Customer Solution Case Study
/ / HoustonCity Government Boosts Productivity with Portal Solution
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry: City Government
Customer Profile
Houston, Texas, is the fourth largest city in the United States with 22,000 city workers and an annual budget over U.S.$2 billion. Its IT department helps connect employees to vital information.
Business Situation
Houston’s city government needed a powerful yet cost-effective information management solution to improve collaboration, increase public information access, and raise worker productivity.
Solution
The city’s IT department chose Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. The new system is a resource for internal team collaboration and an information source to the general public.
Benefits
Increased productivity 20 percent
Completed 40 percent under budget
Deployment fourmonths faster than expected
Reduced data management
Better staffcollaboration
Improved public access / “SharePoint allowed us to go from concept to execution in a very short time with solutions that were not available before.”
Matt Hyde, Assistant Director for Applications and Administration, City of Houston
The greater Houston, Texas, area is the nation’s fourth largest city with nearly five million people and a city government of over 22,000 employees. Needing copies of as many as 1,200 documents each week to support city council agendas and actions, Houston’s city secretary office relied heavily on paper and e-mail-based document creation and sharing. This system was ineffective in fully capturing, storing, retrieving, and sharing valuable knowledge. The city needed a new information management and electronic collaboration system. Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 was deployed to better aggregate, publish, and search information for the city secretary's office and other departments. The project was completed four months ahead of schedule, and total cost was 40 percent under budget. The new solution provides greater access to documents and improved search capability.
Situation
The municipal government for the city of Houston is comprised of 22,000 employees and an annual budget of over U.S.$2 billion. As with many large city governments, the city of Houstongovernment staff found the handling of information and documentation laborious and unorganized. The city needed a better way to share information between employees and with the public.
The city secretary’s office is responsible for documenting and archiving city council meetings with all of the resulting resolutions, motions, and ordinances.This often generates as many as 1,200 documents each week. Also, the secretary’s office must provide city council with additional, follow-up information and documentation to assist and support council resolutions and city ordinances. Much of the document production was manually processed and delivered to staff and council members. That process overloaded both employees and management with paper. Moreover, the information that was being disseminated was not being captured, searched, or targeted to specific roles and individuals. Employees in the city secretary'soffice previously spent as much as 15 hours a week producing, collating, photocopying, and dispersing documents. They spent another 10 hours weekly finding information to support city council meetings.
The city secretary’s office required a meansto reduce document collaboration costs, increase productivity, collaborate with greater efficiency, and improve public access to information throughout the city government.
Another important objective for the city of Houston was the improvement of information and communication with its citizens.
The city needed a better way to inform the public about the status of projects, resolution of problems, and other important city news.
Clearly, an information and collaboration system was a vital need for the city secretary’s office, other city government departments, and key stakeholders that use the system.
Solution
The city of Houston allocated U.S.$500,000 and 12 months to find a solution that would consolidate components of its existing architecture, increase productivity, handle document collaboration, and share information across the system.
The city's information technology (IT) department didn’t take long to see that Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003 would not only meet its needs, but also offer a cost-effective alternative to other systems that were hundreds of thousands of dollars more.In less than half of the projected deployment time, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 was implemented and functioning in the city secretary’s office.The ITdepartment then expanded use of SharePoint Portal Server by building portals for the IT 3-1-1 call center support (help desk services) and the public works and engineering departments.
The city has migrated its existing image files, documents, and meta-data from its Watermark image management system and Natural Document Management system into SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Benefits
Automation of business processes—moving from a manual, photocopy, documentation formatwith as many as 1,200 paper documents a week—to electronic handling of city council support documents is enabling the city secretary’s office to capture, locate, and use intellectual capital that formerly was lost or required hours to process. With SharePoint Portal Server 2003, managers are now targeting this intellectual capital and information to specific roles and employees.
According to City Secretary Anna Russell, “We can now gather information electronically and update it easily. This new process is saving us 15 hours a week in time we formerly used to photocopy documents. We now have the power to manage and locate that information easily. That simply was not possible before.”
The city of Houston has gained several specific benefits from its deployment of SharePoint Portal Server 2003.
Productivity Increased 20 Percent
The Houston city government estimates that productivity for information workers has increased by 20 percent. This is because SharePoint Portal Server decreased the time needed to locate and make use ofinformation.
Much of the productivity gain has been realized in the city secretary’s office. According toMatt Hyde, Assistant Director for Applications and Administration, City of Houston, “We are now able to do full searches on city council agendas, ordinances, and contracts.We can instantly locate that information from numerous years back, and from anywhere in the enterprise. We no longer do time-consuming manual searches that often came up with no relevant information.”
With SharePoint Portal Server easily handling the deluge of city documents and enabling quick executionof a variety of functions that were previously performed manually, the city secretary’s office has become a nimble public agent. It is able to make better decisions with automated and accessible information.
Better Collaboration Improves Project Management in IT
”SharePoint [Portal Server 2003] provides a strong project management solution for us,” Hyde comments. “It acts asa 'palette'on which we have all of our individual contact information.Employees newly joining a workgroup are up-to-speed immediately onwhere a project stands, who is working on it, the status of the project, theproblems and major issues that have occurred, and other issues that we just couldn’t track before.”
Communicating information to the citizens of Houston is a high priority. SharePoint Portal Server 2003 provides a much wider window for the public to see the status of city projects, problems that are being worked on, calendar items, and general city business. This givescitizens a one-stop information source and a significant increase in available information.
Outstanding Value
The IT department was given $500,000 to replace the city secretary’s collaboration system which was archaic and, according to Hyde, “…literally bandaged together. We looked at SharePoint Portal Server and saw that it had a variety of benefits. Our cost of deployment was 50 percentless than budgeted and we came in four months ahead of schedule. We have built portals for three departments at less cost than we budgeted for a single portal for the city secretary's office.”
Personalization and Information Access
SharePoint Portal Server was easily adopted by users in the city secretary’s office and the public works and engineering department.The portal offers easy accessibility to information that was not available previously. Employees have welcomed the advantages of personalizing their work environment with the portal’s popular My Site feature.
Shortened Development Time
After the city secretary’s portal was brought online, other departments clamored to have the SharePoint Portal Server solution at work for them, and two additional portals were built in a short period of time. "SharePoint [Portal Server] allowed us to go from concept to execution in a very short time, with solutions that just were not available before,” said Hyde.
SharePoint Portal Server Proves Its Value
The SharePoint Server-based solution provided numerous benefits:
Deployment came in 50 percent under budget and fourmonths ahead of schedule.
Improved project collaboration and increased productivity by 20 percent.
Reduced document processing and management work hours.
Automated business processes and streamlined daily workflows.
Created a familiar development environment for the IT programming staff.
From greater efficiencies, to higher productivity, to low cost of deployment, the Houstoncity government has found SharePoint Portal Server 2003 to be the right solution.
Microsoft Office System
Microsoft Office is the businessworld's chosen environment for information work that provides the software, servers, and services that help you succeed by transforming information into impact. For more information about the Microsoft Office System, go to:
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2003
SharePoint Portal Server 2003 enables enterprises to deploy an intelligent portal that seamlessly connects users, teams, and knowledge so that people can leverage relevant information across business processes to help them work more efficiently. For more information about Microsoft Office System, go to: