Cross-Departmental Collaboration with ProjectDox
The real value of ProjectDox is that it can help people work together better - on just about anything.
Despite network connectivity and data standards, information silos are a common problem for nearly all jurisdictions.
ProjectDox can help transcend these operational silos by providing a secure, virtual workspace that can be set up quickly for specific projects and process prototyping.
ProjectDox excels as an ePlan submission and review solution for governments that want to streamline and go paperless. What makes ProjectDox so valuable is its ability to merge structured and unstructured data together and make it usable for people who need to work together - for citizen customers and the Building, Planning and other department personnel that participate in the business process.
This same ability can be applied to any number of collaboration scenarios between departments. As the figure above illustrates, government departments typically – despite network connectivity and potential access to data, document files and media – operate as information silos. Data managers and IT departments often bristle at the suggestion of granting access to servers and network segments because of the impending security risks and credential management issues that follow. Desktops in disparate departments do not always have the same software applications or versions available. Also, a situation may call for workflow creation, but a process may be not fully defined or ready for permanent deployment.
To support creative thinking in your workgroup and among your departments – as well as time-bound projects - ProjectDox functions as project information management hub that can be used to transcend operational silos, quickly providing a secure and easy-to-use virtual workspace where selected files, notes and comments can be shared.
For instance, a large county Parks and Recreation department uses a ProjectDox implementation (the same that Planning and Development uses for ePlan submission and review) to share photographs and drawings with the Facilities Maintenance (Public Works) department in order to help manage multiple improvement projects. Another jurisdiction plans to use their ProjectDox system as a tool to prototype emergency and disaster response processes that need to be tested in a variety of conditions prior to approval. A third, major Western city uses ProjectDox to manage a city-sponsored construction project that involves 2D drawings as well as 3D models from multiple contractors and suppliers. In these and other scenarios, ProjectDox provides an ideal, value-added collaboration environment for departments and outside agencies.
ProjectDox is a powerful and flexible collaboration platform that, when deployed in your jurisdiction, can support a wide spectrum of uses and will scale to support your collective imagination.
