4-page Case Study - Posted 7/31/2006

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National Association of Counties (NACo)

U.S. Counties Improve Collaboration and Governance with Knowledge-Sharing Portals

The National Association of Counties (NACo) wanted to help county governments share knowledge and collaborate with each other. It piloted two Web-based portals using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. One portal, for the sharing of software applications, was developed by Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Kanalytics and involved NACo joining the Microsoft Solutions Sharing Network (SSN) initiative. Another portal, for general information sharing and collaboration for NACo steering committees, was developed by Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Quilogy. NACo’s new collaborative technology environment enables county governments to implement new technologies faster and save money by capitalizing on existing IT investments, in addition to increasing transparency by opening up NACo committee deliberations to all member counties.

Situation

The National Association of Counties (NACo) works to ensure that the 3,066 county governments across the United States have a strong voice in the nation’s capital. The organization provides an extensive line of services, including technical assistance. The association serves as a national advocate for counties and provides resources to help them find innovative methods to meet the challenges they face.

Microsoft is particularly good at partnering with small and hungry companies and getting skin in the game from those companies. Bert Jarreau, Chief Information Officer, NACo

“We like large committees because they get our members involved and they let us hear what’s important to county governments,” says NACo Chief Information Officer Bert Jarreau. “We’re a very transparent organization so we want people to see exactly what is going at any point of time. We want county governments to be involved in the whole deliberation process and be able to see how priorities are set. But within steering committees, there is often only transparency between the individual committee members; we’ve never had a mechanism to open it up to all our members.”

Besides increasing transparency, NACo wanted to help county governments share their knowledge and best practices among each other—anything from computer application codes to requests for proposals.

“It’s common for counties to duplicate efforts and reinvent the wheel because there’s no system in place for them to share solutions and knowledge,” says Jarreau. “I might receive a call from a county-elected board member who will want to know about solutions developed by other counties of a similar size, but with 3,066 counties I can’t know what everybody is doing. We needed a way to connect the counties and open up collaboration channels.”

Solution

NACo is working in partnership with Microsoft to provide an online, community-based capability to promote increased communication, deeper information exchange, and collaboration between counties. Two Web-based portals have been piloted using Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Portal Server 2003: one to enable the sharing of information technology solutions, architectures and application source code; and one for more general information sharing and to provide a place for NACo steering committees to collaborate.

The solutions sharing portal was developed by Kanalytics, a provider of knowledge management and business intelligence solutions and a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Through the project, NACo joined the Microsoft Solutions Sharing Network (SSN), a global initiative to provide governments, associations, and public organizations a mechanism for facilitating the trusted sharing and co-development of effective, secure software solutions. The SSN platform was developed jointly by Microsoft and Kanalytics and works on top of Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

The collaboration portal was implemented by systems integrator Quilogy, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. Quilogy delivered SharePoint Portal Server essentially out of the box, with a few enhancements to meet NACo’s specific needs.

“While SharePoint is the engine behind both portals, each was implemented using a slightly different philosophy,” says Jarreau. “The SSN portal uses only the SharePoint features that are required for IT solutions sharing, to make it easy for people to use. The collaboration portal uses the full robust features of SharePoint, to ensure people have all the tools they need to get their jobs done.”

The portals are hosted centrally in NACo headquarters in Washington, D.C. and member counties access them using the same unique user ID and password that they use to log on to the members-only section of the NACo Web site.

Benefits

Mechanism to Make Sharing Easy

Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 and the Solutions Sharing Network are providing an online, community-based capability to promote increased communication, information exchange, and collaboration between counties. The tools support and deepen the culture of sharing already prevalent in county government.

“Counties are more than willing to use the SSN or collaboration portal because sharing is in their nature,” says Jarreau. “It’s not like when I worked for Ford Motor Company where we wouldn’t share with General Motors because we’d be giving away company secrets. In local government you’re willing to give away anything and everything; they’re using taxpayers dollars and by definition their activities are in the public domain.”

Jarreau adds, “What these portals provide is a mechanism for sharing. All counties are constricted by both time and money so sharing becomes futile if they have to spend a lot of effort doing it. But they’ll gladly share if it’s made easy.”

Capitalizing on Existing Investments

By making it easier to share knowledge, counties are able to implement new technologies faster and save money by capitalize on the investments made by other counties. For example, counties can use the SSN portal to access a Web-based project tracking system developed by Los Angeles County to address the problem of cost over-runs, delays, and other issues facing large-scale IT implementations. The system allows for the monitoring of a project throughout its lifecycle, creating cost transparency and the ability to catch and fix problems before it’s too late. 

Counties can also obtain an online reporting application developed by Montgomery County, Maryland, that makes it simple for elected and appointed officials to declare their financial and other interests. And they can use SSN to tap into a system developed by the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania (CCAP) that enables the sharing of technical standards and best practices among counties at the state level.

“Most county governments work similarly so a best practice in Pennsylvania may very well be a best practice in Texas,” says Jarreau. “We wanted to provide those best practices so everyone could see them and pick and choose what they wanted.”

Jarreau adds, “By using SSN, counties can go and use a solution and save a lot of money by not reinventing the wheel. Money is very tight in county governments and they would much prefer to be spending their budgets on things that directly affect their constituents, such as health and human services, rather than on developing technical infrastructure.”

Improving Transparency and Governance

The collaboration portal allows NACo steering committees to quickly locate documents and proceedings, do file sharing and versioning, retain knowledge. It also enables all committee members and others to contribute to the deliberation process.

“We don’t lose things between the cracks and we also increase our transparency,” says Jarreau. “Transparency is part of our core belief system and the portal enables us to be even more transparent because we can open up the committees to all member counties. We can provide a governance process that helps us make better and more informed decisions by getting more people involved.”

Jarreau notes that because SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is flexible and easy to use, it is possible to use the same portal for both ends of the governance spectrum—to enhance collaboration for determining NACo’s future priorities as well as to allow people to view and comment on existing and past activities.

“County government CIOs are just as sophisticated as private sector CIOs but county elected officials are quite a mixture of people. We wanted to be able to set up the portal so that a farmer who is also a part-time county commissioner could use it as well as those who are very technologically sophisticated.”

Jarreau concludes that the cooperation of Microsoft and its technology partners lies behind the success of the portals. Microsoft contributed the SharePoint technology and both Quilogy and Kanalytics have put a lot of no-cost effort into the respective projects.

“Microsoft is particularly good at partnering with small and hungry companies and getting skin in the game from those companies,” says Jarreau. “Because Microsoft is successful, these companies see the benefits of partnering and making the investment.”

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For more information about NACo, call (202) 393-6226 or visit the Web site at:
www.naco.org

For more information about Quilogy products and services, call (636) 947-9393 or visit the Web site at:
www.quilogy.com

For more information about Kanalytics products and services, call (410) 271-6305 or visit the Web site at:
www.kanalytics.com

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