Archive: Around Town

Tompkins County has been recognized as one of the nation's top digital counties by the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties (NACo). The award identifies best technology practices among U.S. counties nationwide, recognizing leading examples of counties that use technology to improve services and boost efficiencies.

The top-ten ranking for 2017 is the fourth straight year that the County has achieved the Top Digital County status.

Tompkins was recognized for its range of digital shared services initiatives, which share resources among local governments, with the County as the hub. Unlike larger governments, small jurisdictions often do not have the resources to implement and support big technology initiatives, and often the best solution is to pool resources with neighboring counties, the County's application notes.

One major shared project is the Tompkins Shared Services Electronic Records Repository (TSSERR – see http://tompkinscountyny.gov/tsserr), a public shared records management portal from Laserfiche for which Tompkins County is the data custodian." Projected cost savings from the project through 2018 is $2.9 million. Tompkins County's next big initiative will be to use a $604,000 New York State Government Efficiency Grant to expand the enterprise content management system to neighboring Cortland County, and in turn will store their backup records in Cortland's data center.

"All governments should be looking to shared services and collaboration to eliminate redundancy, create cost-savings for taxpayers, establish relationships with municipal partners, and make government transparent," Tompkins County Clerk Maureen Reynolds said. "Technology-based service delivery is also what the public is expecting today. "

For 2017, Tompkins County tied for tenth position in the up to 150,000 population category. More information on this year's Digital Counties program may be found at www.govtech.com/dc/articles/Digital-Counties-Survey-2017-Results.html.

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