May Technology Work Group Notes

Posted By: Ian Feldman June 21, 2021

Good morning,

The following topics were covered at the May UASI Technology Work Group meeting.

  • Gabe Lavine from the City of Sugar Land showed how their office uses Microsoft Teams for internal communications during incidents.
    • They use channels within Teams for communications between executive leadership, as well as for incident-specific communications within the City.
    • Teams allows you to connect other Microsoft apps to the channel, enabling things like resource request processing, tracking tasks and assignments, and storing files.
    • Items in Teams get saved into the organization’s SharePoint system for future access.
    • Sugar Land has also linked their ESRI Dashboard into Teams in two ways. Users can view the dashboard and interact with it from within Teams, and they use Power Automate to take data from the dashboard (like submissions via Survey123) and create automatic posts in specific Teams channels (for example, to share significant events).
    • The ESRI dashboard is also linked to forms in Survey123 for collecting ICS 214 information, use of vehicles, and use of equipment for requesting reimbursement; resulting data is visible in Teams as a spreadsheet.
    • Microsoft Teams supports access by external stakeholders, so this system is not limited solely to City of Sugar Land employees.
    • Sugar Land still uses WebEOC for communications and resource requests that go outside of the City (to Fort Bend County, the State, CMOC, etc.).
  • The technology administrators provided updates.
    • Megan Arthur sent a survey out to AlertFM contacts to determine whether a need exists to renew that license once our current term ends. A survey related to i-INFO use will be sent out shortly.
    • WebEOC was upgraded to Version 9.2; so far no issues have been identified. A drill was held at the start of May for administrators and Sentinels, and drills will now continue on a monthly basis.
    • The WebEOC PAR was sent to members of this group on Tuesday. Please review it and send comments to Lach and Ian by close of business on Friday 4 June 2021. They will compile them and send them back to Pacheco.
    • The GIS Work Group met with ESRI to learn more about how other UASIs are sharing GIS data between jurisdictions. The regional Enterprise Portal is online, and they are working with ESRI to enable a smooth connection with ArcGIS Online.
    • Haystax will be adding a new assessment soon, which is designed to be simple to complete while containing triggers to flag assets that need a more in-depth follow-up. There will also be site assessment training in July or August (both classroom and in-person field work).
  • Justin Jurek advised the group that he is beginning a process to determine whether Jetty is meeting our regional needs for Emergency Public Information coordination, as well as for its other uses (i.e. the UASI website).
    • Initially, work will be done to identify current gaps. This will involve reviewing past gap analyses as well as speaking with current stakeholders, including Jetty points of contact within the region and other public information SMEs.
    • Subsequent work will examine whether Jetty meets the identified needs, and if not, what other options are available that could better address the gaps.
    • Jetty is not going away at the moment, but we want to ensure that we are matching our grant-funded projects up with our regional needs.
    • For more information or to participate in the process, email justin.jurek@fortbendcountytx.gov.
  • The Technology One-Pagers will be sent to relevant admins for final review soon, and then will be posted to the website.
  • The next meeting will be Thursday 24 June 2021 at 1:00pm via HSIN Connect. If you have a technology you would like to see a demo of at this meeting, please email Ian or Lach.

Thanks!

Lach and Ian