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State IT Project Wins Category in NASCIO Awards

Solutions that were part of the initiative helped state and local agencies work more efficiently in wildfire cleanup and recovery.

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One of three state projects announced as award finalists this summer by a national IT organization has won in its category, the group said recently, and is being shared with other organizations.

Chosen in August as a finalist for the 2019 National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) State IT Recognition Awards, the state Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) went on to win in the Information Communications Technology (ICT) Innovations category. The honor, which will bring the agency a trophy, an official said, came as a result of its Emergency Management Innovation Project, built to assist in the identification and removal of hazardous materials following wildfires. Among the takeaways:

• Project solutions built on the Esri platform — geospatial dashboards, mobile field-ready applications and Web-based mapping tools — were first rolled out in prototype after the December 2017 Thomas fire in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. But the project didn’t just get the agency off paper spreadsheets and maps, it improved DTSC processes by around 20 percent overall, Jennifer Benson, chief information officer overseeing DTSC’s Office of Environmental Information Management, told Techwire. DTSC’s work on burned properties sped up exponentially. Officials have said the department cleared nearly 1,100 parcels in about four and a half weeks after the Thomas fire; but after the 2018 Camp fire, it assessed more than 13,000 properties in about nine weeks. Digitizing that information has also enabled the agency to make timely, data-driven decisions about improving inefficient processes.

• The project, named as a winner Oct. 16, didn’t just digitize information, it moved it into the cloud — so all partners could access the same information at the same time, a first in this context. Each partner also received copies of the data sets created for future use.

• As a pre-existing Esri customer, DTSC didn’t have to spin its solutions up from scratch. Staffers worked with the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services on creating the project’s dashboards and collaborated with CalOES, counties and others after the fires.

• Work with other entities is in early stages, but DTSC has discussed the project with several counties in Southern California; with the Northern California World Trade Center, a 501c3 nonprofit in Sacramento; and with an international visitor leadership program seeking best practices on disaster and emergency response. DTSC is also examining its own workload for possible applications.

“This particular technology stack is well-suited for several other of our programs, use cases," Benson said. "We do have staff that do inspections on hazardous-waste facilities. And a lot of that is paper-driven right now, so we are looking to see how we can provide these types of tools to other parts of our departments that do field work.”  

Theo Douglas is Assistant Managing Editor of Industry Insider — California.