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Online Services Strategy 2014- 2015 Online Services Strategy Information Systems Department Sonoma County 11/12/2014 Information Systems Department Sonoma County Created: 11/17/2014 Last Revised: 3/4/2015 Overview In 2013, Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project found that about 85% of Americans use the Internet. “Internet use has increased steadily since Pew began doing the survey. In 1995, only 14 percent of Americans said they went online. By 2000, half were online and by 2007, three-quarters.”1 Additionally “this year, for the first time, Americans used more mobile devices than PCs to access the Internet. Smartphones and tablets now account for 55 percent of Internet activity, according to the research firm Enders Analysis, and the number of users with mobile devices will only continue to grow. In 2014 alone, smartphone adoption is expected to increase by 19 percent, according to tech market research firm IDC.”2 The County of Sonoma is already taking steps to close the digital divide (http://sonomacounty.ca.gov/EDB/Access-Sonoma-Broadband/Project-Overview/). As the community continues to go mobile, it is important the County adopt an online services strategy to meet the growing demands for information, online access to services, and ways to engage as a community. Online Strategy The County of Sonoma’s mission is to enrich the quality of life in Sonoma County through superior public service. It does this by focusing on four strategic plan goals: 1) Safe, healthy, and caring communities. 2) Economic & environmental stewardship 3) Civic service & engagement 4) Invest in the future The Information Systems Department’s vision is to maximize public service and financial savings through the implementation of technology solutions that support and enhance current and future service delivery systems in Sonoma County. Superior public service involves and supports residents, business communities, and government partners. The Online Services Strategy focuses on helping the County achieve its objectives by aligning itself with the four strategic plan goals through tools and 1 http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/09/25/pew-survey-finds-that-15-percent-americans-dont-use-internet/ 2 http://www.governing.com/topics/mgmt/gov-utah-mobile-websites-services.html Cover page image is courtesy of Sujin Jetkasettakorn at FreeDigitalPhotos.net 2 technologies that promote civic engagement, performance measurement, and transparency. Underlying these three online services strategies are increased access by the residents, business communities, and government partners to County information and services. Access: Ease of Use. Part of enhancing access is focusing on ease of use. The Information Systems Department has been deploying its new content management system (CMS) to departments over the past few years. The CMS enables departments, agencies, and ISD technical staff to create, deploy and manage web content. The CMS makes it easy for subject matter experts and business users to easily publish and update their content regularly. ISD is continuing to expand the use of the CMS to all departments. In order to expand the visibility of the County’s online Services, ISD will create an Online Services tab on the home page, which will facilitate constituents in finding 3 the services they seek. The Online Services tab will take users to a new webpage which centers around three main groupings: Find It, Pay It, and Report It. The Find section will focus on helping constituents quickly locate services, events, and information. The goal is to display the services most often searched by the public the most prominently on the web page. Currently the County accepts online payments from a number of different systems. There is no centralized place where residents can go to pay their property taxes, parks pass, and traffic tickets. As a Phase I effort, ISD will create a single web page where users view a list of all services available for online payment as URL links. The public may then click the link to get to the page where they can execute that transaction. The City & County of San Francisco utilizes this model (http://www6.sfgov.org/i ndex.aspx?page=6#se c2). ISD will send out a request to all departments asking them to provide a list of available services and how constituents can access those services (online, in person, by phone, etc.) in addition to how constituents can pay for these services. The reporting section centers around the County’s service request submission application, SoCo Report It, further described below. Here users will be able to quickly enter a service request and track the status of their issue as it is assigned and resolved by the appropriate County department. Barking Dog Track requests Graffiti 311 Report It Pot Holes Fallen Tree ISD will link back to these services through its various social media channels and applications. In addition, the goal is to create as many strategic partnerships with local 4 jurisdictions and other organizations to share information and technologies to further enhance access and ease of use by constituents. Device-Agnostic Software. The County’s online strategy focuses on improving access to County programs and services in a multitude of ways. As the use of the internet and smart phones grows, the County will work to ensure access to services are available via the traditional website as well as on apps. The Information Systems Department (ISD) recommends focusing on offering the County’s services in a multitude of ways with ease of use for the public being the primary focus. When reviewing vendor tools and offerings, the County should select options that offer both mobile and web options. Social Media. Access to information and County services will also be available through multiple social media channels including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc. The County’s Facebook page will contain links to County information and services and other social media channels in use by the County. Additionally, information needs to be presented in multiple languages and provide accommodations to individuals with disabilities. For example, ISD recently added Google Translation services to many of its main County website pages, which makes the website instantly available in 60+ languages. Branding. ISD recommends creating a brand for Sonoma County which would be used consistently by all departments when creating new apps and services. A strong brand aids users in connecting with those services and confirms the credibility of the services being offered. Both the standard image and naming protocol should be thoroughly reviewed and evaluated. “Human beings are wired to react to pictures more than text alone… This also explains why our attention has shifted so dramatically over the past few years from blogging and text status updates to picture updates, and why social-media sites such as Pinterest, Instagram and Snapchat have burst on to the scene and become our favorite social sites. In fact, Instagram will soon surpass Twitter in the number posts per day.”3 3 Capture, Engage and Convert Customers with Visual Branding. Entrepreneur magazine. November 17, 2014. http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/239789 5 Transparency: “When we have all data Transparency in government is vital in online it will be great for garnering public trust, public participation humanity. It is a and collaboration. Openness promotes prerequisite to solving accountability and provides the citizens of many problems that Sonoma County with necessary information humankind faces.” – Robert about what their government is doing for Cailliau, Belgian informatics them. Transparency should provide engineer and computer scientist unencumbered access to information for who, together with Tim Berners- both the public and the government agency; Lee, developed the World Wide Web. Transparency can: • push government organizations to become more efficient and effective with their resources; • enable the citizens of Sonoma County to become self-empowered and participate in their community in new and interesting ways; • providing public officials the ability to harness information to help guide decision and policymaking; and • lead to ground-breaking private products and services, spurring innovation and job growth. The County will invest in new tools and technologies that allow it to provide data and information to the public that can be used by everyone and republished as they wish, without restrictions. Currently, the public must make records requests to gain access to much of the County’s information. The County is beginning to shift its focus from being reactive to these requests and proactively publishing this data online. 6 Civic Engagement: Civic engagement means working to a make a difference in the civic life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community, through both political and non-political processes. 4 On December 2, 2014, the County Administrator’s Office presented its Community Engagement Framework to the Board of Supervisors, in line with Board’s 2014 Work Priority. Sonoma County is currently implementing many promising practices in community engagement through the Board of Supervisors, County initiatives, and individual staff efforts. The County seeks to more comprehensively and uniformly institutionalize community engagement practices. In doing so, the County can increase the effectiveness of services and support the well-being of the broader community. One of the actions identified in the framework is to “Provide web-based community engagement infrastructure for utilization by departments.” 5The County wants to engage citizens in new ways, outside the traditional phone surveys and In business, words are town hall meetings. New technologies allow for words; explanations are online discussion forums and surveys, reaching a explanations, promises are broad audience and allowing citizens to participate and communicate on relevant promises, but only subjects. Government agencies can poll citizens performance is reality. on their opinions for new bills and tax measures -Harold S.
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