Milwaukee City and the County of Milwaukee both faced similar challenges in providing a web-based solution for dispensing information about governmental services to their citizens and taxpayers. As might be imagined, the volume of information was huge and the task of creating an interface that was easy-to-use and successful, significant. Faced with budget constraints being felt by government agencies all over, an idea to engage in a collaborative effort between the City and County started to evolve. Administrative changes at the City and County also contributed to a climate for change in the way government thought about taxpayer efficiencies. The time was right to combine forces in delivering a quality solution for the constituents of Milwaukee City and the County of Milwaukee.
Milwaukee City and the County of Milwaukee engaged Northwoods Software to coordinate the collaborative effort in bringing about the solution. The joint effort involved the creation of well-designed informational websites for the City and the County, housed under a single Titan CMS instance. Titan's SmartSearch technology was engaged as a platform to support informational searches on either the Cty or the County site. For instance, a constituent does not have to know who collects garbage or issues birth certificates when they browse the portal. They simply type in the key word and the portal links them to the correct location.
The infrastructure that provides the backbone of the system is also shared. Equipment, including servers that host the site, connections to the Internet, training facilities and staff talent are shared between the entities. The primary site is hosted by Milwaukee County, using County servers, databases and other technology. Back-up servers reside at the City, where data is replicated every few minutes, creating a fail-over environment that prevents loss of usability for constituents and other users.
Because the collaboration takes advantage of the native features of Titan, both parties realized reduced costs. The single Titan instance allows the City and County to share source code and the use the strength of Titan's CMS features for content management. The combined funding that this partnership allowed, reduced the duplicated efforts that would have been the reality if the two parties had acted independently. This made more funding available for site enhancements which benefited both the County and the City in a truly win-win arrangement! See it for yourself!
“The Innovation Award is the highest award that the Public Policy Forum gives to government officials for projects that demonstrate that government works for its citizens and taxpayers. We are proud to honor Milwaukee County and the City of Milwaukee for their accomplishments.” -- Jeffrey Brown, President Public Policy Forum