City of Boston, MA
Project Overview
The City of Boston’s Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) engaged DELTAWRX to develop a comprehensive Strategic Technology and Implementation Plan to update and replace its aging public safety information systems for its Police, Fire, and Emergency Medical Services Departments. Key tasks included conducting benchmarking and market trend studies, assessing the current technology environment and business needs, and creating a comprehensive strategic and implementation plan and an accompanying plan for managing change. After completing our initial engagement, the City subsequently retained DELTAWRX to lead the RFP development, proposal evaluation and selection, contract negotiations and implementation phases.
Client Profile
The City of Boston is home to more than 600,000 residents. The Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) supports all agencies in the City including more than 2,000 sworn officers in BPD, 1,500+ personnel in BFD and 400+ EMS personnel.
Client Challenges
While DoIT spearheaded the effort to provide public safety agencies in the City with modern tools to perform their jobs more efficiently, improve situational awareness and the safety of first responders, anticipated changes in business processes and the user experience resulting from the implementation of new technology were met with skepticism and resistance by system end users.
DELTAWRX Solutions
DELTAWRX created a change management plan that documented key business processes, identified process changes that would occur with the implementation of the new system and developed an action plan to address these changes.Stakeholder groups were deeply involved in the process and gained a knowledge base preparing them for evaluating potential systems against desired changes. DELTAWRX also worked with DoIT and the public safety agencies to create an IT support plan that included a delineation of agency and central IT responsibilities, develop detailed job descriptions and identify gaps in current skills sets.
Benefit to Client
Based on DELTAWRX’s recommendations, the City established a multi-year funding plan in excess of $15,000,000, created a new support organization dedicated to shared public safety systems, replaced the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system used by the Police, Fire and Emergency Medical Services Departments, better leveraged an existing Fire Records System and implemented a new Police Records Management System (RMS).