The migration process was an opportune time to re-evaluate the county’s processes and leverage newer models of data tracking, enterprise routing & collaboration, data verification and business automation.   For example, by tapping into EnerGov 9′s SOA, the county substantially improved its integration with the statewide Environmental Health system, allowing for quicker and more convenient access to data that is more consistent and accurate with automated processes.

The county also improved the enterprise nature of its regulatory process by having master plans collectively manage cases instead of creating multiple related records that need to be managed individually. By creating one master case instead of multiple cases, the county was able to leverage EnerGov’s powerful workflow capabilities enabling central and concurrent management of regulatory tasks, making collaboration easier with information that is now transparent to all necessary parties.   Through these newly introduced processes the county also now works with fewer records, making data retrieval easier, and reducing data redundancy which is allowing the county to realize returns in efficiency and processing time.

After working hand-in-hand with EnerGov’s staff to configure the software to meet the county’s unique processes, workflows and specific needs, the county successfully went live with the new system.  The county is also evaluating EnerGov’s award-winning iG Workforce platform, technology that enables the mobilization of the staff in many areas of the county’s business processes.

“We are pleased with the transition to the new web-based enterprise system,” said Temple Lawing, the county’s IT project manager.   “We expect to see multiple benefits with the new system that will improve our services with faster processing times, mobile capabilities, and better process controls.”

The lack of enterprise software and uncompetitive pricing are major reasons why Android’s market share continues to drop, according to Leif-Olof Wallin, research vice president at Gartner.

With its intuitive design, strong ecosystem, and built-in applications, the iPad works seamlessly with our award-winning mobile platform, iG Workforce.  As a lightweight device with a touch screen interface, the iPad makes it easier to process inspections in the field and eliminates the need to carry extra equipment such as a GPS device or a camera.

See EnerGov’s Jason Wortham speak about the latest trends in mobile government at the 2011 ICC conference held in Phoenix, AZ:

We’re excited to announce the Gold Release of EnerGov’s 9.3 Service Pack, featuring a wide range of new features, functionalities, and enhanced performance.

The release pack includes the debut of two new EnerGov 9 modules: The Rental Property and Tax Remittance modules which are now included in EnerGov’s Licensing and Regulatory suite. Customers that own licenses or currently subscribe to EnerGov’s Licensing & Regulatory suite will be extended these modules at no additional charge.  By utilizing the Rental Property module, government agencies can manage every aspect of landlord licensing and rental property registrations, from application intake to payment processing.  With the Tax Remittance management module, government agencies can also create and manage tax remittance accounts and process for faster, more efficient processing.

Significant enhancements and innovations related to global financial management and automated fee calculations, and more centrally-located information for easier and faster access to enterprise data, have also been added.

Constituents will also benefit from new features in 9.3 including redesigned and enhanced abilities for online business licenses management as well as enhanced citizen engagement functionality and a whole lot more.

We look forward to seeing all the benefits the exciting enhancements and features our 9.3 Gold release will bring our customers. Log in to the EnerGov customer portal to see the full release notes or contact your EnerGov account manager for further information.

Social media is one channel that has proliferated government agencies from the White House to suburbs like Oak Park, Illinois. With its concise, real-time format, Twitter in particular has become a popular way for government agencies to communicate with the public.

EnerGov 9 enables government agencies to automatically integrate social media such as twitter right into their business process.  EnerGov has led the way in this effort as agencies are already taking advantage and seeing the benefits of this new technology that was first showcased and released at the 2010 EnerGov user conference (eUC). By following Marco Island, Florida, for example, citizens can be notified in real-time when a development permit is issued with links for further information and a quick visual map of the development location.  Now realtors, investors, or anyone in the community interested in activities in the community’s development and economic growth can be engaged in real-time, making a once bureaucratic and opaque process more open, efficient and engaging.

As Twitter’s growth shows no signs of stopping, government agencies should seriously consider a social media strategy to effectively engage with a public that is becoming more connected and willing to use web-based communication tools. By embracing and communicating through social media channels, government agencies can foster strong citizen participation, transparency, and other Government 2.0 initiatives.

eReviews 2.0 Features:

• iG Reviews App Integration - Industry’s First Mobile ePlan Review Tech for the iPad
• Partnership with Adobe – Leveraging Industry-leading Design and Markup tools
• Redesigned Collaboration Portal for Constituents
• Integration with ICC eCodes and/or Local, Agency-specific Codes
• Social Integration and Enhanced Real-time Communications
• Single-source Document/Plan Solution supporting Concurrent Reviews
• Redesigned & Intuitive Workspace for Reviewers
• Fully Leverage EnerGov’s Powerful Workflow and Intelligent Object Engine
• Leverage Leading Esri GIS Integration

Enterprise Efficiency and Ultimate ROI

As the trend of moving away from paper into a fully digital environment continues, agencies have often struggled to use stand-alone “third-party” electronic plans review solutions as this can typically lead to siloed workflow and critical data disparate and compartmentalized from the enterprise permitting & land management system and process – often mitigating the potential for increased efficiencies and ROI the new paperless environment should be accounting for.

EnerGov’s native ePlan review technology eliminates this notion, maximizes efficiencies and ROI by allowing for a 100% seamless plan review and workflow process within the EnerGov enterprise business system - eliminating the need for overlapping or duplicate workflow processes with a third-party or stand-alone external ePlan application.

Flexible and Intuitive Workspace

Client feedback was a driver to many of the improvements and enhancements to eReviews 2.0. As we listened to our clients and gathered client input through focus group sessions, we aimed to make the interface more configurable and easy to use than ever before. Options for search, filtering, and sorting have been enhanced so agencies can quickly locate information through a variety of criteria.  Corrections can be grouped by categories and can be expanded for easier viewing and summaries can be viewed in one click.  The user interface has been redesigned with the ability to show, hide, and rearrange all within a preferred user layout and configuration. All related cases (linked permits, plans, etc) can be instantly accessed for quick reference.

Enhanced Communications and Social Integration

eReviews enables agencies to drastically enhance collaboration and communication between government agencies and the constituency. eReviews 2.0 introduces a number of vehicles for enhanced communications including a newly redesigned online portal, real-time collaboration technology and social integration.

Why EnerGov eReviews?

Transitioning from a paper-based process to an electronic review process is not only more convenient but eco-friendly.  Government agencies intake thousands of applications, often may of them involving the submission of comprehensive plans.  Time, paper, and money are wasted if these drawings have to be printed and submitted and re-submitted to each person involved in the review process.   Adopting enterprise electronic plans review technology can drastically reduce the time it takes for permits to be processed, reduce the use and storage of paper, and reduce the number of trips the development community has to make to the Government center - lowering carbon emissions, fuel usage and the overall cost of doing business with the agency.

California County Information Services Directors Association, April 29–May 2

We’ll be exhibiting at CCISDA’s spring conference in City of Industry, CA, where CIOs and other decision makers will be attending workshops and seminars to learn about new technologies and ideas to improve operational efficiencies and  services.   We’ll be exhibiting alongside major IT corporations including IBM, HP, and Microsoft.

2012 Esri Southeast User Conference,
April 30 – May 2

The 2012 Esri Southeast User Conference will be held in Jacksonville, Florida, where developers will learn about the latest Esri technology and best practices in GIS. EnerGov will be exhibiting our enterprise land, licensing, and asset management software solutions with GIS leveragability.

Building Officials Association of Georgia, May 5–8

Founded in 1958, the BOAG aims to establish and enforce uniform regulations related to the safety of buildings across the state. EnerGov will be attending BOAG’s 54^th annual conference at St. Simons Island to demo iG Inspect, our award winning mobile application that allows unlimited  inspections to be processed and managed in the field all from the iPad.

Building Officials Association of South Carolina,
May 6-9

We’ll be attending the BOASC’s 61st annual meeting at North Myrtle Beach this year where building and fire officials will be coming together to discuss best practices for efficient administration and enforcement of building codes. We look forward to demo iG Inspect, our award winning mobile application that allows unlimited  inspections to be processed and managed in the field all from the iPad.

The APA 2012 National Planning Conference was a huge success this year as thousands of planners, civic leaders, and students from around the world convened together in Los Angeles to envision greater communities for the future.  Hundreds of sessions and workshops covered a variety of topics from best zoning practices to planning for fair housing.

At EnerGov, we provide government agencies with the technology to efficiently manage land use planning and regulatory processes such as permitting, licensing, inspections, and code enforcement.  With intelligent automation, advanced workflows, GIS integration, and many other features, our enterprise land management software helps government agencies to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and improve citizen engagement.

At the Expo, we enjoyed meeting with planners from all over the U.S. who had a wide variety of needs.  Some were looking to implement a brand new enterprise system to replace legacy systems while others were looking for a more cost-effective solution.  Many were impressed with our system’s Esri GIS integration as well as the robust workflow management and seamless enterprise integration of our Electronic Plans Reviews technology.

Our award-winning mobile workforce platform applications, iG Inspect and our brand new iG Reviews, also generated much interest for those who were looking to process inspections and reviews in the field or on the go.  With an intuitive userface and design, many found both applications easy to use and navigate on the iPad.

We’ve enjoyed sponsoring APA 2012 and look forward to following up with new people we’ve met. See you in Chicago for APA 2013!

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles spoke on handling the largest transportation project in the U.S. with the building of the Expo Line, a light rail line that runs between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica. Mayor Villaraigosa spoke about a vision of Los Angeles with livable communities surrounding the new line so Angelenos can spend less time driving and commuting in cars.

APA President Mitchell Silver talked about emerging demographic changes in the U.S. with an aging and increasingly diverse population and the number of single person households on the rise.  Mitchell urged planners to prepare for these changes and encouraged them to “sacrifice today for their tomorrow.”

Finally leading climatologist Dr. Andrew Weaver spoke on climate change and how the media, scientific community, citizens, and planners can effectively dialogue and work together to resolve the controversial topic.  Dr. Weaver urged planners to think 50 years ahead to build infrastructure that will curb carbon emissions.

With transportation, demographic, and climate needs in mind, planners were encouraged to “Reinvent, Reinvigorate, Reimagine” their communities and their careers as planning professionals with a renewed purpose to prepare for future generations.

As the world’s largest planning event, the conference is the perfect opportunity for CIOs, planners, civic leaders, and other key government officials  to try out iG Reviews for the first time at the conference Expo.   Users can view, annotate, mark-up plans, make recommendations, collaborate, and manage other parts of the plan review process from the iPad in real-time.   Attendees can also view the company’s flagship enterprise software for Permitting & Land management, Licensing, Asset Management, and Citizen Requests to learn how these processes can be streamlined and automated to increase productivity and improve efficiencies for government agencies.

EnerGov will also be hosting the Expo reception on Saturday, April 14^th, from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. where there will be a free iPad giveaway and refreshments.   We look forward to seeing you there!

After a competitive bidding process, the city of Kirkland and a number of surrounding agencies selected the EnerGov 9  enterprise solution and last week the city successfully went live with the new system. Now the city’s Planning, Building, Fire, Public Works, and a number of other departments can centrally manage and connect every step of the city’s unique regulatory processes including workflow-based fee calculations, plan review and inspection routing and automated task escalations. Citizens will also be able to more easily apply, pay for, monitor applications online.

“According to the city, this was by far the largest and most in-depth software implementation in the city’s history,” says Ryan Hountz, of EnerGov. “The city went from just tracking to managing and automating the entire regulatory business processes of many of the city departments.”

The city claims the new system provides much more robust features that will make the regulatory process more streamlined, controlled, and efficient.

“With the increased efficiencies the system will bring, the city will see a high return on their initial investment as system payback is realized within the first few years,” Hountz said.

To support the software training and Go Live stages, the City and EnerGov created a 60’s theme around “All You Need is EnerGov.” This theme carried through to the Go-Live of the new software system for an exciting rollout of the new software system. Many of the staff got into the act and came to City Hall in their best 60’s attire. The Kirkland and EnerGov staff had a busy but fun days processing permits, plan cases, business licenses, and other various business activities.

“We are excited to see the benefits of the new system and to see all of the team’s hard work come to fruition,” said Katy Coleman, Implementation Project Manager/Development Engineering Analyst.