1st Cabarrus County, N.C.
Cabarrus County, N.C., rose to the top of the list this year after taking second place in 2024. Amid funding constraints and shifting state and federal demands, the county is prioritizing transparency, cybersecurity and operational efficiency.
The county focused on using what it already has to meet technology goals. For example, strategic use of Microsoft G5 licensing helped consolidate platforms and eliminate redundant tools, saving $126,000. A consolidated VPN system, implemented without new expenditures, saved an additional $40,000 and increased connection speeds by 10 times for public safety teams. And a new dedicated security zone created by repurposing existing infrastructure improved cybersecurity and saved $1.5 million.
Internally, automation played a major role in driving efficiency. The eCourts OCR Scanning project reduced case processing time in child support services, saving staff eight hours per week. The county’s API center, modeled after industry tools, enabled faster integration across systems. The center supported several critical applications, including an automated vehicle reservation platform that cut dispatch wait times by more than 50 percent.
2nd Pitt County, N.C.
Expanding access to broadband, ever a high priority for public officials, was a driving force for Pitt County in the last year. The county has reduced the number of unserved locations from more than 7,000 to fewer than 560 through partnerships with area Internet service providers and the North Carolina Department of Information Technology (NCDIT) Completing Access to Broadband program. The county also launched Pitt Stop, a pilot program to bring high-speed Internet and other valuable resources to the underserved town of Bethel. Through a Digital Champion grant from NCDIT, the county put funds towards computer and broadband costs for Bethel, improving residents’ access to telehealth, employment, education and other services.
Cybersecurity has also been a priority for Pitt County. Early last year, the North Carolina National Guard performed a cybersecurity assessment for the county. The results have helped the county increase compliance with various cybersecurity standards including National Institute of Standards and Technology and CIS Security Controls, as well as CJIS and HIPAA. A new managed security solution, for example, addressed more than 30 percent of the assessment’s findings. Another new solution, a workstation management system, has improved cybersecurity and resiliency by ensuring county workstations are up to date and meeting all security requirements.
Pitt County also launched a new website this year, with an emphasis on improving the user experience. Surveys, focus groups and analytics were used to gather constituent feedback during the redesign process. Accessibility was also a key focus, with efforts such as ensuring that documents contain tags and metadata to make them accessible to visually impaired users. And an AI-powered chatbot was introduced early this year through a partnership with Polimorphic. Users can ask the chatbot questions to get information, rather than having to search the website themselves, and the bot is automatically updated when content is added or altered on the site.
3rd Stafford County, Va.
Third-place Stafford County, Va., is in the midst of a slate of modernization projects for internal systems and public-facing tools. Last December, the county wrapped the evaluation of RFP responses for a new ERP system and is now poised to replace this critical backbone of government technology. The county also recently automated the payroll process for Fire and Rescue employees and is upgrading its SCADA system for utilities.
Network infrastructure improvements ushered in a tenfold increase in speed and much-improved reliability. In addition, seven new fiber broadband lines in the county are powering high-speed Internet in parks, building the necessary foundation for more connected facilities in the future.
Complementing earlier work to benchmark IT salaries within the broader market, the county has invested in a tool that unifies all the services that employees regularly use in one unified interface. The upgrade makes it easier for staff to get questions answered and locate key resources. Also in the staffing arena, Stafford County added a cybersecurity compliance engineer, improving its ability to address risk and compliance issues.
Stafford County continues to add to its award-winning virtual ambassador program, AskBlu. Blu, a cartoon great blue heron that serves as the county’s digital mascot, represents his real-world counterpart, common in the county. The program folds a chatbot, mobile app, 311 system, virtual citizen academy, and text messaging service into a single experience, which has saved nearly 400 staff hours and reduced resident wait times by nearly 200 hours.
4th Onslow County, N.C.
With efforts underway to increase cross-department collaboration, boost resilience and improve efficiency, Onslow County moves up one place in this year’s survey. In data-driven work, to support a countywide effort to define its core values, the IT department used Power Apps to compile, analyze and streamline staff responses to a survey asking how they incorporate those core values in their work. The department reports that this solution did in 15 minutes what would have previously been months of work. IT is also building data dashboards for some county departments, helping to both track KPIs and to allow those agencies to more easily tell the story of their accomplishments.
A major effort this year was also the launch of a new mass notification system, Alert Onslow, on the Regroup platform, replacing an eight-year-old system that was rarely updated. The new platform is more user-friendly and enables better communication with citizens via phone, text and email, and is available in multiple languages. Using funds from the Completing Access to Broadband program through the North Carolina Department of Information Technology, Onslow County is working with the state to get broadband to its unserved and underserved areas, acknowledging the importance of high-speed Internet for quality of life and long-term economic success.
In summer 2024, the county IT migrated its identity management system to a new platform for a $40,000 cost savings. The new solution also incorporates single sign-on and multifactor authentication, making it more secure than its predecessor.
5th Charlotte County, Fla.
This county of slightly more than 206,000 residents lands in fifth place, balancing hurricane recovery efforts and a population rise that is driving an increased demand for housing and services, with continuous innovation and a real focus on addressing cyber risks. Charlotte County officials upgraded encryption strength to National Institute of Standards and Technology levels and implemented quantum-resistant cryptography, along with improved firewalls and VPNs, in work that remains ongoing.
Other notable initiatives included a partnership last summer between Community Development and the Clerk of the Circuit Court and County Comptroller to smooth a key permitting element – the submission process for notarized notices of commencement. Officials integrated Accela and e-Record to let customers upload notarized documents directly, saving many hours and establishing a single point of contact.
County IT teamed with other departments to use ArcGIS Survey123 to improve assessments of damage from hurricanes Debby, Helene and Milton – developing custom survey apps and workflows and doing reports with real-time data. Making the best use of GIS technology avoided unnecessary software buys and enabled faster federal reporting. Dashboards and online maps helped communication, resource allocation and recovery tracking, while redesigned damage assessment tags with QR codes and safety information helped residents get permits.
6th Berkeley County, S.C.
Like so many local governments across the country, Berkeley County, S.C., is faced with staffing and funding challenges, and so it has embraced a strategy of proactively developing internal applications to save long term. In the last year (and recent years), it has had several wins this way: An agenda management app allows staff to submit items for council consideration while allowing councilmembers to comment and review documents for that item; 911 apps shuffle nonemergency animal control calls and tow operator reporting from dispatchers to separate systems; a QR code-based app allows for online boat reservations and waitlisting.
Broader system work includes integrating ERP data in the Water and Sanitation Department to automate much of the process of disconnecting and reconnecting water service, replacing spreadsheet-based processes while providing better transparency to customers and speeding up the work of field technicians. The county has also added new and redundant network infrastructure to improve reliability and efficiency, as well as beefed up its cybersecurity with policy moves such as shifting customer invoices to a secure document library along with enhancing multifactor authentication with a dedicated authenticator app.
Berkeley County is planning to comprehensively update its website, extending and adding functionality for building and event reservations, form submissions, resident communication and more.
7th Clay County, Fla.
Given the operational pressures of federal and state policies transferring new burdens onto local governments, Clay County, Fla., jumped at the chance to put emerging technologies to use and find efficiencies. The Management Information Services (MIS) Department saw the potential in generative AI and convened a group of its own staff, as well as people from human resources, grants, legal and communications departments, to experiment with ChatGPT. As a result, they found time savings in tasks like summarizing long policy documents; generating rough drafts of training materials, communications or reports; and making large financial and legal documents digestible. MIS also took care to develop an internal AI use policy with respect to data privacy, transparency and public records compliance.
MIS further invested in key positions last year, hiring a dedicated IT project manager to help the county outfit several new facilities with IT infrastructure, as well as the county’s first dedicated cybersecurity specialist, who conducted a countywide tabletop exercise. In addition to these staffing initiatives, Clay County MIS crossed off a long list of modernization projects: upgrading all of the county’s phones to a cloud-based system; launching a web-based electronic bidding and vendor management system to streamline the procurement process; and implementing new software tools for grant management, facility reservation, permitting, digital payments, garbage-cart leasing, animal services donations, GIS and other government services.
8th Davidson County, N.C.
Davidson County, N.C., just south of both Greensboro and Winston-Salem, finished eighth in its population category for this year’s survey. Among the county's most notable tech efforts in the past 12 months were some much-needed infrastructure improvements that stand to save taxpayer money in the years to come. Specifically, Davidson County’s central IT shop replaced virtual servers in three locations, which it estimates will save $930,000 in annual support fees. In another nifty bit of responsible resource management, it also replaced end-of-life firewalls by using money from a grant.
Meanwhile, the county invested in a pair of new tech systems to help its internal staff. One of these was virtual reality-based. Dubbed the Fire Extinguisher Augmented Reality system, it gave users a chance to train on fire safety in a realistic environment, without having to put them in harm's way. In addition, Davidson’s Social Services Department also got a new system for case/document management, which its employees can use to create electronic cases while uploading supporting documentation.
Finally, in public-facing work, a website redesign gave the site a new appearance, as well as a new GIS hub with a growth dashboard, fire protection ratings and more.
Click here to see all winners in this year's survey.
