Montgomery County, Maryland 1 Using Web 2.0 to Promote Participation and Collaboration Ivan Galic Montgomery County, Maryland May 7, 2008

Montgomery County, Maryland 2 County Map

Montgomery County, Maryland 3 Quick Facts: –Most populous jurisdiction in State of Maryland (~1MM residents) –Diverse population: 35% language other than English spoken at home (2005 census) 35% households with foreign born head or spouse (2005 census) –Nationally recognized public school system –Strong local economy with low unemployment –Median household income: $84,000 (2004 census) County Government: –$4.3B+ annual operating budget –~10,000 employees –~40 operating departments –County Executive is Mr. Isiah Leggett –Legislative Branch: 9 Elected County Council members County Overview

Montgomery County, Maryland 4 October, 1998 – Request to establish eCommerce program March, 2000 – eCommerce manager hired July, 2000 – launched with 5 interactive applications –Property tax payment –Parking ticket payment –Purchase fare media (bus & rail fare) –Purchase County Code –Renew library books November, 2002 – launch of January, 2007 – home page “re-fresh” Website History

Montgomery County, Maryland 5 In the Beginning...

Montgomery County, Maryland 6 First Website (1995 – 1996)

Montgomery County, Maryland 7 New & Improved ( )

Montgomery County, Maryland 8 The Competition ( )

Montgomery County, Maryland 9 1-Stop Portal ( )

Montgomery County, Maryland 10 Today’s Home Page

Montgomery County, Maryland 11 e-Payments Total Collected 2007: $47MM 17% increase vs Total # Transactions 2007: 18K+ 6% increase vs Total Collected 2007: $17MM 8% decrease vs Total # Transactions 2007:1,343 2% decrease vs. 2006

Montgomery County, Maryland 12 Usage Trends 57% vs % vs % vs % vs. 2004

Montgomery County, Maryland 13 Customer Satisfaction High Level of Satisfaction with County Website

Montgomery County, Maryland 14 Awards

Montgomery County, Maryland 15 What Is It*? –Web 2.0 is a trend in the use of World Wide Web technology and web design that aims to facilitate creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users. –Web 2.0 websites allow users to do more than just retrieve information. They can build on the interactive facilities of "Web 1.0" to provide "Network as platform" computing, allowing users to run software-applications entirely through a browser. Users can own the data on a Web 2.0 site and exercise control over that data. These sites may have an "Architecture of participation" that encourages users to add value to the application as they use it. This stands in contrast to very old traditional websites, the sort which limited visitors to viewing and whose content only the site's owner could modify. Web 2.0 Defined * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 16 Web 2.0 – Buzzwords & Technologies Common Terms: – –Blogs – –Mashups – –RSS – –SharePoint – –AJAX – –Web Services – –Wikis – –SOA – –Podcasts – –Rush

Montgomery County, Maryland 17 County Blogs Implementation Blogs*: A blog (an abridgment of the term web log) is a website, usually maintained by an individual, with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 18 County Mashup Implementation - Libraries Mashups*: A mashup is a web application that combines data from more than one source into a single integrated tool. * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 19 SaaS Mashup – Police (CrimeReports) CrimeReports.com is an online mapping and analysis service that combines police data with Google-based mapping and an analytics module so that members of the public can view police data in a map or summary descriptive format. The public may also sign up to receive free alerts.

Montgomery County, Maryland 20 County RSS Feeds Implementation RSS*: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content. An RSS document contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner. * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 21 County SharePoint Implementation SharePoint*: SharePoint is a web-based collaboration and document management platform from Microsoft. It can be used to host web sites which can be used to access shared workspaces and documents, as well as specialized applications such as wikis, blogs and many other forms of applications, from within a browser. * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 22 County AJAX Implementation – Virtual Town Hall Ajax*: Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML), is a web development technique. A primary characteristic is the increased responsiveness of web pages achieved by exchanging small amounts of data with the server so that entire web pages do not have to be reloaded each time there is a need to fetch data from the server. This is intended to increase the web page's interactivity, speed, functionality and usability. * Source: Wikipedia

Montgomery County, Maryland 23 Benefits: –Enhanced Constituent Participation –Improved Online Services / User Interfaces –Greater Information Accessibility / Institutional Knowledge Sharing –Better Integration / Collaboration –Increased Employee Productivity / Efficiency –More Effective Enterprise Applications –Reduced Costs (SaaS model) Risks: –Privacy –Security –Trust / Certification Benefits & Risks of Web 2.0

Montgomery County, Maryland 24 Leverage Web 2.0 Technologies Embrace Collaboration Tools & Methods Get out in Front, Before it’s Too Late! Recommendations