County governments in California are increasingly playing a key role when it comes to deploying technologies that matter to everyday Americans.
Where innovation and out-of-the-box thinking used to fall to bigger, better-funded state IT agencies and the private sector, regional governments have turned their focus to being more adaptable and responsive to the technology needs of their constituents.
This year’s 15th Annual Digital Counties Survey, conducted by the Center for Digital Government*, brings attention to this work and the IT teams making it all possible.
Given California’s bellwether status as a leader in technology and innovation, it stands to reason that the state would have nine counties among the top 10 entries in their respective population categories among those U.S. counties that participated in the survey. While no California county won first place in its class, a couple came close — and against some stiff competition.
Here are the California counties that were ranked in the top 10 nationally in their respective classes:
1 million residents and up
4th: Alameda County
Fourth-place Alameda County (also its rank in the 2016 survey), home to Oakland and situated across the bay from San Francisco, has embraced the local tech economy with a focus on open data. The county has had a data portal for five years and has hosted five data-oriented hackathons called the “AC Apps Challenge.” More than 720 people in 106 teams have participated, crafting citizen-oriented tools such as an open jobs map and an eligibility pre-screening tool for the CalFresh nutrition program. Nearby Marin County used an Alameda white paper to begin its own challenges.
The county has also doubled down on cybersecurity, launching a dedicated Information Security Office and developing a five-year plan to secure systems and data. On top of that, the county’s IT department has updated its threat detection system, joined the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center and set up new application delivery controllers with a suite of security functions.
To support its efforts, the county has adopted a robust strategy for hiring and retaining talent, even as it faces stiff competition from local high-paying private-sector tech jobs. Alameda County has paid for premium services on LinkedIn and Dice, and it posts openings on other social media in addition to internal advertising. A digital onboarding process lets prospective hires see policies early and enter information easily. The county has cut down unplanned attrition in its application services office by 69 percent in five years. The county makes a point of getting employees involved in its innovation efforts. Alameda County maintains an internal website where employees can share new ideas and collaborate on projects.
6th: San Diego County
San Diego County tied Sacramento County for third place in last year’s survey, slipping slightly to join Miami-Dade County, Fla., in sixth place this year while unleashing an impressive array of IT-centered solutions for employees and 3.2 million residents alike.
A citizen engagement tool available from county libraries, Vet Connect, lets rural veterans meet face-to-face online with a veterans’ services representative or use video conferencing to access services and do paperwork. Another new app lets the public report issues with gas pumps, price verification and commercial scales; field questions or complaints about smoke, smells, dust, illegal burns, asbestos or unpermitted operations; and alert officials to waste, inoperable vehicles and graffiti. Inside the probation agency, officers got a new app that lets them access offender information on a smartphone; and officials are in the process of moving toward a next-generation 911 system over the next one to two years.
The county, which outsourced IT 20 years ago, also simplified IT positions this year, reclassifying county IT staff into three new classifications: IT Specialist, IT Analyst or IT Principal. The county also entered into a new IT outsourcing agreement in November with DXC (formerly Hewlett Packard Enterprise).
8th: Riverside County
Southern California’s Riverside County, the 10th-largest county in the nation, is making big strides toward connecting its nearly 2.4 million residents and streamlining IT costs. Most notably, in an effort to overcome a staggering digital divide, Riverside has undertaken a first-in-the-nation effort to bring 1 GB broadband to all residents and businesses within the county’s 28 cities and 12 participating local tribes. The move is intended to help stimulate economic growth, improve access to telemedicine, and expand education opportunities. Officially called RivCoConnect, the network will be funded through a public-private partnership, proposals for which were due this week.
Riverside is also making a strong push toward consolidating its IT, a goal it has been working toward since 2013, focusing on interoperability, resiliency and reducing costs. The county moved to a shared-services model in 2016, one element of which was using VMware NSX to consolidate 53 data centers into a private, county-owned cloud; the costs are offset by leasing space in the data center to external customers. Finally, in response to the coming retirement wave, Riverside County has relaunched its internship program, and some interns have already transitioned to permanent full-time IT positions.
500,000 to 1 million residents
2nd: Sonoma County
Sonoma has made a concerted effort to integrate information and communication technology into its overall governing strategies, touching on everything from economic development and safety to health, transportation and environmental stewardship. A key priority is transparency of government operations, and the county has embraced open data, which includes geospatial information that supports interoperable solutions as well as other data sets available for public consumption. The county has also set up fiscal dashboards, allowing the public to view Sonoma’s budget health, funding details and much more.
The county has a robust public engagement strategy that takes full advantage of various social media platforms to engage the public on a wide range of activities and incidents, such as floods, fires and road closures. The county has also deployed a customer relationship management system that is shared with some of the municipalities within the county. Sonoma County has also invested significantly in its broadband infrastructure.
3rd: Ventura County
Ventura County made a significant jump in this year’s survey, earning a third-place finish in its category. Many of the county’s endeavors underscore its belief in transparent practices, including its financial transparency website, recently upgraded with additional tools to help the decision-making process for county leaders. Water management is getting a boost from sensor networks that more specifically track performance and help shape policy. A commitment to performance-driven government can also be seen in the public safety area, where dashboards provide insights into recidivism trends and offender populations. Higher caseload volumes credited to state policy changes helped motivate the Human Services Agency’s transition to digital workflows, achieving efficiencies through abandoning traditional paper processes. In addition, several agencies coordinate across a single case management tool to more effectively address homelessness across departments.
Ventura County demonstrates a forward-thinking approach to mobility shared by many leading counties who are working to reduce “app sprawl” by providing their services through popular consumer mobile channels. For example, there are plans to publish restaurant inspection data to Yelp, share road information with Waze and sell county animal licenses on Amazon. An app the county developed called iCop unifies countywide law enforcement records management systems, equipping officers with real-time data and cutting crime-solving time considerably.
6th: San Mateo County
San Mateo County made it into the rankings this year with a robust approach centered on collaboration. The county not only maintains an open data portal complete with performance metrics for various departments, it also searches for multiple ways to create value from that data. The county trains and encourages community members and organizations to use the data as they need, including for understanding and illustrating needs and program impacts. The county has also hosted hackathons for the data sets and its representatives have spoken at conferences to help other local government organizations start open data programs.
San Mateo County’s collaborative approach is also manifesting itself in the form of a “smart region” effort involving a shared fiber-optic network among the county, municipalities, education and public safety districts in the area. A major emphasis for the project is to enhance communication between different entities. The county expects to complete the fiber network this year.
Then there’s the governance model the county has in place for IT. An executive council brings the county manager and leaders from every department together with IT professionals, forming dedicated committees to discuss IT issues on technical levels.
Lastly, the county is taking cybersecurity seriously with a multi-pronged strategy that includes end-user training, digital outreach to employees and regular audits of administrative privileges to go along with software and hardware controls such as fingerprint biometrics and upgraded email security.
10th: San Joaquin County
In the summer of 2015, San Joaquin Valley was chosen as one of Google’s kickoff sites for its Government Innovation Lab. The goal was to import some of the company's trademark “moonshot” thinking and apply it to local government problems. If returning to the top 10 of the Digital Counties survey is any indication, then the workshop was a booming success. One of the major goals addressed in the county was maintaining a well-trained and committed workforce. Sitting adjacent to Silicon Valley, the IT department suffered from tough competition, but through a series of internships and reforms to the hiring process, the county was able to make tremendous strides in workforce acquisition and retention.
The other main goal for county officials was implementing a “No Youth in the Justice System” program. Focusing on the high rate of recidivism, the county created a data sharing tool related to law enforcement dealings with youth. This tool and data will be used across departments to guide placement, link support services and inform the virtual team with the goal of reducing the probability of the youth re-offending.
150,000 residents and below
2nd: Nevada County
Home to more than 98,000 citizens, Nevada County dropped slightly in ranking to second place this year but continues to impress with its commitment to serve residents, employees, even other cities, amid a decline in resources brought on by the Great Recession. Its board-adopted, three-year Enterprise Information and Communication Technology Strategic Plan aims to boost productivity, self-service offerings to residents and overall efficiencies.
Cybersecurity continues to be a key focus, which acknowledges that its residents expect government service to be comparable to private-sector service. To that end, the county added an Accela land management and permitting suite, offering upgraded online and mobile services including permit and plan processing, payments, inspections and status tracking. Later this year, the county’s Citizen Request System (CRM) will be replaced by an Accela CRM featuring a fully mobile interface. Officials rewrote the popular, public-facing GIS MyNeighborhood map app on an Esri framework and added new aerial photographs. Elsewhere, its cloud-hosted open data portal filters and previews its GIS data.
The county’s new website, planned for launch this month, will feature responsive design and more social media, video and citizen participation; while another crowdsourcing site, Participate Nevada County, offers residents an easy way to suggest, vet and comment on new ideas. A new Secure Employee Portal lets staffers reach the Employee Access Center during an emergency, while a mobile-worker initiative and a BYOD policy enhance solutions available to employees.
Having established a data center Disaster Recovery site to provide offsite backup and recovery for county data, Nevada County offers rack space and fiber to local state court buildings and the town of Truckee. The county has also partnered with a second local city to assist with its overall IT needs.
5th: Napa County
In a county known for its vineyards and world-class wines, government IT is doing some serious behind-the-scenes upgrades. All in all, the IT prowess in Napa County, population 142,456, has earned it fifth place in this year’s survey — after having placed sixth in 2013 and not at all since. The goal for the county’s Information Technology Services (ITS) division is to ensure that county businesses can rely solely on technology for their commercial processes by building business continuity into their operations — and county departments and constituents can utilize tech to enhance practices and gain efficiencies. And with increased reliance on technology, leaders in ITS have expanded work around information security, including researching new tech to secure both the county’s network infrastructure and its information stored in the cloud. To reduce risk and improve user password management practices, ITS also implemented single sign-on for multiple user groups. This year’s judges were impressed by the county’s commitment to openness, as evidenced by the GIS data it opened to the public in 2002 and then released into the public domain under Open Data Commons licensing in the last year. Of particular note is the county’s creation of an animated video that simplified and gave character to an otherwise bland topic: the county budget process. Once the video was posted to Facebook, the visual “civics lesson” generated buzz. ITS also is conducting its Innovation Days pilot program, where employees set their normal duties aside for two days to work on developing a solution for a business process issue they’ve identified. The six-month pilot began April 1.
The Center for Digital Government is a division of eRepublic, Techwire's parent company. A version of this story appears on Government Technology, sister publication of Techwire.
