The Best of Connect 2023

Tyler Podcast Episode 83, Transcript

Our Tyler Technologies podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Each episode highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give the podcast a listen today and subscribe.

Episode Summary

On this special episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, we are revisiting some of our favorite conversations from Connect 2023 and looking ahead with a lot of excitement to our upcoming Connect 2024 user conference, which will be in Indianapolis this coming May. For more info and to register now, go to www.tylertech.com/connect.

Everyone on today’s show is a Tyler Excellence Award winner, which was given to them for the amazing projects they’ve implemented in their cities, towns, and counties. From system modernization to accessible and equitable data processes, we let these TEA experts detail the transformative ways Tyler has helped improve where they live and work.

Guests:

• Sara Worley, Economic Development Director for Goochland County, Virginia
• Greg Overtoom, Assistant Director of Enterprise Applications for Bloomington, Indiana
• Pamela Clark, Business Systems Specialist for Prosper, Texas
• Cindy Burke, Senior Director of Data Science, SANDAG
• Liang Tian, Principal, Data Science, Management & Analytics, SANDAG

Transcript

Sara Worley: I would say probably the biggest benefit is the transparency into the permitting, process whereas before everything was done on paper, and it just kinda went into the black hole, if you will, of the community development department. But now they can act create a password and and log on to the system and be able to track their permit as it goes through the process.

Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, it's the Tyler Tech podcast. Your source for insightful conversations with thought leaders addressing the pressing issues in our communities.

I'm Josh Henderson, and I'm on the corporate marketing team here at Tyler. Thanks for joining us. In each episode, we dive into the essential topics, shaping our society, and shed light on the individuals, places, and technologies empowering the public sector.

If you like what you hear, please consider giving us a five rating in review, subscribing on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and recommending the show to others.

We here at Tyler have some exciting news to share to kick things off. Early registration is now open for our annual user conference Connect 2024.

In the New Year, we'll be in Indianapolis from May nineteenth to May 22nd, and we'll have some additional info for you later in today's episode. So, stay tuned.

In celebration, we're bringing you a very special podcast where we'll be sharing some of our favorite conversations with a few of our Tyler Excellence Award winners from the 2023 Connect conference in San Antonio. We hope you enjoy.

Our first Tyler Excellence Award winner we'll hear from is Sara Worley, Sara is the Economic Development Director for Goochland County, Virginia, and she sat down with us in San Antonio to discuss the county's TEA-winning software modernization project.

Sara Worley: I was the project manager for the EP&L implementation for Goochland County. And so what that was was, basically, a community development software upgrade. We were using an extremely antiquated system that did not have any online access. There was no credit card availability.

There was no transparency for citizens or for contractors. And so, we really saw the need to upgrade and to move kind of into, the modern era with our permitting system. And just to give you some examples, like for inspections contractors would have to call in and leave a voicemail on a inspection line. Our staff would have to download that voice mail, manually write it out on an inspection, enter it into the system, print out a copy paper, give to our inspectors, they would go out the next day, do the inspection, leave a copy paper, bring it back, have to enter it back into the system, whereas now, everything is online. And so, contractors can set up their own portal, passwords can log in, can apply online, pay online, see their permit status, request inspections.

Our staff basically does a review of the inspection, makes sure can be gone, on the schedule for the next day. Inspectors have iPads.

They go out. They do the inspection. The contractor gets the inspection immediately. And then there's no paper that has to be printed and no kind of input that has to go back into the system. So, it it's it's really been a huge time savings and improvement. And that's just one example of some of the efficiencies with using EP&L.

I would say probably the biggest benefit is the transparency into the permitting process, whereas before everything was done on paper, and it just kind of went into the black whole, if you will, of the community development department. But now they can actually create a password and log on to the system and be able to track their permit as it goes through the process. So, they can see who's doing their reviews and what their comments are in real time, when their permits issued, and it's been, super helpful for them, just to have that, that view into the permitting system.

Josh Henderson: From permits to public data. Our next TEA winner Greg Overtoom, Assistant Director of Enterprise Applications for Bloomington, Indiana, details how the city's workforce has streamlined their data.

Greg Overtoom: Before we had people like, you know, like in public, we're exploring data other, their system, creating a report and uploading it, and they don't have to do that anymore. We made that a live data stream. So, it's reduced. And we had another data set that was actually nine data sets and once we evaluated it, we were like, this is all the same data just cut nine different ways. So, we made one data stream and then we created visualizations that showed the nine different ways. And so now it's all automated. It's refreshed every night, and it's live up to date data.

There's no question about where it comes from or about how current it is. And so that's been huge. So, we've had several departments who have just lost hours of tedious work that they used to have to do to create these reports. So now we connect live to the data set.

So, it's always up to date, and people can view it in a tabular format, or they can pull down the shape file and they can view it in their GIS software, which was a capability we didn't have. We were doing a lot of custom request fulfillment where people would call us, say I need a map, I need a dataset and now I just basically point them to Data & Insights and say, here you go. Let us know if you have any questions or can help out. It's made it much easier for people to find information because now they don't have to sort through six different versions to find it.

There's one version of the truth. The other thing that they that's given them is visualization tools. Data & Insights has built-in visualization capabilities so people can build their own right in the system and and we let citizens, establish their own accounts, then go in and create their own visualizations. They can even like submit them to us and say, hey, I'd like you to publish this.

And if we feel it's it's good quality and and represents the data, we will work with them to publish it. And it just has streamlined the the whole process.

Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We'll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Jade Champion: I hope you're enjoying listening to this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast. My name is Jay Champion, and I'm hanging this week with Breanna Case to chat about Tyler's annual user conference, Tyler Connect. Breanna, tell us about Connect 2024. Where's the location and what can we expect that this annual user conference?

Breanna Case: Hey, Jade. This year, Tyler Connect is heading back to Indianapolis, Indiana, May 19th through 22nd, 2024. Early registration is now open. This is an exclusive Tyler client conference where you can receive product training and network with thousands of industry peers.

Last year was our largest conference to date with almost 6,000 people in attendance. We're excited to bring our clients back to Indy.

Jade Champion: I'm so excited for this conference Indy's home to six thriving culture districts. It's known for its iconic motor speedway and 500-mile race.

It's one of the most walkable cities in the U.S., and it's named the number one convention city in America by USA Today.

Breanna Case: Yes. It is the perfect place to host Tyler 2024. Be sure to take advantage of early registration to save $250. Visit tylertech.com/connect and sign up for email communications so you can be the first to hear about all the exciting plans we have for this year's conference.

Jade Champion: Get hype and check out the video in our show notes to imagine yourself in Indy for Tyler Connect 2024. Now let's get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.

Josh Henderson: Much like Greg and Bloomington, our next award winner, Pamela Clark, Business Systems Specialist for the town of Prosper, Texas, talks to us about the importance of continuous improvement and best practices for tech implementation.

Pamela Clark: I've always really enjoyed having an understanding of a process from beginning to end. And then now being in a role where I actually get to design and create those processes, it's very rewarding for me. And it's rewarding getting to work with Tyler, because Tyler is a a very fluid software that is constantly improving. I mean, we went live in December and we've already gone through another upgrade, and it's already resolved some of the issues that we had from day one. So, I know our staff is is always looking at that because our building inspectors will come in and they recognize that there wasn't a capability yesterday that becomes available the very next week. It's it's just we recognize that there's there's areas that where you can improve, and then all of a sudden they're just improved.

Josh Henderson: Our final TEA-winners are two members of SANDAG, the San Diego Association of Governments, Senior Director of Data Science Cindy Burke, and Liang Tian, Principal, Data Science, Management and Analytics. This SANDAG duo really knows the ins and outs of making data equitable and accessible.

Cindy Burke: It probably started about four or five years ago. We started trying to look at a plan of excellence and really trying to say, how are data governance procedures? How do we we have so much data at SANDAG, are we making the best use of our data? Are we ensuring it's valid and reliable?

Are we making sure that there's not opportunities to introduce error? And how do we make it accessible to people? We want to make data equitable, easily accessible to people. So, in a number of ways, since we launched the open data portal.

We've been using it internally to make sure we have a data library that we know what's the most recent version of the data we're using. And then we're trying to really push it out there on the open data portal as fast as we can, allowing people to play with the data. People who call in and do requests for data may not know what to ask for. They may not know until they get their hands in the data.

Not everyone is equally savvy with data. So being able to have really nice visualizations and easy to use systems to see what data is out there, we’re hoping we can offer new insights to anybody who gets on there.

You know, I think it was so important to, really take advantage of the service Tyler was able to provide from the very beginning because you've worked with so many other entities around the country so you could bring those lessons learned to us.

Liang Tian: We have, a lot of staff, right? So right now, we have this consolidated and centralized repository. So we can all go on this platform and then working with the data, creative visualizations, and publish our research findings. So that's kind of the biggest benefit. And also, for the, like, outside facing, outside of SANDAG, because we can use that tool to use as a communication venue to communicate with local jurisdictions.

Because those are the, the members we serve as well. So, they can use this and then to make a better informed and data driven up, a decision for the region.

Josh Henderson: And that's it for today's episode. Remember, early registration is now open for Connect 2024 in Indianapolis, and you do not want to miss this. You can register right now at tylertech.com/connect and save $250 with early bird pricing until March 22nd, 2024.

Tyler Technologies creates solutions made exclusively for the public sector and has experts with government experience ready to support you on this journey. We hope you are excited about what the future holds and will reach out to us at podcast @tylertech.com to connect with a subject matter expert if you'd like to learn more. And if you'd like to learn more about our Tyler Excellence Award winners, check out the show notes for more resources.

For Tyler Technologies, I'm Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining the Tyler Tech podcast.