SAN JOSE, Calif., August 18, 2005 - Cisco Systems, Inc., today announced that the City of Cleveland, Ohio is utilizing its wireless local area networking (WLAN) technology to transform the city's paper-based permitting and inspection workflow to a new on-line, wireless electronic process.
The city's deployment of an electronic permitting program for all city divisions and departments is the first application to take advantage of its new wireless network from Cisco. This highly efficient e-permitting and e-inspection program has allowed city workers to streamline the process of creating, issuing and tracking permits. What used to take days to complete, now takes hours.
The City of Cleveland has deployed Wi-Fi hotspots throughout the city that allows inspectors to connect wirelessly to their internal network. The mobile inspection staff can use the e-permitting and e-inspections applications to upload completed permit and inspection forms, reschedule inspections, and download new assignments from the hotspots. This allows inspectors to remain in the field longer, reduce travel time and the need to return to their offices for new assignments or research. With this new solution, the interdepartmental permit review process is now automated with auditing and tracking capabilities. Mobile city inspectors can access a complete permit/violation history on-line. The City's former paper-based permit and inspection process was labor intensive and time-consuming requiring inspectors to manually check the permit or inspection status.
Cisco is working collaboratively with strategic alliance partners Intel Corporation and IBM, and also OneCleveland, to deliver a proven and robust wireless network solution to the City of Cleveland. Cleveland represents a pilot city for Intel's Digital Communities Initiative announced today. OneCleveland is a nonprofit organization of community organizations providing community-based broadband networking services. This deployment demonstrates the interoperability of Intel® CentrinoTM mobile technology-based wireless clients working seamlessly over a Cisco WLAN infrastructure. Cisco is also working closely with IBM to provide network design and integration services to the City.
"We are continually evaluating innovative technologies to help improve our productivity and efficiency of our city operations," said Chris Ronayne, chief of staff and chief development officer for the City of Cleveland. "We are blending the strengths of three industry leaders for our technology deployment. With Cisco's proven wireless technology, coupled with Intel's advanced mobile technology, and IBM's world-class integration services, we are helping to reduce cycle times and costs associated with the inspection and permitting process, and improve our services to the community."
Cisco's program with The City of Cleveland is part of the company's overall effort to provide state and local governments with highly secure networking solutions to help enable enhanced collaboration and productivity, while reducing operating costs. Cisco is delivering intelligent information networks to help governments around the world facilitate technology-enabled process change to improve service to constituents.
"Cisco's market-leading wireless infrastructure continues to be a key enabling technology for public and private organizations worldwide," said Alan Cohen, senior director of marketing, Wireless Networking Business Unit, Cisco Systems. "The City of Cleveland's innovative application of wireless technology is indicative of a growing trend in government organizations to improve operational efficiencies by empowering their mobile workforce."
OneCleveland Broadband Program
Through this wireless deployment, Cisco is supporting OneCleveland, a nonprofit entity of community organizations providing community-based ultra broadband networking services to educational, governmental, research, arts, cultural, nonprofit and healthcare organizations in greater Cleveland. Goals of this community-based network include: remote security monitoring, first-responder access to real-time data and e-permitting and e-inspections including the ability to issue permits and access a complete permit/violation history on-line. In addition, the network stimulates economic development and enables collaboration among different governmental and community organizations.
