Background and Vision
The County of San Mateo has approximately two dozen departments and over 5,000 employees that serve the over 700,000 residents of this county, including services related to public safety and criminal justice, health and human services, planning and building, parks and recreation, public works, elections, and much more. To enable such a large and complex agency to maintain and continually improve its organizational effectiveness, engagement, and agility, ISD must always look for solutions that connect people and data, improving communications among County employees and well as between the County and its residents.
Technology Projects
ISD is upgrading County communication systems to improve collaboration and efficiency, including the implementation of Office 365, which includes cloud-based productivity applications as well as:
SharePoint – implementing a robust solution for collaboration and document management
Yammer – leveraging internal social networks for effective team collaboration
Lync – enabling chat and video communications as well as deploying webinar capability
Outlook/Exchange – standardizing email and calendaring systems to integrate with all of the above
All of these applications are consistent with ISD’s mission of providing stronger connections among County employees consistent with current technology trends, including the migration to the cloud, the rise of social applications, and the ubiquity of mobile.
Next Steps
ISD is currently rolling out all of these solutions throughout the various County departments. The target date to have all applications available to all departments is fall of 2015. Once completed, the combination of standard modern communication tools and an employee portal for internal County-wide communications will allow the organization to share best practices and collaborate across teams, improve collaboration with partners, enable better document sharing and collaboration, and automate workflows and processes. All of this should serve to make the County more effective in serving its constituents and more efficient with its budget.