| Study site |
|
Photograph courtesy Seattle Municipal Archives,
item no. 130912 |
Our field studies will be done with the collaboration
of the City of
Seattle's Public Utilities. We are very pleased to have the opportunity to
work with the city on this project.The City of Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) has been
chosen as the
research site because of the expected
utility and relevancy of the results for fieldwork automation
through
fully mobile and wirelessly connected (FMWC)
applications. The City of Seattle was one of the earliest adopters
of DG concepts. With the advent of
sufficiently robust mobile Information and
Communication Technology (ICT),
the City began deploying and
using mobile applications in its field
operations. Consequently,
with
increased opportunity for wireless connectivity of mobile
devices, the City
completed the deployment of
first-generation (1G) FMWC applicationsin its police and
emergency-response
departments. |
Also, SPU was among the early adopters of FMWC in its Water Operations group, where
fieldworker crews were
equipped with FMWC-enabled ruggedized laptops, cellular data phones, and
Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs).
Via the FMWC devices, crews access the stationary backend systems for
information access and
entry, application service, and batched input (upload) and output
(download). By and large, and except for
interface accommodation, the use of stationary backend systems was expanded
to FMWC devices without
adding ambience-specific applications. Still, numerous measured and
intangible benefits have been
accounted for since the introduction of those 1G-FMWC applications to the
SPU Water Operations field
crews in 2002—such as cost reductions, productivity increases, work process
streamlining, increase in
data integrity and quality, decrease in performing redundant tasks, reduced
support requirements for field
crews, increased customer satisfaction, reduced number of task delays,
speedup in decision making, and
increased connectedness among others.
The use of mobile and wireless technologies in Seattle has been noted elsewhere, for
instance in Chicago.
Read the article from Chicago Business here (requires registration).
Links to:
Literature:
To read more about the City of Seattle and digital government, the following
articles are relevant:
- Ho, A. T.-k. (2002). Reinventing local governments and the e-government
initiative. Public Administration Review, (62)4, 434-444.
- Kaylor, C., Deshazo, R. and Van Eck, D. (2002). Gauging e-government: A
report on implementing services among American cities. Government
Information Quarterly, (18)4 , 293-307.
Funded by the National Science Foundation
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