City of Seattle invests $320,000 to improve digital literacy, access to technology

August 13, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

Eleven Technology Matching Fund recipients aim to close digital divide

The Seattle City Council approved $320,000 in funding for community-led projects that increase digital literacy. The Technology Matching Fund grants were awarded to 11 projects that will reach an estimated 3,000 residents, increasing their access to technology and digital skills training.

“Access to technology and digital literacy is an equity issue. Important tasks like applying for jobs, finding healthcare, accessing childcare, and even communicating with our loved ones in times of need have all moved online, making internet access and digital skills more critical than ever. Furthering technology equity and access is an important way to create opportunity for historically underserved neighborhoods,” said Mayor Jenny A. Durkan. “These investments allow our communities to capitalize on technology and job training while making a more inclusive, just city.”

This year’s recipients include a program offering youth with disabilities and English-language learners hands-on training in sound and multimedia technologies, a computer lab to serve low-income and homeless people, a career-training program in web design and coding for low-income women of color, and a digital literacy curriculum for indigenous artists.

Technology Matching Fund grants are distributed annually as part of the city’s broader Digital Equity Initiative. Funded projects improve connectivity and provide devices and technology support to communities that might not have equitable access. The funded organizations, selected from a pool of 47 applicants, will reach more than 3,000 residents, including immigrants, refugees, homeless residents, seniors, youth, and people with disabilities.

“I have seen this program grow and evolve over the years and I’m looking forward to seeing what this particular group of awardees will accomplish over the next year,” said Seattle Council President Bruce Harrell and chair of the Governance, Equity & Technology Committee. “Improving digital equity has been a major commitment of mine and I am very pleased to see how this funding will address some of our city’s most pressing needs.”

The Technology Matching Fund awards up to $50,000 to non-profit organizations in Seattle for digital-equity projects. City dollars are matched at 50 percent with cash or in-kind contributions of labor, software, hardware, supplies and services. This year’s projects will provide a projected $302,000 in matching resources.

“We want to do our part to level the technology learning field and give all Seattle residents the educational opportunities afforded to them despite access or income level,” said Seattle’s Chief Technology Officer Saad Bashir. “Our goal is to continue to narrow the digital divide.”

The 2019 Technology Matching Fund recipients:

Atlantic Street Center
Computing For All
Dress for Success Seattle
Full Life Care
Indigenouz PlaceMakerz
Jack Straw Foundation
Kin On Health Care Center
Multimedia Resources and Training Institute
Real Change Homeless Empowerment Project
Seattle Neighborhood Group
South Park Information and Resource Center

The Technology Matching Fund was created in 1997 and has since awarded more than $5 million to organizations, funding more than 300 community technology projects. The grants are funded through the city’s broadband franchise agreements.

To learn more about the City of Seattle’s commitment to Digital Equity and the Technology Matching Fund, visit http://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/digital-equity/technology-matching-fund.

Tech Talk Tuesday: Summer webinars offer tips on building to meet demand for broadband

July 23, 2019 by admin

More than half of Seattleites live in apartments, condominiums and townhomes, known as multiple-dwelling-units or MDUs. And permitting records show nearly 81 percent of Seattle’s new housing builds are MDUs. These residents want access to abundant, high-speed broadband. They rate it as the top amenity when considering a place to live – outranking an in-unit washer and dryer.

While today’s connected mindset has changed the housing market, access to competitive, high-speed options is often limited by outdated wiring in older buildings or a lack of technology planning in new construction.

Enter Seattle’s Office of Cable Communications’ Build for Broadband initiative, an awareness and education effort designed to help building owners, property managers and developers navigate the challenges of providing broadband. The initiative includes a series of free summer webinars with a focus on planning for broadband like any other utility during new construction or during renovations of older buildings.

The Office of Cable Communications recently offered two lunchtime webinars with three more planned. Previous topics included broadband technology 101 and infrastructure pathways for MDU broadband. You can listen to recordings of previous webinars here. The next webinar, noon, Thursday, July 25, will cover G.Fast, an emerging technology to increase broadband speeds using existing wiring in older buildings. Get more details here and register here.

Two August webinars will cover wired and wireless options for broadband and offer an overview of the types of common agreements involved with bringing internet services to an MDU. August webinar dates will be announced soon. Sign up here to get webinar updates and other Build for Broadband news.

The Build for Broadband website offers more information, including Tip-6000, Ensuring Broadband Service Access for MDU Development Projects; broadband provider contacts for service to MDUs; and links to other MDU broadband-related resources.

For more information about building for broadband, contact Alice Lawson, broadband and cable program manager, at alice.lawson@seattle.gov or (206) 684-5957.

Alice Lawson is a strategic advisor who’s spent that past decade working on cable, broadband and telecom policy and consumer protection issues. She’s a native Seattleite who’s passionate about supporting city efforts to ensure preparedness for the evolving broadband future, and ensuring the future includes equitable access for all residents.

Tech Talk Tuesday: New Dataset Helps Fuel Parking Choices for Seattle Drivers

June 18, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

One of the most comprehensive parking datasets ever released by a major U.S. city is now available to Seattle residents and visitors to help cut down on time spent searching for a parking spot. This paid parking occupancy data dates back to 2012 and will help drivers make data-driven parking decisions and manage difficult parking situations.

Whether planning a weekend shopping trip to downtown, attending a performance at a popular theater, or sporting event, drivers in Seattle can now figure out the best spots near their destination. All they need to do is search for Paid Parking on the City of Seattle’s Open Data Portal.

This metadata is being made available thanks to a partnership with Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) and Tyler Technologies.

“Our team is proud to support Seattle’s initiative to publish machine-readable parking transaction data for researchers, developers, and the public to use to run analysis, build apps, and find a smarter way for people to park,” said Franklin Williams, president of the Data & Insights Division of Tyler Technologies. “Sharing 1.5 billion rows of data is no small feat. Not only is this the largest dataset on the Seattle open data portal, it’s one of the largest datasets Socrata powers.”

With the adoption of a new parking policy in 2010, a goal was set to have one to two spaces available throughout the day. This plan is monitored with an Annual Paid Parking Study that implements changes to parking rates, hours of operations, and time limits based on information received. This information automatically generates several datasets:

Paid Parking (Last 48 Hours)
Paid Parking (Last 30 days)
Paid Parking (Year to date)
Historical archives by year going back to 2012

Seattle Information Technology’s Open Data and Business Intelligence teams worked through technical and organizational hurdles to make this data available to the public.

“To help realize the power of this valuable dataset, SDOT and Seattle IT have partnered with a graduate research team from the University of Washington’s iSchool to develop a predictive model of parking availability. Leveraging recent developments in big data analytics and modern cloud tooling, this graduate team aims to discover statistically significant signals that can affect parking availability, and ultimately help the City improve public policy and infrastructure that makes parking easier for Seattle drivers,” said Open Data Manager Paul Alley.

Key factors of Seattle’s paid parking system include:

Roughly 11 million parking transactions occur with 12,000 paid spaces on 1,500 block-faces (one side of a street between intersections)
Most areas operate Monday through Saturday between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Some paid areas end at 6 p.m. (about 25%), 10 p.m. (10%), or 4 p.m. There is no paid parking on Sundays

Maximum time limits are 2-hour (65%), 10-hour (8%), 30 minutes (~2%), or 4-hour (25%)
Hourly rates set by paid parking area or sub area and by time of day vary between $.50 per hour and $5.00 per hour
Spaces are not marked so parking is allowed anywhere along a block-face which can create full occupancy when cars have squeezed into spaces or many small cars park on one block
Overnight parking is allowed when parkers purchase time for the following morning

This data set has been reviewed with the City’s Privacy Program. It does not contain any personally identifiable information. There is no vehicle license plates or vehicle registration data. The data set refreshes overnight but there is a 7-day delay in the information. The City is working to make datasets on parking transactions and paid spaces available this year.

Looking for candidates to fill a few key positions as we restructure our department

May 24, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

We’re recruiting for a few key positions in the Seattle Information Technology department (Seattle IT) as we restructure and refocus our efforts to deliver best-in-class, client-focused service. These positions are essential to Seattle Information Technology’s transition. Applicants must clearly state how they meet the required qualifications.

We’re looking for strong candidates to apply for the following roles:

Position: Enterprise Architect

The Enterprise Architect serves as a member of a growing team of Enterprise Architects and reports to the Lead Enterprise Architect within the Service Modernization division of Seattle IT. This role guides the selection of technologies and technology solutions that support expected business outcomes, meet current and future business needs as well as functional and non-functional requirements.

Open until August 13, 2019 at 4 p.m. Full job description and link to apply.

Position: Senior Applications Developer

This position is responsible for the operations and maintenance, incremental enhancements, troubleshooting and repair of Oracle Utilities Applications and integration components, which are built upon Oracle Weblogic Java EE application servers, its integration with Oracle Service Bus (OSB) and Oracle databases, Solaris operating system, and batch job application processes.

Open until August 20, 2019 at 4 p.m. Full job description and link to apply.

Position: Director of Service Modernization (Repost)

The Director of Service Modernization is primarily responsible for strategic leadership and execution of IT modernization processes and functions. This includes defining services, establishing standards and processes and delivery and reporting on service metrics. The Director will translate high-level organization objectives into achievable plans, which should include measuring and analyzing trade-offs to maximize value for operations, customers, and technical teams.

Open continuously. Full job description and link to apply.

Position: IT Applications Manager

This position supervises a team of senior IT staff focused on supporting enterprise and operationally critical applications. This team provides a wide spectrum of services (i.e. designing, developing, integrating, system analysis, implementing and supporting) for Work, Asset and Inventory Management (WAI) applications citywide.

Open until August 27, 2019 at 4 p.m. Full job description and link to apply.

Position: Senior Business Analyst, Concept Consultation (Temporary)

This role supports all aspects of our four-pillar approach to business analysis, including adherence to the BABOK standards, organizational change management, performance metrics based upon balanced scorecard, and continuous process improvement when designing future state.

Open until August 27, 2019 at 4 p.m. Full job description and link to apply.

Tech Talk Tuesday: Vendor Forum Offers Window into City and County Technology Partnerships

May 14, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

2018 vendor forum attendees participate in speed networking session — 2018 Vendor Forum

Seattle Information Technology (Seattle IT) and King County Information Technology (KCIT) are jointly hosting their annual IT Vendor Forum this Thursday, May 16, 2019 at Seattle’s City Hall. This event is held every year to lay the groundwork for successful future partnerships with technology organizations. The goal is to give attendees a chance to learn how to do business with the City of Seattle and King County, hear about upcoming technology projects, and speak with managers one on one. This event also gives Seattle IT and KCIT the chance hear ideas and solutions from our local technology community.

Interested in joining us? Here’s what to expect?

Make sure to bring business cards and wear comfortable shoes. Have a short introduction prepared for the five-minute networking sessions and come with ideas! There is no sign-up for the networking session this year. Project leads will be on hand to speak to you in the following categories: • Collaboration Tools

Automation
Network and Applications Monitoring
Data Analytics
GIS
Project Management
Digital Security
New Technologies

If you have not done business with the City of Seattle or King County before or need to change your status to include the women or minority-owned business designation, you can do it at this event.

Details:

Where: Seattle City Hall Bertha Knight Landes Conference Room

When: Doors open for the morning session at 9:30 a.m. The session runs from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Doors open for the afternoon session at 12:30 p.m. with session at 1 – 3 p.m.

Parking: There is no public parking at City Hall. There are several parking garages in the area. Street parking is limited.

We look forward to seeing you at the 5th Annual Seattle IT/King County IT Vendor Forum! Go to our Vendor Forum page for more information, or to join our Listserv to get updates on the Vendor Forum throughout the year.

Tech Talk Tuesday: Using Data to Improve the Health of Seattle’s Open Data Inventory Paul Alley, Open Data Manager, City of Seattle April 2019

May 7, 2019 by admin

With 30 departments represented across more than 250 open datasets (and counting), the City of Seattle’s Open Data inventory has grown significantly since data.seattle.gov was launched in 2010. While this growth has contributed to the success and reputation of Seattle’s Open Data Program, it also comes with a responsibility to ensure that data consumers can not only find, but trust the accuracy, currency, and privacy of open datasets published on data.seattle.gov.

Like many other open data programs that share their origins with the Federal Government’s launch of data.gov (also in 2010), the first datasets were often spreadsheets uploaded from employees’ hard drives, or one-time “snapshot” of data from source systems. As programs matured, they increasingly relied on more sophisticated ETL and automation tools to extract data directly from transactional databases and OLTP systems. Most recently, open data pipelines and platforms are being integrated into enterprise data architectures so that open data becomes a natural byproduct of an organization’s overall data architecture strategy. This evolution has put open data squarely at the forefront of innovation and near-real-time smart city initiatives and brought with it a heightened need to focus on the “health” and curation of open data inventories.

As open data portals begin to age, and more datasets are added to their inventories with ever-increasing amounts data, datasets can get stale and search results can become cluttered. This ultimately makes it more difficult for data consumers to find the data they’re looking for because top search results might contain outdated or superseded data, or datasets with minimal metadata aren’t properly indexed for searching. This “search noise” has the potential to diminish the overall trust that departments and residents place in open data portals, and to an extent, their government. Needless to say, ignoring the need to keep open data inventories current and clean won’t make these challenges go away.

While Seattle’s Open Data Team is excited about the future of open data and the possibilities to help enable smart city initiatives and near-real-time data flows, they’re also keenly aware that keeping the inventory healthy is vital to maintaining the overall value of the City’s open data inventory.

To help improve and maintain the health of data.seattle.gov, Seattle’s Open Data Team is working with departments and developing analytical tools to improve metadata, remove un-needed datasets from the platform, and reduce the average time between dataset updates. By May 2019, the Open Data team will have met with representatives from over 15 City departments to implement open data action plans which identify opportunities for improving metadata or curating stale or low-value datasets. In just the first four months of 2019, this work has led to a roughly 30% rise in average metadata-completeness across Seattle’s Open Data inventory!

Cleaning up Seattle’s Open Data inventory has been an all-hands-on-deck effort for the Open Data team and its network of Open Data Champions who represent their departments’ open data needs. From developing a data warehouse that enables long term analytics of Seattle’s Open Data inventory, refactoring legacy automation code, and developing analytical self-service dashboards, every member of the Open Data team has played a vital role in not only cleaning up Seattle’s open data inventory but building tools and processes to help ensure the inventory stays healthy for years to come.

As you search for datasets on https://data.seattle.gov, rest assured that Seattle’s Open Data Team is hard at work behind the scenes to ensure you can not only find the dataset you’re looking for, but have confidence in the quality and currency of the underlying data. If you have any questions about Seattle’s Open Data Program, or its efforts to improve the health of the City’s open data inventory, please reach out to Paul Alley or send an email to open.data@seattle.gov.

Paul Alley is the City of Seattle’s Open Data Manager, and has worked in public sector data management and software engineering since 2001. Prior to his current focus on open data architecture and governance, Paul led the development of custom data management and analytics solutions across a variety of domains including university accreditation, remote telemetry, ecosystem monitoring, supply chain logistics, tax calculation, and asset management. Paul’s enjoys bringing his passion for data stewardship to the City of Seattle and helping departments release the city’s most valuable data for public consumption.

Tech Talk Tuesday: City of Seattle’s Ginger Armbruster named one of the Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Award by GovTech Magazine

April 30, 2019 by admin

by Ginger Armbruster

I am honored to receive GovTech’s 2019 Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Award. I am very fortunate to work in a constantly evolving area of technology with talented and dedicated leaders and colleagues. With their support, I was encouraged to lead the effort to develop the City’s Privacy Program, the first municipal privacy program in the nation, with the mission to build and maintain public trust about how the City manages the personal and sensitive information we collect to provide needed services. This award is indicative of what may be achieved in an environment that supports innovation and risk-taking.

I came to the City in 2012 as an intern, while earning my master’s degree and shifting to a career in privacy. As a Scholarship for Service recipient and member of the National Science Foundation’s CyberCorps, my internship led to a love for public service. The City has been a very supportive and nurturing environment. I found mentors throughout the organization who helped me transition to full-time City employment and grow into my current role. I have also enjoyed working with bright and motivated colleagues who, like me, are dedicated to public service and improving how City residents interact with their local government.

The Privacy Program’s team of four employees, myself, Sarah Carrier, Nathan Merrells, and Omari Stringer, continues to mature the Privacy Program as we work to become a model for municipal data privacy. With the support of my City work family, I am confident we will achieve this goal together.

To learn more about the City of Seattle’s Privacy Program, visit seattle.gov/tech.

Tech Talk Tuesday: Bringing Transparency to Our Digital Properties

April 23, 2019 by Michal Perlstein

The reality of providing online content in 2019 is that all visitors to our public website have distinct needs and abilities. As a local government, the City of Seattle is responsible for providing access to digital information and services for all residents. We strive to create an inclusive experience.

In the City’s 2018 Technology Access and Adoption Study, almost one-quarter of the respondents fall into a segment labeled “digitally cautious.” This segment represents residents who have limited their internet use because of concerns about the privacy and security of their online interactions. It’s important to build trust with our residents; with consistent design and processes we can ensure that our website is easily identifiable as belonging to and representing the City of Seattle.

As we identified patterns in the way residents engage with the City online, two concepts merged together:

The need to create and display the rules for interacting in online forums.
The need to provide simple and clear information about how the City of Seattle manages its website and makes design decisions.

With one portal consisting of a few pages, we’re able to describe our human-centered approach to user experience, highlight our commitment to accessibility, introduce our existing digital programs that support the public, and showcase analytics we’ve collected about user behavior.

Image showing the four sections of the "About Our Digital Properties" portal: Content Policies, User Experience, Privacy and Data, and Web Analytics

We decided to make our web analytics publicly available in a dashboard format and illustrate a comprehensive reflection of our residents. When do you visit? How did you get here? What are you doing here? Drawing from the federal government’s analytics page, we reviewed and compared various online dashboards. We selected data points in Google Analytics that told a story about our website visitors with visualizations through a JavaScript-based charting library called Highcharts. We displayed our active web visitors with 10-minute intervals using Google’s superProxy. Finally, we performed an unmoderated usability test to validate that the charts and interactions made sense. The results have informed refinement of the language used in our dashboard and we’ll continue to study reactions for further improvements.

Image showing two data visualizations from our web analytics: Overall City Visitors and How Visitors Get Here

Explore more at https://www.seattle.gov/digital.

About the Digital Services Team

Michal Perlstein leads Digital Services for Seattle IT. The team consists of designers, developers, and producers who continuously innovate on the technology platforms that enable City departments to communicate effectively with the public and fulfill their expectation to access City information on any computer or device. The expertise among the members of the Digital Services Team brings increased consistency, usability, and accessibility to the City’s digital communications.

Seattle Channel receives 17 Northwest Emmy Nominations

April 23, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

Seattle Channel received 17 Northwest Regional Emmy Award nominations from the Northwest Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS). The nominations were announced earlier in April and highlight the quality of two longtime Seattle Channel series, feature magazine show CityStream and arts program Art Zone with Nancy Guppy.

The municipal TV station received nominations in a wide range of program categories including the environment, politics, sports, business/consumer, arts, historic/cultural, human interest, documentary/cultural, informational and program promotion. Staff was also recognized in hosting, photography and editing categories.

“Seattle Channel is honored to be recognized for its work,” said Shannon Gee, Seattle Channel general manager. “Seattle Channel has a deep commitment to share our city’s stories, revealing its diverse culture and history, its artists, activists, community leaders and unsung heroes. I congratulate our dedicated and talented team of producers, hosts, photographers and editors.”

Image of Shannon Gee and Randy Eng announce nominees — Seattle Channel General Manager Shannon Gee and Video Specialist Randy Eng announce nominees at the NATAS Northwest Regional Emmy nomination party at the Triple Door, April 12.

The Northwest Regional Emmy Awards will be announced June 8. The NATAS region includes five states: Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington.

To see a complete list of Seattle Channel’s 17 Emmy nominations log on to the Take 21 blog: https://take21.seattlechannel.org/2019/04/15/seattle-channel-receives-17-northwest-emmy-nominations/

CSR Mobile Workforce app delivers efficiencies to SPU field staff

April 10, 2019 by Rosalind Brazel

Faced with more than 1,200 percent growth in customer reports of illegal dumping and graffiti over four years, Seattle Public Utilities needed to find a way to maintain high levels of customer service for illegal dumping and graffiti reports.

While the Find it, Fix it app was making it easy for customers to report graffiti and illegal dumping, the field team did not have an easy process. Intake staff, Illegal dumping inspectors and Graffiti Rangers lacked real-time connectivity to find problems and communicate with customers. All service requests had to be processed in the office in both the Motorola CSR (customer service request) app and the work order system Maximo before crews headed out into the field. Lacking onsite system connectivity, field crews had no convenient way of learning about new requests, and often missed opportunities to respond to a new request in the neighborhood they were already in because they didn’t learn of it until returning to the office.

The CSR project team of Rodney Baladad, Deanna Wang, and Brandon Bolinger worked with Motorola and Connected Bits to develop a backend solution for field workers to access and resolve requests via mobile application developing the CSR Mobile Workforce. Motorola PremierOne CSR is the core service request tracking and workflow system used city-wide. It is built on cloud technology and hosted on Amazon Web Services and accessed via a web browser. Where before, customers could report issues and request information in person, over the phone, web and the Find it Fix it mobile app, City staff can now respond with real-time updates to requests using the CSR Mobile Workforce app in the field.

In just a year, here’s what one little app accomplished:

SPU has managed 30 percent annual growth in reports with current staff and no reduction in performance
SPU is saving an estimated 35 hours of labor time per week from efficiencies
Seattle residents and visitors live in a cleaner and safer environment as field staff can take immediate action
Customers receive real-time status updates at critical stages of the process including, intake, inspection, and resolution.

The customer service request suite of applications, with the Motorola PremierOne system at its core, empowers customers and City staff to quickly and seamlessly report and respond to a broad range of request types, from initial customer report through real-time response in the field. The FAS CSR team is keen to engage with other City service providers to explore how this functionality can benefit both them and their customer.

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