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Washington, D.C., Adopts Mobile Government System

Department of Health inspectors process permits in the field.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The District's Department of Health conducts health and safety inspections annually or biannually in approximately 30,000 facilities including restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and others and wanted to provide inspectors with mobile technology to process permits in the field.

The department selected Accela Wireless as the department's new mobile government application. HP Tablet PCs will be used to run the application, providing department inspectors with complete mobile capabilities. The project, which involves adding new enhancements to the department's existing permit and licensing system, is being managed by kedsTechnologies.

The department's health inspection teams now have mobile technology that shifts many of their daily tasks from the office to the field. Using the tablet PCs, inspectors can remotely access their daily inspection schedules and corresponding permit information. While in the field, inspectors can input their inspection results and update the agency database in real time, thereby speeding up the overall process.

"The use of a tiered architecture and Internet-based technologies at the department is consistent with our IT strategic plan and federal strategies for a public health information network infrastructure," said Willis Bradwell, CIO for the Department of Health. "By building the proper application and database architecture, and surrounding it with the appropriate security mechanisms, the inspectors will be able to process permits in a wireless environment, but in a secure manner."

Additionally the department will implement Accela GIS, which allows users to view geographic data related to a particular permit. The application can also be used to minimize the time spent traveling between various inspection sites; the system's route optimization feature maps the most expedient path based on the locations of the inspections scheduled for that day.

"The use of mobile technology and interactive mapping capabilities allows our inspectors to accomplish their daily tasks more efficiently," said Denise Pope, the administrator of health regulation administration at the Department of Health. "The enhancement of our permit and licensing system will improve efficiency, track individual and group productivity, and produce management quality assurance reports for tracking and trending of inspections and noncompliance."
Miriam Jones is a former chief copy editor of Government Technology, Governing, Public CIO and Emergency Management magazines.