The Systems & Applications Division of IST is responsible for the design, development, and support of large application systems

Managed by Rwena Holaday, sixty+ analysts and programmers create and maintain systems on platforms ranging from mainframes to the Internet. Current languages in use include Visual Basic, VB.Net, C#, ASP.Net, XML, AJAX, ABAP, Java, Micro Focus COBOL, on the Internet and LAN plus COBOL and IDEAL on the IBM mainframe. The mainframe applications use DATACOM/DB. All other database work is MS SQL-Server.

In January 2010, all County applications have been migrated off the mainframe. This effort started with the migration of PISMO/TAPIS, the County's integrated Property Assessment & Tax application from COBOL/DATACOM to a .Net environment using Micro Focus Cobol and SQL Server 2005.

The division is organized into teams oriented to specific application areas, application support, and the County ERP software, SAP.

Application areas:

Justice
Supporting the needs of the Sheriff, the Marin Superior Court, the District Attorney, Probation, and Public Defender is critical for the protection of Marin County citizens. Currently two teams are involved in this area. A mainframe based CJIS system, which serves as the heart of our integrated Criminal Justice service is supported by a team managed by Lynn Say. Her team also supports our client server District Attorney Case Management system.

The Public Defender Case Management system, Gideon, is a .Net application supported by a team managed by Nathan LaForce. The Gideon team was rewarded the County's "Team of the Quarter" award for this project. This team also supports a client server Probation Case Management System and the Marin Superior Court Civil System, written in PowerBuilder. This team also supports EJUS, Electronic Justice Search, a secure internet based application that provides the Marin Justice community an integrated view to all current and historical adult criminal justice information. Written in VB.Net, EJUS is based on the Government Justice Exchange standard, GJXDM (Global Justice XML Data Model). EJUS received an award for Most Innovative Use of Technology from CCISDA (California County Information Services Directors Association). In June 2011, the team completed the JURIS project, modernizing the mainframe based Traffic Court application to VB.Net.3.5 running on Windows server 2008.

Property
Marin is blessed with some of the most valuable real estate in the world. The property system manages over fifty five billion dollars in property values and generates over seven hundred million dollars in tax bills. Managed by Linda Jamieson, the Property Systems Team designs and supports Marin County's Property Tax infrastructure.

The TAPIS (Tax Assessment & Property Information System) application integrates the efforts of the County Assessor/Recorder, Auditor and Tax Collector. The recent modernization of this system converted over thirteen hundred custom IDEAL and COBOL programs running on the mainframe to Micro Focus COBOL. DATACOM tables were ported to SQL Server 2005. Property also maintains data warehouses that allow analysis via a Visual Basic client server interface.

The project to modernize TAPIS called PISMO (Property Information System Modernization) is featured in Microsoft websites and other publications such as ZD Net...

Dave Hill's downloadable podcast:
http://www.microsoft.com/events/podcasts/default.aspx?pageId=x3692&audience=&topic=

ZD Net features Dave Hill's downloadable webcast:
http://www.zdnet.com.au/whitepaper/0,2000063328,22478570p-16001467q,00.htm

ZD Net White Paper:
http://whitepapers.zdnet.com/abstract.aspx?docid=992935

The County G Channel features the PISMO project:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=16B4859574A4963F

On the County website the team also supports access to the Recorder's Index, parcel maps, online property tax payment, and property tax inquiry. The Property team also supports other client server applications. They provide a complete work flow and appraisal support system for the County Assessor. This allows the entry and tracking all activity through the Assessor's Department. For personal property, the team supports a Business Property assessment system. Also in support of taxes is an application to track and assess Transient Occupancy tax. A web & client server application, FBN (Fictitious Business Name) is supported for the County Clerk's office.

Health and Human Services
Working collaboratively with HHS to provide software support for the state, federal, and local program initiatives for the various divisions such as Aging and Adult Services, Social Services, Mental Health Services, Planning and Administration is a team managed by Christophe Meneau. This team supports client server and web based applications on Microsoft platform.

GIS - Geographic Information System
GIS applications are developed by a matrix team staffed by members of Community Development and Information Services. This group develops GIS based applications for county departments for internal use and for the public and is one of the few cross-departmental teams in the county. The GIS team is led by Ray VanCleave. http://www.co.marin.ca.us/depts/is/main/gis/.

Community Development
One of Marin's current software enterprise initiatives is a single unified and integrated solution for the Community Development Agency. Project COMET (County of Marin Enterprise Tracking) is led by Ron Matteson. The project is a phased implementation for 4 divisions: Environmental Health, Code Enforcement, Planning, and Building. Phase 1 was implemented in January 2011. Phase 2 implementation is scheduled for February 2012. This initiative will provide a permit tracking system that consolidates and centralizes enforcement records currently managed in multiple systems. The products Marin chose for this solution is Infor's Hansen8 and Dynamic Portal.

Application Support:

Database and Middleware Support
The Database Administration Team, managed by Ray VanCleave, has primary responsibility for ongoing administration of all development and production databases, both client/server and mainframe based, within county government. The team currently supports several dozen databases on multiple servers running Microsoft SQL Server, and CA Datacom/DB running on an IBM 2066 Mainframe. The team supports SQL Server versions 2000, 2005, and preparing for 2008. In addition to administrative duties, the team provides SQL programming support and database design consultation to the IST application development division and supports the implementation of SQL databases for third party applications. The transfer of data to data warehouses or to other local and state agencies is also supported.

The County of Marin supports the use of a middleware product called Viaserve to facilitate the data sharing and updating between the mainframe and client/server and web based applications.

Quality Assurance
The Quality Assurance team, managed by Deter Guglielmo, assures that all in-house applications meet standards, function as designed and satisfy customer requirements. The Quality Assurance analysts work closely with the application developers and clients to gain an understanding of the application and to develop a test plan. They use the test plan to assure that the product functions correctly before it is implemented.

Application Integration
Linda Jamieson manages the application integration team. The County uses Microsoft Biztalk server as its middleware product. Integration between the Sheriffs 3rd party software and County Justice applications uses Biztalk. The Biztalk interface design is consistent with the County's efforts towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for applications. This team also supports other application integration needs such as ADAM/AD LDS (Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services), WCF (Windows Communication Foundation), etc. This team is beginning its efforts towards the IST strategic plan for single sign-on (SSO).

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)

MERIT
The Marin Enterprise Resource Integration Team (MERIT) supports the County's SAP ERP system. The County's SAP implementation includes modules in the core transactional system (ECC 6.0), BI (Business Intelligence), and the SAP Portal.

MERIT consists of teams under the leadership of the MERIT ERP Business Systems Manager, Tim Flanagan.

The Financial Integration & Logistics team supports the financial modules which include: FI/GL (Financials/General Ledger, Cash), CO/FM/GM (Controlling, Funds Management, Grants Management), AP (Accounts Payable), AR (Accounts Receivable), and FI-AA (Fixed Assets).

The HCM (Human Capital Management) team is managed by Brenda Grayson. Her team supports the following SAP modules: Organizational Management, Personnel Administration, Time Entry, and Payroll.

The STS (SAP Technical Support) team is managed by Jim Toth. The team includes support for: Management of systems (BASIS), SAP's proprietary programming language ABAP, BI (Business Intelligence), the Employee Self Services (ESS) Portal, workflow and security.