A step-by-step blueprint to connect departments and tear down silos
Hartford is a city of opportunity, hope, and success.
However, like many modern urban centers, Hartford has faced considerable challenges in managing its municipal services and data, with delays of up to four months. Incorporating Accela’s has been instrumental in transforming operations, streamlining workflows, and enhancing service delivery. This is anticipated to reduce counter visits by 40% and move these transactions online, eliminating the disruptive delays. It underscores the critical importance of adopting integrated solutions to bolster efficiency, collaboration, and community engagement in contemporary urban governance.
With this blueprint, your government agency can modernize your services, connect departments, and tear down silos.
Getting to Know Hartford
As the capital of Connecticut and one of the oldest cities in the United States, Hartford holds a unique position with its rich historical heritage, vibrant cultural diversity, and significant role in the insurance industry. Founded in 1635 and home to 125,000 residents, Hartford is renowned for its historical landmarks, such as the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Bushnell Park.
Hartford’s Legacy and Challenges
Despite their strengths, Hartford was challenged with outdated and inefficient processes for processing permit and license applications, handling payments, and coordinating work across multiple offices and departments. Data entry was manual, with staff managing paper checks and application packets, leading to backlogs and delays of up to four months. The absence of a unified platform for data sharing and collaboration among departments resulted in siloed tasks, inefficiencies, and challenges in coordination. As a city serving a tech-savvy citizenry, Hartford urgently needed a solution to modernize its operations and lay a foundation for future digital transformation.
Building a Foundation with Accela
In search of a comprehensive solution, they evaluated multiple platforms and ultimately selected Accela. Leveraging the Accelarators program, Hartford invited colleagues in government to witness how the Civic Platform and Civic Applications could address their day-to-day issues in community development. A pivotal moment was a visit to Brookline, MA, where they saw a live demonstration of Accela in action, tailored to our unique needs, including deep GIS capabilities and support for the same departments they aimed to bring online. This, along with visits to other Accela clients, showcased Accela’s transformative permitting, zoning, and inspection processes.
Choosing Accela as Hartford’s new digital front door was a strategic decision to enhance service delivery in a customer-friendly manner. Opting for Accela’s standardized platform allowed Hartford to sidestep the pitfalls of creating a bespoke system, such as implementing disparate point solutions, incurring ongoing and expensive maintenance, and facing potential disruptions from vendor changes.
Implementation: A Three-Phase Strategy
In collaboration with Accela, implementation partner Vision33, and Hartford’s dedicated team led by GIS Manager Brett Flodine, we developed a three-phase strategy to achieve our goals and build a foundation for continuous improvement in service delivery and future departmental integration:
- Reduce Manual Work with Online Permitting: Streamline processes to minimize manual data entry and handling.
- Single Digital Front Door with Improved Planning and Zoning: Create an integrated platform for citizen engagement and service delivery./li>
- Public Works and 311 Integration: Enhance coordination and data sharing among departments.
Phase One: Reduce Manual Work with Online Permitting
Phase one prioritized online permitting for the Building and Health & Human Services (HHS) departments by developing tools to empower citizens, businesses, and contractors. For the first time, HHS could electronically accept, process, and issue permits and business licenses, which was a long-desired transition. This electronic processing significantly reduced the manual workload, leading to faster permit issuance and renewals. This leap forward increased efficiency, decreased foot traffic from new applications and annual renewals, eliminated backlogs caused by manual data entry, and significantly reduced processing times. Both citizens and businesses now enjoy a more user-friendly interface for permits and services.
Phase Two: Single Front Door with Improved Planning and Zoning
In phase two, we continued improvements to Planning and integrated Zoning, focusing on identifying workflow inefficiencies and redesigning them for simplicity. Using Accela’s pre-defined record types and workflow designer, we reduced 26 original workflows to 2 through automation, ensuring tasks were assigned to the appropriate staff at the right time in the application review process. Standardizing the basics of our workflows into a single process allows us to configure and save new workflows based on their unique aspects moving forward.
Phase Three: Public Works and 311 Integration
Phase three is currently underway, aiming to transform the Public Works Department and 311, which connects residents, businesses, and visitors to city services using the Accela Service Request Management (SRM) solution. SRM provides comprehensive information related to properties in specific locations, helping us understand request trends and how we respond to service requests.
Additionally, we have implemented a program for housing loans for lower-income citizens, utilizing Accela for the required home inspections. These loans support property repairs or improvements, beginning with an application for funds and followed by property inspections before and after the work is completed. We’ve also started using Accela’s calendar capabilities, which automatically schedule events for planning, zoning, and historic preservation meetings, ensuring no steps are missed in these detailed processes.
A Service-Oriented Future in Hartford
Hartford’s journey with Accela marks a significant step towards becoming a more sustainable, prosperous, equitable, and vibrant city. Our near future will be characterized by a transformation in how we use data to enhance transparency through public-facing dashboards and maps that show the state of building permits, code violations, and service delivery speeds, fostering community trust and engagement. Accela’s platform is now a cornerstone in Hartford’s digital transformation, driving efficiency, collaboration, and innovation to benefit our citizens and business community. As Brett Flodine, GIS Manager & Accela Champion, aptly remarked, Accela is the best piece of software the city has ever purchased.
Accela is the best piece of software the city has ever purchased.
Brett Flodine
GIS Manager & Accela Champion
With Accela in place, the city of Hartford achieved increased efficiency and reduced backlogs, enhanced collaboration, improved service delivery, and strategic initiatives and transparency.
We look forward to continuing this innovative journey with Vision 33 and Hartford!
