Environmental Public Access Portal

About the Program

Category: Information Technology (Best in Category)

Year: 2017

The existing legacy environmental online public access portal for the Department of Regulatory and Economic Resources (RER), has been critically outdated for several years. The software is no longer supported by the vendor and functionality has become completely obsolete. In an effort to provide a more modern experience, a low cost, highly configurable, open source solution was sought by the Information Technology Department (ITD) to maintain the current level of service, while leveraging existing electronic content management (ECM) software (Documentum). In addition, ITD could offer the public enhanced abilities that could ultimately reduce the carbon footprint associated with records requests, i.e. travel time, paper used in reproduction (photo copies), toner, electricity, personnel costs, etc. A product called “HPI” by Technology Services Group fulfilled this requirement and provided the opportunity to offer citizens the ability to locate and retrieve entire case folders, permits and associated documentation, in an easy to use interface compatible with mobile devices. This web based service allows the citizen to compress and download all available case / permit information in a few clicks or finger taps. Combined with other features, this service makes visiting County Offices to obtain public environmental records completely unnecessary. The time, effort, resources and personnel previously associated with researching, creating digital media and/or photocopies has been eliminated. Since HPI software utilizes open source and viewable source technologies, it is completely customizable and scalable by ITD employees with little or no assistance from Technology Services Group. The servers containing HPI software are easily cloned and redistributed without licensing issues that would otherwise involve extensive tax dollars. The software is also being configured for use with internal county business processes. The deployment of HPI has achieved the ideal partnership of a combined economic and sustainable solution for county government.