Still, Wright has a prolonged proceed to go to update an IT infrastructure that connects a $2.7 billion county government.
“Anyone who knows me knows that we am a initial to acknowledge that we have not been rival in terms of IT,” Wright said. “We were really reactionary. We are operative to put a county on a turn personification margin with Montgomery, Fairfax and D.C.,” Wright said.
Wright, 39, a lifelong Prince George’s resident, won unanimous capitulation Tuesday from a County Council to rigourously take assign of a $33 million Office of Information Technology and Communications. He earns $145,000 annually.
Wright had been on a pursuit given Jan as a behaving record chief, replacing Tanya Gott, a holdover from a Jack B. Johnson administration.
Brad Seamon, a county’s arch executive officer, lauded Wright’s proceed to a job.
“I have been . . . energized by his leadership,” pronounced Seamon, a tip assistance to County Executive Rushern L. Baker III (D). “He has always voiced a certainty in a ability to get a arms around a formidable challenge, and we are now in a routine of doing that.”
Wright oversees 69 employees and contingency coordinate with a county’s several agencies, all of that need to promulgate with one another and share data.
One of his vital projects this year was a origination of a 311 center, an online and write call-in complement that county residents use to place requests for service, board complaints and obtain information. Baker had betrothed when he ran for bureau that he would emanate a 311 system, something that Montgomery County and a District have put in place.
Prince George’s 311 online core non-stop Jul 1, and a call core on Oct. 1 in a groundwork of a county administration building in Upper Marlboro. It has logged some-more than 19,000 calls and some-more than 10,000 online requests.
And Wright and his staff are personification pivotal roles in speeding adult a constrictive and buying processes, by substantiating a database with a list of prequalified contractors. If a executive is on a list and is awarded a contract, a new complement fast provides information about a association that a county needs to emanate a contract, potentially shortening delays by weeks.
“One of a biggest complaints we get is that it takes too prolonged to emanate a contract,” Wright said.
Two vital hurdles sojourn on Wright’s to-do list. Wright, who perceived a bachelor’s grade in business administration from a University of Maryland, is formulation to set adult a data-collection room to make certain that online information is being collected in a format that can be review and accepted by many agencies, as good as a public.
His other plan is an renovate of a county’s mercantile information systems for payroll, timecards, grants and other information related to payments. Fairfax and Montgomery have redone their systems for tracking information and disbursing supports in new years, spending as most as $40 million. Wright says he thinks he can get it finished for reduction since of a state of a economy. “I consider we can come in underneath $30 million,” he said.
Wright pronounced a county wants to emanate online elements such as interactive maps so residents and businesses can inspect information for specific communities.
The users would be means to demeanour adult information about open propagandize exam scores, occurrence of crime, skill values, county services, circuitously parks and other information.
The information also will assistance surprise process decisions and bill proposals.
“The thought is to have all a information in one place so that we can report, brand trends and request resources to delineate a budgets,” he said. “It will give us a good feel where problems are and will concede us to use information to make some-more sensitive decisions.”
That data-collection complement is vicious to Baker’s Transforming Neighborhoods Initiative, begun progressing this year. It targets high-crime areas and tries to step adult supervision and amicable services, as good as urge peculiarity of life by improved coordinating rabble pick-up and enormous down on problems such as bootleg dumping.
“It can change a proceed we do business,” Wright said. “It is some-more formidable than it sounds. The information is in so many opposite places, in so many opposite conditions.”