Andrew “Pete” Peterson, City Of Oakland Chief Information Officer, gets rightful credit.
Oakland, CA – The City of Oakland is proud to announce that it is a recipient of the CIO 100 Award for its OAKAPPS portal, a collection of web-based applications designed to easily connect residents with Oakland City services. The CIO 100 Award recognizes enterprise excellence in business technology and is awarded to IT organizations both public and private throughout the country for driving value through innovation in technology. Past winners have included major corporations like Amazon, Kaiser, Walt Disney, Accenture, and the City of Boston.
OAKAPPS allows residents to conveniently access many City services such as reporting rental disputes through the Rent Adjustment Program, filing a complaint regarding potential police misconduct to the Community Police Review Agency, and calculating the cost of business permits for a new or expanding business. The portal also provides online access to City services like registration for City Parks, Recreation & Youth Development services and reporting non-emergency issues through the OAK311 portal.
OAKAPPS facilitates a more modern approach for interaction between the City and the population it serves. The goal is to expand the breadth of City services available online with a conscious effort to bridge the digital divide and provide increasingly meaningful services for the City’s most vulnerable populations.
“We are thrilled with the recognition for the City of Oakland,” said Andrew “Pete” Peterson, Chief Information Officer. “Our goal is to make residents’ lives easier by bringing City services to their digital device of choice. We know that for many residents, coming down to City Hall is a huge barrier to receiving services. With the OAKAPPS portal, we are attempting to bring the City to them.”
Oakland’s Information Technology Department used the application development platform OutSystems to build these applications in house – delivering eight apps in 12 months and saving the City an estimated $2 million in developer and vendor fees.
The City expects to release additional apps in the near term including a Homeless Services app, Volunteer Management app, Business Assistance app, and National Night Out app, to name a few.
“We are just getting started,” said Peterson. “As a government organization, success for us is about reaching out to our residents and understanding their needs. This certainly is at the core of every application that we build. We are really excited to see how our digital transformation will positively impact our community.”