Agenda - 11-19-1997 - 10b - Laserfiche WebLink

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3 1.2.2 Citizen and Commissioner Access - Provide citizens with access to information and services through the county's computer and communications system. A related requirement is providing the County Commissioners with the information they need to set county policies in a flexible and timely manner. Since county employees will be the primary users of an improved computer and communications infrastructure, it is easy to lose sight of the government's responsibilities to use that system to directly benefit the citizens who support it. Consequently, the Task Force recommends a major new initiative to provide county citizens with direct access to public information generated and maintained by county government. That access should be provided wherever practical through the Internet, using the World Wide Web as a common interface, with appropriate restrictions for confidentiality. If recognized early and factored into the planning process, this initiative need not result in significant additional costs. A separate but related initiative should be to provide better access to documents, data, and analyses for County Commissioners. They are currently required to make decisions without benefit of information that is potentially available but not accessible in a timely manner. Database systems should be upgraded to provide more flexible reports and analyses with little or no custom programming. Commissioners also need access to both archival documents as well as drafts of documents currently being developed. Again, access should be primarily through the network. 1.2.3 Departmental Systems -Upgrade specialized systems within individual departments, such as Land Records and Human Services, and install network servers for documents and public databases. Many county departments maintain their records and, thus, conduct much of their business using out-of-date database management systems. These systems provide limited function and are difficult and expensive to maintain. A review of the automation needs of the respective departments should be undertaken to determine a priority schedule for their update and the migration of their data to contemporary database management systems using relational formats. This review should also look for operations currently being done manually that could be done efficiently through automation. Individual development efforts should be viewed as part of the county's overall strategy to eliminate redundant data collection and maintenance and to improve departments' operating procedures through automation. While this transition will require several years to accomplish and incur some inconvenience and costs, it should result in significant long-term savings in operating and maintenance costs and ease of future upgrades. An important part of this upgrade should be to install network access, with appropriate safe-guards for confidentiality,to better serve the information needs of both Orange County citizens and the County Commissioners. A related issue is installing specialized WWW servers that don't currently exist to provide access to county documents to employees working in different locations and to the Commissioners. Other servers should be installed for particular data collections, such as GIS data. 1.2.4 Citizens Advisory Council- To assist the county in these tasks, an ongoing Citizens Advisory Council should be established. It will help identify and order technology-related tasks, advise on performing those tasks using county personnel or through outside contracts, and review the resulting recommendations and implementation plans. It will also help keep the county's on- going development efforts focused on long-term strategic objectives. Thus, it will serve as a