1. Harris County Texas – Mission Critical Networks Meet the Challenge
Recent Government Technology survey, 50% of state and local IT execs indicated that they were in some stage of shared services - planning, implementing, or considering with cost savings and service improvement as most important drivers.
Thank you for letting me share some of the success Harris County has achieved in delivering shared services.
Cynthia Tucker
Market Director, State & Local Gov’t

2. Harris County Texas 3rd largest US county, 3.9 million
Major transportation, energy, healthcare markets
Employees 16,000, 275 locations
Key county pressures
Breaking down silos
Enabling inter-agency communications
Securing people, information, and assets
So who is Harris County Texas? Our sister county to the south…
What keeps Harris’ County CIO, Steve Jennings and his IT staff up at night? 2

3. Source: Harris County CIO, Steve Jennings
Visually where they want to be…
Steve Jennings’ vision is for the county’s customers (if authorized) to have access and connectivity everywhere much like the London subway.
He sees convergence as critical to making shared services a reality.
Source: Harris County CIO, Steve Jennings

4. Harris County Converged Information Utility
Virtualized
Processes
Open Standards
Citizens
Convergence
Suppliers
Partners
County Business
Scalable
Adaptive
Warehouse
Employees
So how is Harris Co. meeting these challenges…
Harris has built a Converged Information Utility on a 10 Gig backbone network designed to deliver shared services and help control costs.
It’s standards-based and scalable and provides a 24/7 “always on” environment.
And because the utility is flexible, it can respond quickly to customer changes… meeting demands of suppliers, citizens, partners, and employees.
The benefits of this environment: secure, productive, cost effective
Interoperable
Infrastructure
Collaborative 4

5. Converged Information Utility Services
County ISP
High speed access from 275 locations
E-commerce
Security
Wireless LAN
Wireless WAN/radio convergence
Voice over IP
Video over the network
Harris IT Center is the county ISP and provides high-speed access for all county employees, e-commerce for citizens to pay taxes, parking tickets, etc., wireless LAN services, radio convergence for public safety, voice, and video over the network.
Multiple agencies and department now share numerous services to improve service levels and reduce costs. 5

6. Source: Harris County ITC
Improving Criminal Court Services – Inmate Arraignment
Challenge
187,000 inmates processed every year
Security risk with movement of violent offenders
Solution
Connected justice offices with fiber and wireless
Provided video services for arraignment, multi- language rights education, and visitations
Benefits
Reduced costs for inmate transport
Improved employee and citizen safety
Reduced access requirements to jail facilities
Moving 187,000 prisoners takes a lot of time and manpower with multiple staging/movement procedures. And there is always a security risks for employees and citizens moving violent offenders from secure to non-secure environments
Criminal justice and other dept buildings were connected (2Mb bandwidth) to the backbone for video services for remote locations to perform video arraignment, eliminating the need to transport prisoners to the downtown courthouse.
The solution was to implement video services in (3) areas inmate rights education, arraignment, and visitations.
Video was also used to conduct the inmate rights process in multiple languages eliminating the need for bilingual speakers for the education portion.
Inmate visitation center use video for visits over the network eliminating the need for public access to the jail facilities.
This was an IT capital improvement project funded by the criminal courts department and took approx. 90-days to implement. The benefits truly outweigh the costs.
From an IT perspective, reaching consensus from various agencies and departments (sheriff, DA, magistrate, criminal courts operations) but everyone agreed early one that it was a good idea from an overall improvement proposition and critical to controlling costs for the county.
Sources: Chris Robins, John Meadows - Harris County Information Technology
Source: Harris County ITC 6

7. Source: Harris County ITC
Improving Social Services – Forensic Interviewing
Challenge
Limited access, availability to children’s interviews
Recurring travel time, costs for multiple department
Solution
Connected Children’s Assessment Center to network for video
Provide remote access for collaborative agencies
Benefits
Increased service effectiveness with “on-demand” access
Eliminated travel costs
Reduced impact to taxpayers
Another video example is interviews at the Children’s Assessment Center. Previously children's interviews were recorded on VHS tapes and investigators, the sheriff, constables, CPS personnel as well as the DA’s office had to drive to the center for evidence and "checkout" taped interviews.
IP video system was deployed and integrated into the data network. Now multiple personnel can view live or recorded interviews from their desktop or download eliminating the need for travel.
The Children’s Assessment Center project was funded by a special grant (RFP process) to develop a custom video solution for children’s interviews. The project took approximately 1-yr to from concept to full deployment.
Source: Harris County ITC 7

8. In closing…
Consider your information and communications technology as an integral part of your county’s services
Establish collaborative environments among IT teams and county agencies beyond just phones or data
Embrace network convergence and IP transformation as key enabler for on-demand, shared services
Thank you…
Q&A
It seems Harris County started with a specific project for video services over the network.  Now other agencies/departments are using it.  Was that planned and part of the original vision?
Actually Distance Learning for county employees was the initial driver for video services however it ended up that inmate arraignment was deployed first. In speaking with the Harris IT team, the biggest challenge was reaching consensus with the various agencies and departments (sheriff, DA, magistrate, criminal courts operations) on the what, when, how… But everyone agreed early one in the planning process that leveraging technology for inmate arraignment was a good idea for overall efficiency improvement and critical to controlling costs.
What advise would you give to other communities interested in deploying shared services to solve new agency business problems?
The Harris Co. IT team indicated that because their network, platform, and applications environments are standards-based and highly scalable – all critical in a multi-vendor environment. The Harris County network is primarily Alcatel-Lucent with Tanberg for the video communications.