Sacramento County moves up a slot to again achieve top ranking for its commitment to engaging citizens and businesses and streamlining operations using technology initiatives. The Center for Digital Government’s 2015 Digital Counties Survey places Sacramento County in third out of hundreds of U.S. counties vying for a spot in this vigorous measure of technology performance and innovation.
Bradley J. Hudson, Sacramento County Executive said, “To receive third place in this highly competitive survey is a proud accomplishment and recognizes the outstanding, cost effective IT solutions the County provides.”
Only those counties revealing best practices and developing trends in their use of technology are fortunate enough to be considered as a top qualifier. The core of the technology survey questions focused on citizen engagement, policy, operations and technology/data.
Best illustrating the County’s initiatives for citizen engagement through electronic access to services included 311 Connect, which is a single point of contact for County residents to report neighborhood issues via phone, email, and mobile app; the Be Healthy Sacramento open data initiative to share data pertaining to Sacramento County health, economy, education, environment, government/politics, public safety, social environment and transportation; and its busiest public service center, which offers more than 50 online services using mobile first design principles – the Sacramento County Portal.
Through policy, Sacramento County highlighted shared services, collaboration across jurisdictions, strategic governance, and improving internal operations with the Sacramento Regional Radio Communications System (SRRCS), Regional Fiber Team, and Sacramento Regional Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) Cooperative.
Sacramento County operations accomplishments have helped reassign staff for higher priority tasks and were done through the automate onboarding process for new staff, expansion of the Employee and Manager Self Service Online Portal, and Business Intelligence dashboard.
Sustainability and green initiatives are important to the County and highlighted in the survey the Landfill Power Plant that converts greenhouse gas emission into electricity; its LED lighting and control projects and Green.SacCounty.net website.
In the realm of technology and data accomplishments, the County included information about its adaptive, multi-layered information security defense strategy to effectively respond to cyber threats, and its cost efficient, fully integrated voice, video and data architecture, and extranet environment that guarantees data security.
“The trend of citizens using online services continues to grow,” said Rami Zakaria Sacramento County Chief Information Officer, “and Sacramento County is dedicated to expanding these services and ensuring citizens’ privacy and data security.”
The Digital Counties Survey allowed participants the choice to underscore any other accomplishments; Sacramento County chose its support of community charities, public safety upgrades, and surplus computer equipment donation.
Sacramento County will be honored for the 2015 Digital Counties Survey ranking at a reception during the July National Association of Counties annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina and has ranked in the top ten every year it’s participated since 2004.
2015 Digital Counties Survey Ranking in 500,000 or More Population Category:
1st Fairfax County, VA
2nd Montgomery County, MD
2nd County of San Diego, CA
3rd Oakland County, MI
3rd Sacramento County, CA
4th Wake County, NC
5th Bexar County, TX
5th King County, WA
6th Orange County, FL
7th County of Alameda, CA
7th Baltimore County, MD
7th Snohomish County, WA
8th Pierce County, WA
8th County of San Bernardino, CA
9th Hennepin County, MN
9th Westchester County, NY
10th Cuyahoga County, OH
10th County of Ventura, CA
The Center for Digital Government is a national research and advisory institute on information technology policies and best practices in state and local government. CDG is a division of e.Republic, the nation’s only media and research company focused exclusively on state and local government and education.
