The department, which serves as the county’s central technology service provider, is responsible for building a secure technological infrastructure and maintaining an effective operational environment for all county departments, industry partners and residents.
With these responsibilities in mind, the department has outlined its future IT goals under “emerging technologies” and “system upgrades and enhancements” in its business plan.
Examples of emerging technologies include:
- Cloud technology: Currently, the department is in the process of migrating its web-based applications to the cloud to facilitate the continuous use of applications regardless of maintenance downtime or infrastructure failure.
- Augmented reality: The department is also working on expanding augmented reality applications for smart devices to superimpose digital information through camera lenses onto real-world objects. According to the department’s business plan, “the service content will be geospatially referenced so that county personnel can conduct business smarter to locate assets, locations and incidents.”
- Cybersecurity: One of the county’s main goals regarding security is to continue to update and enhance capabilities to adapt, protect and respond to a changing threat environment. To achieve this, the department plans to research cloud access security brokers, an on-premises or cloud-based security software and zero-trust architecture to strengthen data protection.
- Enterprise resource planning consolidation: Under this initiative, the department plans to consolidate several of its ERP systems, including the county’s aviation and water and sewer department databases, into a single ERP platform.
- Blockchain: Lastly, the department is exploring how blockchain can improve business digital workflows and processes while guaranteeing “high service availability, data integrity and a way to store asset transactions” for county government.
Meanwhile, system upgrades and service enhancements include:
- Capital improvement and construction management solution: The department, in collaboration with the Internal Services Department, the Transportation and Public Works Department and PortMiami, are working on a request for proposals for a cloud-based capital and construction management solution to help departments improve workflows, billing and management processes.
- Enterprise applications initiatives: The department is also working on modernizing the county’s application portfolio, which “will require updating the skill set of IT professionals in emerging technologies and ensuring adequate ongoing support for legacy systems until they are modernized.” Specific initiatives under this category include enhancing the county’s e-commerce capabilities through interactive voice response applications, introducing GIS industry best practices across all county departments, developing enterprise asset management mobile capabilities to capture real-time data, integrating GIS into Miami-Dade’s web portal and implementing a cruise planning graphical app to better visualize PortMiami’s cruise area.
- Establish a network operations center (NOC): Lastly, the department plans to establish a NOC to monitor all department networks, systems, management issues and events to improve system availability and response time.
More information about the county’s IT department business plan can be found online.
