July 2006

Virginia Town and City

e-Government Solutions Enhance Service to Communities

THE CORPORATE PAGE

Town and city governments are continually improving efficiency and constituent

services by implementing solutions with the help of electronic government, better

known as eGovernment or simply eGov. Once viewed as a cutting-edge trend, many

local governments now accept the use of electronic technology, including the Internet,

as a necessity. In fact, the latest e-Gov Survey conducted by the International City/County Management Association (ICMA) found that 29 percent of agencies

responding already offered one of the most popular e-Gov services – online request
management – and 62 percent planned to offer the service. 

Local governments that embrace the use of eGov do so to streamline or otherwise improve business practices, especially interaction with citizens.  Years of using e-Gov systems already has proven that Web-based technology is effective at helping keep up with increasing demands for public services.  The systems have proven to be sound investments for communities, whether they are experiencing population growth or are coping with declining budgets, or both.

Timmons Group is the exclusive VA provider of RequestPartner, the Citizen Request Management system used by agencies nationwide and selected for recommendation by ICMA and a panel of cities and counties through a competitive RFP process.

e-Gov benefits and options

Cities and towns in Virginia can gain some or all of the following benefits of implementing e-Gov solutions, 24-hours a day, seven days a week:
• Improving access to information and services online
• More timely customer service
• Improving efficiency and staff productivity
• Improving cross-departmental communication
• Making use of reporting tool that support management decisions
• Reducing operating costs.

Many Virginia municipalities already have created internal systems to provide these benefits in the same way they independently built their Geographic Information Systems.  For those municipalities seeking to invest in mature, proven technology, it often makes sense to outsource the implementation and maintenance of these tasks to a trusted professional team. Especially important is the team’s willingness and ability to tailor the implementation to address the community’s unique needs, schedules and budgets.

Timmons Group, best known in Virginia for engineering and information technology services, is also a leading provider of e-Gov solutions focused on:
• Citizen Request Management (CRM);
• Community Development and Permitting; and
• Parks and Recreation.

Having helped Virginia towns, cities and counties for years to improve planning processes, build and maintain infrastructure and implement effective GIS solutions, Timmons Group understands community needs. Through the RequestPartner
system, Timmons offers the leading CRM tool. ReservePartner is the accompanying
online class registration and facility reservation tool. And CommunityDevelopmentPartner is a highly advanced, yet flexible, solution for permitting, planning and code enforcement, with added modules for online permitting and GIS interactive mapping features. All of these solutions include self-configurable capabilities and are both user-friendly and affordable for agencies of all sizes. 

These GovPartner systems, provided exclusively by Timmons Group, are built on state-of-the-art Web technology, and designed around a central database. The applications communicate across platforms and operating systems, making it easy to integrate e-Government with other existing information systems. Furthermore, these solutions can leverage the power of existing GIS to create a uniquely local solution, and can be deployed on a locality’s intranet/internet network environment, or as a secure, hosted Web service.

Contact: Timothy M. Davey, PE, at 804/200-6954 or tim.davey@timmons.com. Timmons Group, a VML sustaining member, is an engineering, planning, infrastructure and information technology services firm offering the leading e-Gov systems for Virginia cities, counties and towns. GovPartner, an e-Government software firm, is an International City/County Management Association corporate
partner. Visit their Web site at www. govpartner.com.

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