Community Connectivity

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2014

The Community Connectivity program is the Hennepin County’s strategy for achieving better data network connectivity while reducing cost through community collaborations and asset sharing. Today each government entity in Hennepin County (county, city, town/township, school district, etc.) owns and operates its own data networks, with limited sharing between them. Yet many of the governmental organizations overlap in terms of geographical boundaries (e.g., school districts overlap towns). This project’s purpose is to rationalize the use of network bandwidth to reduce the cost of competing bandwidth at common or adjacent sites, as well as better over-all monitoring and support of the networks. Providing fiber optic connectivity to county facilities and more than 500 city halls, public schools, police and fire facilities operated by other units of government within Hennepin County greatly reduces ongoing costs while providing as much as 1,000-fold boost in bandwidth. By transmitting data at the speed of light, fiber optic infrastructure is the state of the art backbone for computer networks around the globe. The program also works closely to share assets and expand fiber connectivity with Hennepin County Public Works, which operates a system of traffic management equipment on the County’s 137 county bridges and more than 1,800 lane-miles of roadways.