Building A Citywide Technology Improvement Plan (TIP)
What it is: The FY22-23 Technology Improvement Plan serves as a comprehensive strategy to support the upgrade, replacement, and development of digital solutions across the City. Digital in partnership with each City department will inventory current technology, define and roadmap improvements, and build a transparent process for forecasting, budgeting, and developing realistic project timelines.
Why it matters: The TIP will enable the City to…
- Eliminate shadow IT to reduce the cybersecurity threat to the City
- Forecast technology needs to ensure our budgets are right-sized and avoid purchasing surprises
- Create a predictable and structured process for involving Digital in the evaluation and selection of the best solution to meet the City’s needs
- Identify opportunities to reuse or share applications across departments
- Identify cost savings opportunities by optimizing contracts and retiring legacy systems
- Create a single source of truth and shared view of all City technology assets
What you need to know: Director MacLeod and members of the Digital team will be scheduling TIP meetings with each department throughout the current budget season. Please start thinking about who you would like to include in these conversations, and what your current and future technology needs are in the next fiscal year.
311 Resident Request System Upgrade
What it is: Our current 311 resident request system, CP Connect, will be sunsetting on April 20, 2022. The vendor is offering to migrate us to an alternative solution, SeeClickFix. In order to guarantee the success of a new 311 implementation for San Rafael, Digital is partnering with departments to determine their needs around resident request and complaint tracking.
Why it matters: With this new system, the goal is to bridge communication and service gap between staff and residents and be able to connect all San Rafael residents to City services by phone, online, and by text 24/7.
What you need to know: The Digital Team is surveying current users of CP Connect to better understand how staff use the current system and asses what folks would like to see in a replacement for CP Connect. This survey should take 5 minutes to complete. Please complete by February 3rd, 2022.
What’s Digital up to in January?
Focus Area: Digital Workforce
- HR Applicant Tracking System
- Why it matters: A modern Applicant Tracking System will bring the latest software capabilities to the City’s recruiting and hiring processes!
- What you need to know: Staff who support recruitments as hiring managers and interviewers will be trained in a new system that allows you to get broader reach and visibility on your job postings, track candidates through a pipeline, and manage the interview process all in a single interface (no more fillable PDFs!).
- What’s next: After an extensive vendor landscape review and requirements gathering, the HR team is currently beta testing their top two software choices. A selection will be made in mid-February, and we will begin engaging staff on the implementation thereafter.
- Citywide Telephone System Replacement
- Why it matters: Our current City telephone system, ShoreTel, is at it’s end of life and is no longer supported by the vendor. We have a unique opportunity to learn about the City’s current communication needs and implement a modern system that will reduce costs and keep everyone connected.
- What you need to know: Digital sent out a survey to City staff in early January, requesting feedback on the current system and information about staff’s various communication needs. If you did not respond to the survey and want your voice heard, please submit your feedback in a Digital Request Form on the employee website.
- What’s next: Digital is finalizing a Request for Information that will be made available to the vendor community. Through this process, we will learn more about the various digital telecommunications options that exist in 2022 and can craft a more detailed RFP later this Winter.
Focus Area: Community Engagement
- Vegetation Management Data and Map
- Why it matters: Active Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority projects include work in the open space to reduce hazardous fuels near homes, roads. Residents want to know about all the work the Vegetation Management team at the Fire Department has been doing in their neighborhoods.
- What’s next: Digital will support the Fire Department Vegetation Management team to put an interactive map on the city website that will help residents learn about projects near them in a self-service way.
- Council Chamber Readiness for Hybrid Meetings
- Why it matters: While the City continues to follow Public Health guidelines regarding COVID-19, we are preparing to return to in-person public meetings with an option to participate over Zoom as soon as it is safe to do so.
- What you need to know: Elected officials, staff, external presenters, and community members will be able to participate in future public meetings either in person or from the comfort of their home.
- What’s next: We’re doing some final testing in the room with the City Clerk’s staff, Digital staff, and our vendor. We will invite the City Manager’s staff and our elected officials to a mock meeting to gather feedback prior to hosting our first hybrid meeting.
Focus Area: Smart City
- San Rafael Data Strategy
- Why it matters: The Digital Team is creating a data strategy to support departments leverage their data in day-to-day work, and relaunch our open data portal.
- What you need to know: We will ask for support from departments to help identify important data assets and potential uses for that data.
- What’s next: A meeting with people who work with data across the city to introduce the data strategy and next steps.
Focus Area: IT Ops and Maintenance
- Migration to BGP Network
- Why it matters: This project will add a redundant internet connection to the Public Safety Center Facility that allow multiple internet feeds on a single network. This backup will increase our network and communication resiliency specifically in the case of a disaster or emergency.
- What you need to know: The cutover to the new network took place on January 13th, all remaining services will be cutover in coordination with the Public Safety departments before the end of the month.