The IT Department has accomplished much this past year. The following is a summary, although not a complete listing, of some of the interesting projects.

Recorder of Deeds

In January of 2004, Recorder of Deeds, James Zugay, began a comprehensive search for a computerization system that would be easy to use and allow for efficient recording and detailed searching. After review of over a dozen software systems, the County selected Aptitude Solutions for use of their Oncore recording system.

In February of 2006, the system was implemented and has revolutionized the way documents are recorded in Dauphin County . Prior to this change, documents were hand-clocked, hand-stamped, photocopied, and placed in books on shelves. The only way a document could be seen was to physically review the book or microfilm in the Recorder's Office and then make a photocopy.

Now documents are immediately scanned and digitized for their images to be on computers in the office as well as by Internet access. Typically, the document is returned to the customer within 48 hours.

As a result, recording and researching documents at the Recorder of Deeds has become easier and more convenient. In addition, over 4.2 million historical images have been scanned to provide an index and library of documents that date back to 1979.

This system provides a benefit to the professional searcher, as well as the citizens of Dauphin County who may have an occasion to print a copy of a deed, mortgage, or satisfaction of a mortgage. No longer is there a need to drive to the Courthouse to find the proper book in which the document is located. Now that document is available at a customer's home or office.

Finally, this project was funded from the County Records Improvement Fund, or ACT 8, which was established to support development and improvement of records management activities. There were no property-tax funds used as this fund is created by user fees charged by the Recorder of Deeds for the usage of the office.

Register of Wills

In September of 2005 the Register of Wills began a comprehensive search to identify and implement a computerized system that would be of benefit to the county and its citizens as well as the internal Register of Wills office. A Request-For-Proposal was designed and supplied to various vendors within the state. Upon review of these documents and numerous vendor demonstrations, LANDEX, with a proven history throughout the state of Pennsylvania , was selected as the system of choice.

The "Register of Wills Image and Information System" is a fully integrated windows-based, client/server system that meets the needs and requirements of the Register of Wills as well the Clerk of the Orphans Court. The application consists of numerous modules including Document recording, Docket Management, Accounting, various Indexing Functions as well as Public Access and Retrieval of documents.

This system was implemented in May of 2006 and the transition from the previous "green screen"/ "main-frame" application has been very successful. New functionality such as the ability to meet state electronic reporting requirements is an example of additional benefits and savings that have been realized. The various documents that are created by the system as well as documents that pass through the office are now electronically scanned, digitized and stored.

Future enhancements are being explored including "back-scanning" of the numerous documents that have been processed prior to this implementation and are currently stored in books and placed on shelves. Additionally, the public access component of this system providing Internet accessibility is being planned which will provide electronic access to this information for all citizens.

From a financial standpoint, this system was funded by the County Records Improvement Fund (ACT 8) thus no General Fund dollars were necessary for this implementation.

Public Defender

During the 2006 budget process, the County Commissioners declared that a priority should be given to operational improvements within the Public Defender's Department with attention given to technology advancements. This past year has seen the successful result of that direction with the implementation of a complete case management system and an automated personnel scheduling program.

"Legal Edge" is software that administers all client information and activity and is available to all clerical and legal staff. Information is now available on-line and eliminates the need to do extensive searching with the paper files. Additionally, the software is integrated into a comprehensive imaging module that incorporates file documents into the basic case information.

Med-Media, a local software company, assisted with the development of a customized scheduling program that provides immediate information about an attorney's current responsibility as well as future caseloads. Clerical staff is now able to better respond to an attorneys schedule and more efficiently schedule upcoming events.

The benefits of adopting advanced technology in this office are starting to be realized and improved efficiencies are expected to continue as staff becomes fully adjusted to the new work process.

Web Site Redevelopment

After much planning and effort during 2006, a new County web site was introduced in early 2007. This project was the result of extensive research and input from the local business community, citizens and County staff.

andCulture, formerly D2 Media, was engaged to assist in the design of the site. During the project, they demonstrated their professional expertise as they built a new framework that improved navigation and reorganized the massive amount of County information. They also delivered an enterprise content management system that will distribute web maintenance and update activities across multiple editors giving non-technical staff an ability to build specific content for public display.

Some key points about the improved site are as follows:

• Focus on visual presentation with many new pictures of the County. The goal is to showcase the beauty of our region and demonstrate why it is a great place to live and work.
  
• Better web experience for all users. There was much effort in planning and design to better represent the workings of county government and provide an easier method to get information. The menu categories on the left-hand toolbar are represented in a way to give a simple but complete picture of the County.
  
• Current news and events have been highlighted and focused to be able to more efficiently communicate important information to the citizens of Dauphin County.
  
• Implementation of current backend technology that allows the county to provide new features on an ongoing basis.

eGovernment solutions are a new and exciting way of improving service delivery to our constituents. This website is not a finished product but an evolving solution that more effectively communicates information to our citizens. Look for many new and exciting changes in this area over the next year.

Adult Probation: Mobility Project

Recognizing that the County workforce is becoming more mobile and that technology is needed to support the operations of these employees, IT started an ambitious and innovative program with the Adult Probation Department. In collaboration with Hewlett-Packard, Tablet computers were acquired to replace standard desktop computers for the Probation officers. These computers not only provide traditional case information but replace manual paper logbooks used to capture case notes. This information is now captured and stored electronically protecting the data from loss or corruption. Data access is now available allowing the officers to spend more time in the field servicing their clients and reducing the time in the office.

Additional benefits have been realized that were not seen at the onset of the project. One of those is that supervisors now have immediate access to case notes allowing them to monitor activity without removing the paper logbooks from the officer's hands and taking them out of action. The result is that the probation and parole department has another tool to help keep pace with the growing workload.

This project was recently featured in a national magazine by Hewlett-Packard. A copy of that article is included at the end of this report.

IT Infrastructure Upgrade

Server Infrastructure

In late 2005, the Dauphin County IT department evaluated several vendors as part of an overall data center upgrade project before deciding on Hewlett-Packard Corporation as the lead equipment supplier. This process effectively eliminated the need for any additional County purchases of legacy mainframe based technology. The result has been a reduction of costs in data center technology while providing a more flexible and agile infrastructure for the County to keep pace with the ever-changing industry-wide technical environment.

An HP BladeSystem is an integrated, consolidated infrastructure that can include computer nodes such as servers or desktops, storage, networking, and power, all virtualized and automated through a common management framework.

The value of an HP BladeSystem:

• Lower acquisition costs
  
  With as few as eight blade servers, HP BladeSystems with a Fibre Channel connection are more than 22 percent less expensive than comparable rack-mounted infrastructures.
  
• Operational cost savings
  
  Reduce initial setup time from 12 hours to 30 minutes per server, and implement changes, updates, and reconfigurations from 4 hours to 30 minutes.
  
• Reductions in cable complexity
  
  Reduce cabling by 87 percent and save $100 to $350 per 10/100 network port. Also, eliminate the need for KVM switches and cables through Advanced Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) management capability over IP, saving up to an additional $25,000 for each rack.
  
• Data center space savings
  
  Reduce the amount of space required in the data center by more than 50 percent, supporting as many as 96 blades in the same space as 42 1U rack-mounted servers. Greater density frees rack space for technologies such as SANs that can reduce needed storage capacity by as much as 50 percent and extend space savings.
  
• More efficient power usage
  
  Save over $6,000 per rack of 32 servers through reduced power consumption and lower power distribution costs.
  
• Improving power and cooling efficiency
  
  Today, many data centers are not equipped to supply adequate power to a large farm of servers. This is a reality of the future that every enterprise will face and must plan for, regardless of whether a blade or traditional rack-mounted architecture is employed. Power consumption in the data center is also increasing due to higher performance and speed of next-generation processors. Given these circumstances, HP BladeSystems were designed specifically to scale to meet future power demands, and offer the best short- and long-term power advantages over competitors.
  
  New technologies like 68-watt AMD Opteron processors, Intel Xeon processors, and HP power management tools that can monitor and dynamically adjust the power consumption can significantly reduce the power required and heat generated. Unlike standard rack-mounted servers or other blade server designs, which have dual power supplies in each server or blade enclosure, HP BladeSystems incorporate a centralized power subsystem at the bottom of the rack, which provides better monitoring and reliability. In addition, this design reduces the cooling requirements compared to rack mounted servers, where individual server power supplies demand more cooling capacity from top to bottom of the rack. Instead, the bottom-based power subsystem (along with the reduction of cables throughout the rack) enables better airflow through the rack, and contains the heat of the power supplies at the bottom of the rack, where cooler air generally resides in a data center. The consolidated power subsystem of BladeSystems reduces power distribution costs by eliminating the need for PDUs in the enclosure, and by reducing the need for multiple power feeds in each enclosure, which alone can save up to an additional $3,000 per rack.
  
• Improved high availability at lower cost
  
  The integrated infrastructure eliminates downtime that occurs due to various causes, such as cable, server, storage, and switch failures; human configuration errors; and software, power, and cooling problems. In addition, time to repair these problems can also be significantly reduced, cutting both planned and unplanned downtime.

SAN Infrastructure

To compliment the HP BladeSystem, Dauphin County chose an HP EVA8000 Storage Area Network (SAN) system to address our expanding data storage needs. This system provides us with the following feature and benefits.

• Reduce costs and complexity
  
  The EVA8000 combined with HP StorageWorks Command View software offers simplicity, security and automation of any SAN and lowers total-cost-of-ownership (TCO). The EVA provides online LUN growth, easy dynamic capacity expansion, instantaneous data replication and optimized performance.
  
• Adapts real time
  
  New controllers with 2Gb and 4Gb connectivity, double the cache mirroring ports (from early generations) for improved I/O performance. Outstanding virtualization ensures all the disks in the array are used more efficiently, no stranded capacity, keeping them all busier and eliminating bottlenecks that lower performance.
  
• Online expansion and tiered storage
  
  Add physical disks online quickly to increase capacity without restrictions typically associated with capacity expansion on traditional arrays. Mix High Performance and FATA drives on the same enclosure for maximum efficiency/cost savings.
  
• Investment protection
  
  State-of-the-art virtualization improves performance, disk usage, and allows for easy dynamic expansion. New disks are added to groups and the controller automatically distributes data and removes potential hot spots.
  
• High capacity
  
  Supports up to 84TB in a single cabinet and up to 120TB with an expansion cabinet of versatile storage capacity, with any combination of high performance Fibre Channel and/or low cost (500GB) FATA drives while supporting all Vraid types.

Security: Video Surveillance

In a combined effort, staff from Information Technology and the County's Prison has implemented a new state-of-the-art video surveillance system to provide improved physical security and monitoring capabilities at the Prison. This functionality has now also been extended to the Schaffner Youth Detention Center .

This technology captures video images from a large number of cameras and stores it into a single data repository providing the ability to retrieve these images on demand from any authorized computer. Investment was made into disk storage that allows for 30 days of video recording from all of the capture devices with the ability to archive any relevant footage that may be required for documented incidents.

This type of system has endless possibilities and can be expanded throughout the County to improve security operations. Having the ability to archive video footage from numerous sources into a single database with easy retrieval and duplication

Geographic Information Systems

Significant accomplishments occurred during 2006 as Dauphin County GIS focused on creating data, in addition to providing new products and services to county departments. New data layers included: public & private schools, school districts, libraries, medical facilities, daycares, senior centers, recycling facilities, magisterial district boundaries and offices locations .

A voter district study was created as a reference document to identify areas for potential districting changes. Polling places and voter districts were mapped, and then linked to officials' contact information, census information and voter registration numbers for each district .

A second project included the creation of a layer identifying the county's forested areas. Along with a customized United States Department of Agriculture soil layer, the forest layer is helping the Department of Tax Assessment develop a more accurate and efficient Clean & Green calculation process.

After widespread flooding in June, Dauphin County GIS began mapping the county's flood-prone areas and identifying potentially affected facilities. The first phase of this project mapped the areas along the Susquehanna River flooded by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Dauphin County GIS also took part in several efforts to increase coordination between county and regional GIS functions. Partners include: Dauphin County EMA , Tri-County Regional Planning, and the South Central PA Counter-Terrorism Task Force GIS working group.

In 2007, Dauphin County GIS has already begun to broaden its customer base to include more county departments and municipalities. As a part of this effort, a web mapping application has been launched that allows users easy access to this vital information. Continued data collection will support the expanded services and help to create an extensive database of county geographic data.

Document Management

For many years, improving document management strategies has been an issue for county government. The advancement of imaging technology coupled with the fact that these solutions have become much more cost-effective has allowed the County to aggressively pursue new opportunities in this area.

The benefits of imaging are far-reaching and include reduction in office space and storage costs, improved security of documents that prevent misfiling or theft, simultaneous and instant access to stored documents which can improve departmental workflow problems and assist in the delivery of public services, and possible revenue streams from public customers who are willing to pay fees for this increased service.

The implementation of an automated civil court system with an integrated imaging module a few years ago provided the County with the foundation for this far-reaching technology platform. Using an enterprise document management system, OnBase, IT has been able to develop new solutions to realize some of the benefits listed above.

One of the solutions has been the integration of OnBase with a legacy-based application system for the Children & Youth Department. Now, client data can easily be married to scan documents to provide an online file folder to office workers. Now space reductions for storage can occur along with improved operational workflow as employees have access to information instantaneously.

Many new and exciting projects are planned in this area as it has application in every department of County government.