Coming in at seventh and ninth place in the 500,000 to 999,999 population category were San Mateo and Ventura counties.
We previously highlighted the work of Alameda, San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which placed first, third and sixth respectively in the 1 million and up population category.
7TH: SAN MATEO COUNTY
San Mateo County is using dashboards to boost its online presence and increase transparency. The county’s tech professionals have collaborated with the Department of Housing to create what officials call a series of interactive dashboards that helps residents keep tabs on local affordable housing — one of the key factors related to poverty avoidance and wealth accumulation. Since early 2023, the dashboard, which resides on the housing department’s website, has attracted more than 10,000 views, helping to bring more transparency to the issue while also identifying the areas with the greatest need for affordable and accessible living quarters.
As that effort continues, the county is using tech to better tie together various departments.
Via its use of the GovDelivery platform, for instance, San Mateo County has boosted communication among its workforce and constituents via email and text message, which in turn helps officials provide quicker updates on services, community events and emergencies. The platform now has more than 274,000 unique subscribers and offers more than 100 topics to an audience spread across all county departments. The interactions conducted via such an effort also provide valuable data and insights to county officials as they continue to propose and work on policy.
9TH: VENTURA COUNTY
Ventura County placed ninth in its population category with a number of big-lift IT initiatives. For starters, the Information Technology Services Department migrated from a legacy property tax system to a new, more automated system. The department has also developed a web-based mapping application for the Public Works Agency, called PWA GIS Viewer, which combines more than two decades of spatial data from several departments to track watershed, sanitation, land development and more.
Similarly, the county has also implemented data-driven technology in public safety to identify known drug offenders entering county jails. The update to the Ventura County Integrated Justice Information System (VCIJIS) application allows jail staff to identify inmates that could be smuggling drugs into jail facilities while also helping to stem the possibility of inmate overdoses. In the same spirit, data mining and analytics capabilities built into the VCIJIS now allow officials to notify domestic violence victims of an offender’s address and/or community of residence.
IT Services has also rolled out a solution to enhance security across workstations, servers and email systems and endpoint protection has been added to all workstations and servers. Efforts to build the first leg of a countywide municipal broadband network are in the grant stages.
Industry Insider — California will continue to highlight the remaining California-based winners in the coming days.
*Government Technology and the Center for Digital Government are sister organizations of Industry Insider — California, and their parent company is e.Republic.
