Office of Innovation: Interdepartmental Jobs Board

The Challenge

Even before the issuance of the Governor's "Hunker down, Hoosiers" Executive stay-at-home Order on March 25, 2020, the workload of many City departments was shifting dramatically. Human Resources (HR) was experiencing an increased workload as Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requests for assistance were ramping up. The Parks Department, however, was seeing a potentially decreased workload as many of its in-person services were halted by the order. How might we better distribute the work to be done across all departments instead of mandating that the work of one department be done only by its own team?

The Idea

After a meeting with the Indiana University Crisis Technology Innovation Lab (CTIL), Fire Chief Jason Moore contacted Innovation Director Devta Kidd with the challenge and suggested that she connect with his CTIL colleagues who were contemplating a Jobs Board type of tool. After discussing the potential need, CTIL member William Liao suggested that the City use a technology with which the departments were already familiar - Trello - to advertise discrete tasks, indicate when a task had been claimed, and also indicate when a task had been completed. William even created a prototype Jobs Board within a matter of minutes and shared it with the City of Bloomington. Within days, the Jobs Board was tested by a number of departments, iterated, and finalized. Instructions including screenshots were developed for those unfamiliar with Trello. 

The project took less than 3 days from idea inception to full implementation.

The Cost

Zero cash outlay - Trello is a free tool unless you want to get really fancy with it. The project took ~ 15 minutes of William's time, ~ an hour of discussion with ITS, and ~ 8 hours of Devta's time.

The Benefit

Within one hour of deployment, a task from HR had been posted and picked up by someone in the Parks Department. At the time of this writing, tasks within the Legal Department and the Controller's Office were being scoped for posting to the Board. Because this tool leveraged technology with which the departments were already familiar, adoption was quick and easy. This tool was a quick win that broke down departmental silos and promoted a spirit of "we're all in this together!"

Metadata

Department(s): Innovation, Fire, Information and Technology Services, Office of the Mayor

Department Point(s) of Contact: Devta Kidd, Jason Moore, Rick Dietz, Chris England, Celeste Wolfinger

Partners: Indiana University Crisis Technology Innovation Lab

Partner Point of Contact: William Liao

Type of Innovation: Technical/Software, Process Improvement, Brand New Service 

Date Implemented: March 2020