Page 49 - Federal Computer Week, July 2019

CaseStudy
Low-code apps boost emergency services
The Quick Base platform is helping New Orleans 911 deliver custom applications without coding expertise
BY STEPHANIE KANOWITZ
T yrell Morris, executive direc- tor of the Orleans Parish Com- munications District in Loui- siana, is writing applications to make the agency more effective and efficient despite having no software develop- ment training. What’s more, the apps are producing data that is helping poli- cymakers make better, often lifesaving
decisions.
OPCD — the administrative and
operational office for New Orleans 911 services and a consolidated response center that dispatches fire, police and emergency medical responders — is using software-as-a-service tools from low-code vendor Quick Base for its human resources portal. The technol- ogy relies on templates and prebuilt elements to help users design apps
that connect to back-end services. As a result, people can create simple apps quickly without knowing how to code.
On OPCD’s portal, every staff mem- ber has a profile, and Morris and other leaders can document their profession- al certifications and when they expire so those certifications don’t lapse. Quick Base also generates OPCD’s major-offense log every morning — a process that used to take the staff three hours every day and now hap- pens “in the click of a button,” he said. The department publishes the informa- tion on its website to support openness and transparency.
One of the apps that Morris created allows the agency’s 178 staff members to request time off. Now managers can see up to four months out where staff-
ing shortfalls might occur rather than dealing with them on the fly.
Previously, “everything was paper, from how we manage our staff, how we document training, how we request time off,” Morris said. “Of course, paper-based systems are slow, and in our world, slow systems equal loss of life.” Now 90 percent of those paper- based processes are automated, he added.
OPCD has also integrated some emergency functions into Quick Base using open API calls to connect with external resources. Now when some- one calls in to ask for help for a sui- cidal friend, call takers plug the friend’s mobile phone number into Quick Base, which in seconds shows what phone carrier the friend is using. The depart-
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