Westchester County is being recognized for its innovative use of technology and increased efficiency by being selected to receive two Best Practices awards from the New York State Forum for the 2009-2010 year.

The applications being recognized are the WESTARM program that manages the storage of inactive public records and the Spatial Analysis for Public Health, which helps the county respond to a public health event by giving employees access to data needed in an emergency. Both programs were developed by the Department of Information Technology (DoIT).

The Forum, part of the Rockefeller Institute of Government, is a network of public officials and state government organizations that focuses on information management, policy, and technology.  Awards are given to a limited number of local governments each year to recognize their efforts to improve governmental services.

The Westchester Archives & Records Management (WESTARM) program was developed to help the Records Center better manage all inactive public records stored for the county’s 60+ departments and agencies. The program, which replaced an inaccurate manual system, improved document accountability and increased efficiency in warehouse management. 
 
The Spatial Analysis for Public Health is a first-of-its-kind intranet application developed by Geographic Information System staff in collaboration with the Health Department that gives employees immediate access to data that may be needed during an emergency.  The new service, available to staff in remote offices, allows users to map locations from a text file of street addresses or coordinates and find critical facilities such as schools, hospitals, shelters, senior centers, and municipal offices. The application also includes data related to land use and features, as well as roads, structures, street addresses, census tracts and aerial photos.
 
Awards will be officially presented Sept. 13 in Albany. More information is available at the NYS Forum website