A mark on the digital footprint of New York City
Online NYC Zoning Resolution
“Our experience with digital transformation of a critical line of business at NYC Planning was not easy and its success certainly cannot be left to chance. Many factors contributed to this successful digital transformation including strong organizational commitments, talented technical expertise, beyond a doubt qualitative research and a lot of planning!”
I would like to share with you my experience leading the digital transformation of the business process for managing and disseminating NYC’s zoning resolution. For a bit of context, the Zoning Resolution (ZR) text is the legal instrument to regulate and establish limits on acceptable use of land and buildings in NYC. The first ZR adopted in 1916, grew from a simple 14-page pamphlet to an unwieldy, 1700+ page double-column book that inadequately realizes a 21st Century vision of an NYC for all residents.
The double-column ZR book (fondly known as Moses tablet in some circles) were sold for approximately $700 per book; often to engineering, legal firms and land-use developers. Once amendments to Zoning Resolution are passed by the City Council, it is up to Department of Building to enforce it as part of its permitting and inspection processes. Meanwhile most New Yorkers were not able to easily access the latest Zoning Resolution.
In the summer of 2017, City Planning (with OMB permission) decided that we needed to go digital! The agency wanted to go digital for many reasons — cost, transparency, and timely updates to name a few. With the decision to go digital, the agency also decided to stop producing hard copy of NYC Zoning Resolution in December 2017; this in itself is a cost savings for the agency.
Unlike previous attempts where PDF version of zoning code were simply posted on DCP’s website, the agency this time was seeking a digital system for managing the zoning code and the internal approval life cycle, which in turn results in a more efficient process for publishing zoning code.
We had until December 2018 to figure out a path to a new technology solution for delivering this digital tool and more importantly influence the processes for better digital service overall. The following six steps were critical to successfully rolling out this digital transformation initiative:
- Establishing strong executive support for this work and ensure there is a clear understanding of objectives
- Understanding the business process and problems that needed solving
- Defining business proposition and metrics for success
- Understanding the technology market for Zoning Resolution platforms in the United States
- Deciding on technology path and implementation
- Continuous reflection and refinement
Establishing strong executive support for this work and ensure there is a clear understanding of objectives
The Executive office strongly supported the initiative — the goals in this phase were to inform and educate the executive management on the initial assumptions, engagement plans including identifying key stakeholders. It was important to validate the initial assumptions about goals and identify key areas of considerations before engagement. We were also strongly encouraged to look beyond the zoning resolution production but at other related processes and supporting technology platform within the Zoning Division. Executive approval and the support of senior management was critical, especially when initiatives like this impact business processes. This support was very much needed when we ran into technology and organizational impediments.
It is important to note that during the entire project, we ensured that we found the right communication means to keep the executive support going and stayed aligned with goals.
Understanding the business process and problems that needed solving
In the fall of 2017, IT and Zoning experts at City Planning started looking in-depth at the current processes for generating the print of NYC Zoning Resolution (NYC ZR), and other related products, such as Zoning Handbook, Database History of NYC ZR. It was very helpful to look at the end-to-end processes and seeing the connections to find opportunities to streamline them. Our research quickly determined that certain legacy products and processes could easily be streamlined and digitized leading to improved efficiency and productivity.
Defining business proposition and metrics for success
We started with very high expectations and believed that there is a product which we can adopt that is — intuitive to use, flexible to customize and brings efficiency to the zoning update process. Through surveys and various web analytics tools (WebTrends, Google Analytics and Web Survey), we got insight about Zoning Resolution audience. We learned that we were dealing with an elite of professionals (lawyers, architects, planners), and the real estate community, but we were missing a great deal of people who can benefit from better service. City Planning was committed to providing a better service with Zoning Resolution.
We arrived at few refined business goals and objectives for the Digital Zoning Resolution:
- Increase accessibility and timely availability of current zoning resolutions to land use practitioners (lawyers, engineers, general contractor), development government agencies (DOB, BSA, LPR, DOT, City Hall etc)
- Improve transparency to the general public
- Eliminate production and sale of the hard copy zoning resolution book
- Streamline internal process for managing zoning resolution content including mapping to the city council workflow
We also established metrics for success:
- Monthly online zoning resolution website traffic vs. existing PDF site
- Cost savings (cost to operate new system vs. production cost for zoning resolution booklets)
- Time to update and disseminate latest zoning code
- Ease of use
Understanding the technology market for Zoning Resolution platforms
Between October and December 2017, IT Department at DCP embarked on an extensive market research to discover high level requirements for a modern online Zoning Resolution platform for NYC and custom off-the-shelf software (COTS) platform. The goal of the market research was to quickly identify and procure an off-the-shelf product matching our vision and needs.
From our assessment of 35+ municipalities and 12+ COTS products, we realized the Online ZR COTS platforms were not easy to use and not mobile-friendly. In addition, the pricing model of the COTS product were often subscription-based and based on update frequency. These factors didn’t align well with our stated goals of timely and cost-effective updates as well as the ease of use success criteria.
Deciding on technology path and implementation
We pivot into a custom build solution based on Content Management System (CMS) since most already has a content approval process and easy to use interface for editors. We conducted a market comparison of major CMS — Drupal, WordPress, Joomla to name a few to determine which platform will be best for our future digital platform. Ultimately, we picked Drupal 8 platform because of the following differentials — wide use in security sensitive environments, its API first approach allowing for extensibility, ease to use interface for editors and mobile friendliness due to out of the box responsiveness. There were other factors we considered as well for making the technology selection: cost, feature sets, ability to deploy workflows that allows for review and approval of changes by designated roles, and history of successful deployments within NYC government.
In order to validate the viability of the technology solution and its potential, we started to prepare for a proof of concept. We built the prototype as proof of concept and committed to 4 weeks build of a “Beta” version of NYC’s Digital ZR deployed in May 2018. We engaged with a digital services contractor (through a micro-purchase contract) who was very passionate about what he does and helped us turn our vision into something real that we all can see and experience. His design-first methodology really connected with our partners and other stakeholder in the agency.
The next step in our iterative evolution of the NYC’s Digital ZR site was to migrate zoning resolution content to the “Beta” version of the platform — 14 articles, 96 chapters, more than 4,000 pages in Microsoft Word that were manually formatted. The challenge was making sure we didn’t inadvertently introduce new meaning and interpretation into the zoning resolution by wrongly formatting the text; a subtle tab goes a long way in changing the interpretation of the regulation.
The last phase before we released the product was to extensive test the product features, review the content for completeness. In addition, we solicited feedback from potential users in the public and private sector. The survey results yielded an overall satisfaction with the direction of the product, and welcoming this change; However, there were broad areas of improvement identified, such as “search”, “cross-referencing” sections, “navigation”, “defined terms”, and the “amendment history” of changes.
Continuous reflection and refinement
In June 2019, we added a new feature that was most valuable to our audiences — Amendment History for each section starting from 1961; users can see what actions/amendments have affected each section in ZR. Information which was available only at DCP, and not in a very user-friendly way.
This is the beginning of a new era for Zoning Resolution; The new online experience features a modern look and feel, mobile friendly, as well as the most up-to-date regulations. New Yorkers will no longer spend $700+ to buy a book — the most recent and up-to-date version is free; By eliminating the annual printing cost and efforts to prepare documents for print (two staff for about 2–3 months) every year we estimated approximately $80,000 cost savings per year.
“I am thrilled to have been part of this story and lead the effort from the beginning alongside my colleagues in the IT Division. We are also fortunate to have worked with the most knowledgeable experts of NYC Zoning Resolution along with the commitment and support of the agency’s management and Executives to make what looked at the beginning as a ‘dream’, into reality, so that we can be even more efficient and transparent about the way we serve our constituents.”
Online ZR is getting roughly 40,000 page views/week and this is all-time record we have ever seen.
From now on, it will be continuously enhanced to meet our growing customer base.
Tell us what you think and want to see there next — https://zr.planning.nyc.gov/feedback
Subscribe for updates — https://zr.planning.nyc.gov/subscribe , there is more to come …
https://zr.planning.nyc.gov/ — Anida Murati,@ anida_murati@yahoo.com
