT has implemented an annual desktop equipment refresh plan for City agencies compliant with DoIT’s approved standard devices. This year, DoIT will be purchasing a combination of several hundred traditional desktop and thin client devices to be deployed across the enterprise. By determining an approved list of computer hardware and software available for purchase, DoIT has simplified the City’s hardware inventory, reduced maintenance cost through standardization and utilized bulk purchasing to leverage optimal pricing. DoIT is relying on desktop utilization reports to determine its deployment plan, ensuring that the new machines are put to the most effective and productive use.

Service Desk & Asset Management

IT Service Desk
DOIT’s Service Desk staff offer technology support for all City employees.  They help troubleshoot problems, triage technical issues to appropriate DOIT divisions, and help deploy new software and hardware upgrades. The long-term vision is to become enterprise level 1 support to connect with City users through service and adding value.

Workflow Improvements
Our first task was to re-brand the Service Desk as a customer-service call center and not simply a number to call.  Our Service Desk staff are talented individuals and we wanted to capitalize on their personalities.  They are delivering more individual attention and relevant solutions for our callers.  We also focused on the idea that we service the users and not the transaction through establishing new processes, work-flow and Service Level Agreements (SLA).  We want to also care about the users behind the printer problem or software issue.   Finally, we’ve worked hard to keep users informed throughout the process about the state of their request and the outcome. 

User Feedback
Over the past year, we have doubled our user feedback rating in terms of user satisfaction. There has been a 98% improvement in user satisfaction. Our users are speaking more fondly about the IT Service Desk and that has, in a city-wide networking environment, become very important as a brand building extension for us. We now have a dynamic, highly engaged and passionate group of IT Support Desk professionals who are building and growing our IT service deliveries through every interaction with our users.

IT Asset Management
As part of the department’s overall efforts to green our IT processes, the Service Desk has developed and now maintains an electronic Asset Management program to monitor technology resources at City Hall.  As part of these efforts, regular E-Waste disposal events are scheduled for City agencies and we continue to maintain power management software to control PC settings centrally. 

Boston’s Legislative Information Management System (LIMS)

The City of Boston had an antiquated and disjointed platform that formed the core of its legacy based legislation information management system. The system had no workflow, document management, electronic communication or mechanism to publish information to the web. In August of 2010, the City of Boston formed a steering committee with staff from Mayor's Office, City Council, City Clerk, and CIO/Department of Innovation & Technology to perform a comprehensive needs analysis, define requirements, and implement a new state of the art legislation information management system.

After 6 months of discovery, selection process, business process reengineering and execution, we rolled out a state of the art legislation information management system in January 2011. The solution streamlines the process of creating, publishing and accessing information about City Council meetings. We built a solution that combines our web infrastructure with Sire Technology’s Agenda and Minutes Plus application cloud platform.  It allows for meeting information to be managed electronically throughout the process:

1. The City Council and Mayor’s Office submit agenda items and supporting documents electronically to the Clerk’s Office.

2. The Clerk creates the agenda and publishes it to the web prior to meetings.

3. Citizens can view the agenda on the City’s website at www.cityofboston.gov and the City Councilors download the agenda on their HP Slates (a touch-screen tablet, similar to Apple iPad) from anywhere before the meeting. We are planning on electronic voting and roll call in Fall 2010

4. Live video of the meeting is streamed to the website in real-time.

5. Immediately following the meeting, meeting minutes are published on the City website.  Videos are time stamped, linking them to the minutes and agendas and making them searchable.

6. Complete meeting records – including agendas, minutes, video and supporting documents - are archived on CityofBoston.gov. Records are searchable by date and keyword.

The Legislative Management system has new and innovative technology elements like: business process reengineering, cloud computing and compatibility with mobile devices and tablets ( iPhone, iPad, slate etc.). This project has revolutionized the way various parts of City government interact and collaborate.  
 
All processes between the executive and legislative branch are now electronic - resulting in efficient and effective operation. The project is aligned with DoIT's Green IT Roadmap by eliminating the need for paper copies of documents. Prior its introduction, 26 inch thick copies of meeting materials were produced each week, amounting to a 104-foot tower, or roughly 312,000 sheets per year. The project will save almost $250K over the next 5 years because of automation, electronic collaboration and dissemination of information to all stakeholders electronically and in real-time. LIMS has had a huge impact on city government and citizens. It has improved the entire business process, made the government operations more open and transparent, used latest technology like cloud and tablets resulting in huge cost savings, accessible legislation information increased citizen participation. This project can be easily replicated elsewhere with similar efforts, resulting in similar results.

More Information on LIMS