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Cleveland Rolls Out Wireless Permitting

City's first enterprise application goes live with phase one

Todd Q. Adams
Cleveland -- a relic of the industrial age rusting away on the shores of Lake Erie? Intel -- solely a manufacturer of computer chips? If so, Intel's partnership with Cleveland in the much-publicized Digital Communities initiative makes no sense. And what are "Digital Communities" anyway? A fresh coat of paint on the aging "e-government" Web site?

That was then, this is now, as participants in the Digital Communities initiative will tell you. And digital communities are far beyond the Web site and URL of yesteryear. Digital communities are an idea brought to the street by people like Cleveland's Todd Q. Adams, working in the real world of building inspections and permits, utilities, infrastructure, health and safety.

The City of Cleveland, said Adams speaking at an Accela users conference in San Diego earlier this week, has an advantage in that OneCleveland -- a nonprofit provider of community-based broadband -- runs a fiber ring that serves the city government, hospitals and other institutions. That digital infrastructure can be leveraged and extended by the city for such functions as wireless permitting for example.

Cleveland brought 11 key departments and 400 users into an Accela-based wireless inspection and permitting system using HP iPAQ 2150 handhelds. The city went live with phase one last month.

Training
Converting from a paper-based inspection system required some effort, said Adams. All 400 users were trained in Accela automation, and 25 percent needed remedial work on automation, the iPAQ and more. One of the most successful training techniques, said Adams, was to take the old paper inspection reports and enter the data into the new system step by step. That worked very well, he said -- classroom training alone was not sufficient.

The average time to train users on the wireless application was half a day, said Adams, and a day each for the handheld unit and Accela Automation. And no matter how "intuitive" the technology seemed to be, some users did not find it so. "Some people came back and asked for more training," said Adams, adding that the city is now training its chief inspectors. "You have got to have knowledge transfer and ownership," said Adams, explaining that while the city's private-sector partners have done a good job, the city can't stay dependent on them. "At some point you have to take ownership."

Handhelds vs. Laptops
The iPAQs were chosen because they were much less expensive than ruggedized laptops, said Adams. The handhelds cost the city $449 per unit, and with charger, case, etc. the cost was about $600 per inspector.

The technology was simplified to reduce keyboarding, which is time consuming on a handheld. "Data entry has a lot of dropdown menus," said Adams, adding that city codes and anything that could be "canned" was put into the boilerplate. They staggered the rollout geographically by district across wards and political boundaries.

Of 120 iPAQs, said Adams, one was stolen and one screen cracked. Under city policy, the employee responsible for the stolen unit had to pay for it. The cracked screen was replaced under warranty. The units have printing capability, said Adams, but the city has not yet been printing permits in the field, as do some other jurisdictions. The permits are printed in the back office and mailed out. Another feature being looked at is the ability for inspectors to schedule their own inspections. The system uses Cisco 802.11 wireless technology, and the network restricts access to the 120 devices through a Media Access Control address, so security is good, he said.

The city does not yet have citywide wireless coverage, said Adams, so inspectors must still come into the office

to synch up and upload reports, and to clock in and out. Adams expects that many of the limitations imposed under manual processing will give way to more efficient technology-enabled methods. The implementation started in October and went live in July.

But the city did much more than adding wireless connectivity and handheld hardware. "This is the first time Cleveland has deployed an enterprise application of any magnitude," said Adams. "We have spaghetti architecture, we have different domains, multiple local area networks, and no standards with those networks, or even at the desktop level. We have LANs, WANs, with multiple entities trying to make it all work over the Web." Adams said that connectivity was impeded by everything from firewalls to popup blockers when they set out to standardize desktop and server-level management.

Return on Investment
Attendees had many questions on total costs and return on investment for the system. Significant costs for the system were a one-mile mesh network in district three where 10 inspectors work, notebooks, additional desktops, retraining, maintenance, etc. Some private-sector attendees estimated a wireless network to cost between $40,000 to $60,000 per square mile. The benefits in increased productivity are now being quantified since the system went live. One measure includes an inspector's salary and how many more inspections can be done in a day. Another advantage is that an inspector will have immediate access to references, past inspection history, etc. and should be able to complete the process with fewer delays.

Some attendees, planning or in the process of installing wireless systems, pressed for actual costs and more data on ROI. Accela has an ROI calculator that will be posted on the new Digital Communities Web site, hosted by Government Technology.

Adams said it is important to manage expectations, as some productivity gains may be slow to arrive as the inspectors learn the system. Some cities, he said, charge more for faster service, which -- if you can handle it -- adds to revenue. The model is based on United States passports, where travelers demanding fast turnaround on a passport pay a premium fee.
Wayne E. Hanson served as a writer and editor with e.Republic from 1989 to 2013, having worked for several business units including Government Technology magazine, the Center for Digital Government, Governing, and Digital Communities. Hanson was a juror from 1999 to 2004 with the Stockholm Challenge and Global Junior Challenge competitions in information technology and education.