Transportation Accountability Project Category Open Government Initiatives State of Illinois Department of Transportation 2300 S. Dirksen Parkway Springfield, IL 62764
B. Executive Summary Illinois has recently experienced a culture where information is often difficult to obtain, taxpayer dollars are hard to trace to specific projects and issues affecting the well being of the general public go unseen. Governor Pat Quinn and Secretary of Transportation, Gary Hannig are committed to changing that culture by openly communicating what we do and how we do it in a transparent and timely manner. Illinois is a large benefactor of the Federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) monies and has assumed a responsibility to account for how that money is being spent. The Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) has put the Governor s open government edict into action by launching several web sites that make detailed bridge and transportation contract information available to other government agencies, businesses and the general public. These sites are also part of an open government umbrella of sites the content of which combines to roll up to various Federal reporting sites. One of these Federal sites is the recovery.gov site, which provides access to Recovery Act data. The Bridge Information site, the Construction Dashboard site, the ARRA Construction site and the IDOT ARRA site provide information on what transportation projects are happening in the state. They provide project details such as: start dates, estimated completion dates, legislative districts, costs, contract numbers, contractors and much more. IDOT has also integrated this information with their mapping applications so that users may search by text interface or by Bing or Google map-type interface. The information can also be grouped and reviewed by transportation, legislative or geographic boundaries. IDOT s bridge information site provides detailed structure information that wasn t available to the public before. In view of significant bridge tragedies in other states over the past few years, IDOT leadership felt that the bridge structure information needs to be shared with the public, as well as, other government agencies and contractors. The information is updated on a nightly basis. Having detailed information available 24x7x365 in a self help format allows other government agencies, businesses and the general public to pull information when they need it. This reduces the delays associated with direct information requests of IDOT and frees up personnel to perform other duties as needed. Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 1 of 6
C. Description of The Project The project began with a need to build some web pages and integrate them into the overall open government vision. The content needs to educate the public by providing information on how IDOT performs their role in expediting safe travel throughout the State of Illinois. Content must also address bridge structure and construction projects and be available in a self service format so other government agencies, contractors/businesses and the citizenry can access the information when they need it. The web pages need to be easy to navigate using a standard text or a visual search and display interface. The workload significantly increased by the award of $6,921,580,000 under Section 1512 of the Recovery Act and the scope of the project expanded. Since taxpayer money is being spent, the public wants and needs to see how and when this money is being spent. State of Illinois officials, the Governor and even the U.S. President are requesting full and transparent project disclosure to include: contract awardees, start date, estimated completion date, cost, and how much has been paid to date. Creating the technology to produce a new system is only half the challenge. The other half is providing an interface easily accessible and understood by the public. The vernacular used in describing data within the agency is often highly technical and not intuitive to the public. We have leveraged internal resources to produce reports that are made available to the public via the web in a self-service format. We have been able to re-deploy staff resources previously dedicated to pulling reports. IDOT was able to combine several of its strengths; including: a mature geographic information system (GIS); a strong web-based presence; and long established relationships with industry partners; to build a system that can span multiple state data sources to gather and present information in simple, easy-to-use web pages. Issue or Problem Context IDOT needed to find a way to share information on bridges, construction projects and ARRA projects in a timely, efficient and transparent manner. The decision had to also consider the longevity of the data that was going to be shared with the public and make the appropriate investment in each project. Since the ARRA initiative is relatively short-term and many of our projects span several years, there was a need to balance the allocation of staff resources. IDOT decided to share information with other government agencies, businesses, contractors and the general public through self-service web sites available over the internet on a 24x7x365 basis. There were 4 distinct sites created as part of this initiative. The first site is the bridge information site which provides information on all the bridges contained in the state s bridge inventory system. The second site is the construction dashboard site which provides status information about construction contracts throughout the state. The third site is the ARRA construction site which allows the user to search for specific ARRA construction projects or groups of ARRA construction projects with the ability to access detailed project information such as: completion status (time/money), contract adjustments and number of direct jobs created by the project. The fourth and final site is the IDOT ARRA site which provides the ability Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 2 of 6
to look at state ARRA charts and reports and search for ARRA related transportation projects. These four functional web sites feed into several other state and Federal programs. At the state level, these sites are part of recovery.illinois.gov and the Governor s open and transparent government initiative to design sites in functional areas so the content is more easily accessible. The sites are basically search and display without any complex site navigation issues to negotiate. ARRA contract vendors also use the ARRA site to fulfill their monthly reporting requirement, including a tally of the number of jobs created on each project. At the Federal level, the sites roll up to recovery.gov and other open government sites. Assessment and Decision Process: In determining the present course of action, IDOT had several strategies that it could have pursued. The easiest tactical approach would have been to continue its present strategy of manually handling information requests from other agencies, contractors and the public. While this would have been acceptable in the short term, the number of ARRA projects is continually growing. The sheer volume of information requests could overwhelm the existing staff and cause large project delays. Increasing the staff levels was not a viable option. A second strategy could have been to simply add the new searches to existing pages. This approach would have been the easiest for IDOT in terms of technology and getting a solution out the door quickly. Once the user located where they needed to search, the search output would have been pretty close to what they have. The biggest drawback to this approach was that it would have been easier for themselves, but not their customers other government agencies, businesses/contractors and the general public. This would also be a deviation from the Governor s open government philosophy to design searches with the user in mind. To align with the other agencies and the Governor s office, the chosen strategy created independent sites that each addressed a functional area. This detailed information is on the web 24x7x365 in a self help format that is easily searched by the user. Solution A web framework was designed and implemented, so that all web sites would be able to use a technology standard that could be replicated as needed. Best practices and patterns were used when possible so the application would be easier to understand and maintain by the IT staff. Connectivity to the data repositories was made through a set of data acquisition layer calls used throughout the framework. The business logic is also abstracted into a common set of classes that is inherited by the web site associated code. The web site presentation uses both a simple text search where users select parameters from a pre-determined list of choices and a visual map-based search similar to Bing or Google maps. Information is displayed in a simple, easy to read tabular format by itself or on a map. The data content can be easily grouped by transportation, legislative or geographic boundaries. Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 3 of 6
The projects were managed by Project Management Institute (PMI) certified project managers assigned by the IDOT Project Management Office (PMO). All projects follow the Bureau of Information Processing guidelines for development and utilize the common web framework when possible. The project management lifecycle follows the standard PMI IPECC (initiation, planning, executing, controlling/monitoring & closing) phases through the duration of the project. The projects were staffed by a combination of full time employees and contractual resources. The project lifecycle is waterfall in theory yet cyclic in nature. End user requirements are gathered by the business analyst and go to the technical architect who leads the team in creating the initial design and end user review(s). The development begins and is tested/reviewed at functional break points. The design is modified as needed after each functional break review and development resumes until the project is complete. Length of Time in Operation/Metrics The web sites were initially released internally in the central office and throughout the districts on the department s Intranet. After successful use by the department, the sites are made available to the public over the Internet. The first site went live to the public in February of 2009 and the last was made available at the end of August 2009. The sites average between 6,500 and 7,000 hits/month. This is a significant increase over the number of inquiries that were manually being serviced before the web sites were brought on line. The data made available through these web sites has never been readily available before. Previously, agencies, businesses and citizens had to contact IDOT and specifically request it. These self service sites put information at the finger tips of people who need it and it is accessible from anywhere with an internet connection -- an engineering workstation in the office, a laptop in the field or a smart phone right on site. Leverage and Transferability The website availability coincides with other electronic document imaging projects currently underway. IDOT is actively automating paper processes with electronic scanning, indexing, storage and web-based, visual search and display processes. This allows documents that were traditionally paper-based to be easily stored, located and shared via an electronic medium. IDOT also leveraged its geographic information system (GIS) and utilized its long tradition in mapping and cartography. The department has been producing roadway maps since the early 1910s. It was natural to create a map based visual search and display interface to locate bridges and transportation projects throughout the state. Almost 60% of the site hits come via the map/visual search interface. Communications plan to educate users and/or promote awareness and adoption The web sites were publicized in press releases and media campaigns to inform other government agencies, businesses, contractors/sub contractors and the citizenry. IDOT also socialized the web sites in a community outreach to existing contacts in other agencies and businesses, as well as, with contractors with existing relationships. Staff was asked to conduct a word of mouth campaign among family and friends. Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 4 of 6
D. Significance As President Obama has advocated and our Governor has urged, open government is something that happens as a byproduct of concrete efforts made. Illinois Governor Quinn advocates a presumption of disclosure as we consider whether or not to expose data to the Internet. This is a significant change in philosophy and is counter intuitive to what has been engrained in the long history of State government. These web sites have created a genuine opportunity for meaningful and practical civil engagement and have added a level of public confidence in government. They provide information that has never before been so openly available. Through the ARRA related sites, taxpayers can track money spent and real jobs created. The ARRA site data feeds the State recovery.illinois.gov site and the Federal recovery.gov site which puts DOT in alignment with State and Federal ARRA reporting requirements. E. Benefit of the Project It is often times very challenging to quantify projects of a non-economic nature. However, the ability to provide this information electronically in a self help format 24/7/365 has resulted in a reduction in total information requests. Information requests were typically quite involved and required manual reviews of forms, drawings and documents. Servicing a request formerly took an hour or more to complete. Assuming only 5% of the monthly website hits would have been a request for information, we can assume savings of approximately 300 hours of work per month. One of the primary benefits of the project is the ability to provide information openly and share with other agencies, businesses and the citizenry. The sites encourage collaboration between the other state agencies, IDOT and private sector partners, as the data is readily available to all involved decision makers. Having up-to-date information early in the decision cycle normally makes for a better educated decision. By making the DOT data easier to access and work with, IDOT hopes to encourage the novel and productive use of the data to help solve some key infrastructure problems related to safety, congestion management and economic development. We firmly believe that by making our data/information readily available we can provide opportunities for safer travel in Illinois. In 2009, Illinois experienced the lowest number of fatalities in over nine decades. We are convinced that access to more data has been a contributing factor. This is the first step at IDOT in making data available in a collaborative effort. We are confident that coordinated problem solving efforts between IDOT, the public and our business partners may lead to solutions that might not have otherwise been identified. We have taken a first step towards opening the data sources within our jurisdiction. IDOT is currently in the development stages of a new effort similar to the Federal government s Data.gov website. Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 5 of 6
The websites were developed using a combination of employees and contract resources with a cost to the State of approximately $113,300. Based on the average number of hits over the last eight months in production, the state estimates it will save the equivalent work of two full-time employees annually. This is not a reduction to the current IDOT staffing level, but a redeployment. There were no layoffs due to this initiative. These savings allowed the state to realize its return on investment within the first 18 months of operation. This is good news, but the real importance of making this data available to the public is to make the way state government does business every day more transparent. Opening the books of state government requires a substantial cultural and technical change. Transparency, collaboration and citizen participation are core tenants of the State of Illinois open government plan and these websites are tactically aligned with these core strategies. The exposed data also helps promote efficiency and effectiveness across the state agencies and its business partners, resulting in a lasting change to the way state government works. Transportation Accountability Project State of Illinois Page 6 of 6