Information Technology Specialist (Computer Aided Dispatch)

Information Technology Specialist

The Broward County Board of County Commissioners is seeking qualified candidates for our Information Technology Specialist position for our Public Safety Section.

Benefits of Broward County Employment:

• Eleven (11) paid holidays each year
• Vacation (Paid Time Off) = 2 weeks per year
• Tuition Reimbursement (Up to 2K annually)
• Up to 40 hours of Job Basis Leave for eligible positions
• Paid Parental Leave
• Health Benefits
• High-Deductible Health Plan bi-weekly premiums: Employee $10.90 / Family $80.79
• Includes a County Funded Health Savings Account of up to $2,000 Annually
• Consumer Driven Health Plan bi-weekly premiums: Employee $82.58 / Family $286.79
• Florida Retirement System (FRS) Pension or Investment Plan
• 457 Deferred Compensation County matches up to $2,000 a year

The position is responsible for maintaining the design and integrity of mission critical servers and client applications used to support the operation of Broward County's Public Safety E911 Answering Points (PSAP) and Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) system with 99.999% reliability and uptime. Broward County PSAPs rely on the Regional CAD system and supporting applications for successful and efficient emergency response of countywide Law and Fire personnel to the needs of Broward County residents. This role will require subject matter expertise and self-directed research on features, functionality, innovation trends, design, implementation, and testing of CAD and supporting applications (AVL, ProQA Paramount, Mobile Data, Law Records, Fire Records, etc) in support of our public safety end users. As a member of the 24x7 Regional Public Safety Applications CAD Team, the specialist will provide onsite, remote, and on-call support to our public safety end users who have critical response time requirements. Work involves end user feature and functionality planning, acceptance testing, implementation of version upgrades, system maintenance, system configuration, and general oversight of the Regional Public Safety Application systems in cooperation with staff from the County, Sheriff, Municipal Police, and Municipal Fire Departments. Work also involves planning long-range strategic evolution and integration of county-wide, multi-agency, multi-discipline, multi-jurisdictional CAD and related software application technologies and infrastructure to be regional and state-wide interoperable with other public safety departments.

General Description:

Manages large scale information technology projects.

Works under administrative supervision, developing and implementing programs within organizational policies and reports major activities to executive level administrators through conferences and reports.

Minimum Education and Experience Requirements:

Requires a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university with major coursework in computer science or closely related field.

(One year of relevant experience may be substituted for each year of required education.)

Requires four (4) years of experience in systems analysis, systems design and/or applications programming relevant to area of assignment including two (2) years of experience working in a position of supporting Public Safety Emergency Services or 911 operations or closely related experience.

Special Certifications and Licenses:

None.

Preferences:

Experience with performing research, data analysis, and feasibility studies in order to submit technical and management reports. Experience with providing client laptop and desktop hardware support and administration. Experience with database administration. Virtualization Administration Certifications (Citrix, VMWare, HyperV, or closely related application) Project Management Certificates (PMP, PgMP, or closely related field. Six Sigma Certifications (Green Belt, Black Belt, or Master Black Belt) Network Administration Certifications (CCNA, CCIE, CISSP, or closely related field). Database Administration Certifications (SQL, Oracle, or closely related application). Presentation or Training Skills in Mission Critical Public Safety Services and Applications. Software or Application Programming Skills. Technical Writing or Documentation Skills. Master's Degree or higher Electrical Engineering, in Business Administration, Computer Science, MIS, or closely related field.

Scope of Work

Duties and Responsibilities:

The functions listed below are those that represent the majority of the time spent working in this class. Management may assign additional functions related to the type of work of the job as necessary.

• Provides high-level technical expertise and project management direction of multiple large scale information technology initiatives including technological research, analysis, design, development, and implementation of projects.
• Reviews County-wide information technology strategic direction, recommends approaches for incorporation of the emerging technologies when appropriate, and implements the approved approach.
• Reviews programming techniques and recommends information technology solutions, enhancement plans, and related cost-benefit comparisons.
• Supervises professional and technical personnel in assigned work teams or sections.
• Plans, organizes and implements approved emerging technologies.
• Administers County-wide technological specialty functions.
• Performs project management responsibilities for large scale complex information technology projects.
• Reviews systems designs, development of applications, and documentation for accuracy, timeliness, and adherence to departmental standards.
• Documentation of deployment, security, quality assurance, change controls, and compliance.
• Emergency Planning: Creates, maintains, updates, validates, and quality-controls geographic datasets supporting public safety applications to include CAD, Next Generation 911, Fire Records Management Systems, and Law Records Management Systems
• Vendor Communications: Investigation, diagnosis and reporting of application bugs, beta testing, system maintenance, system configuration, system upgrades
• Internal Systems Administration: Advanced troubleshooting, creation of geographical data packages, identification of database inconsistencies, documentation and implementation of corrective actions, and dataset maintenance affecting geographic components of public safety applications. Reconciles Automatic Number Identification/Automatic Location Identification (ANI/ALI) telephone data with regional geographic data to maintain a minimum 99.95% match rate.
• Remote Access Technologies: Secure Access VPN, Endpoint Central, Citrix, Omnissa
• Customer Communications: Provide 24/7 on-call support, engage stakeholders for incident progress, impending changes, outages, feature/functionality review, and proactive system enhancements

Competencies:

• Tech Savvy: Anticipates and adopts innovations in business-building digital and technology applications. Is an early adopter of new technologies, technical skills, and capabilities that improve performance. Regularly experiments with and leverages technologies and tools to substantially improve performance.
• Manages Complexity: Makes sense of complex, high quantity, and sometimes contradictory information to effectively solve problems. Consistently looks at complex issues from many angles; obtains a rich and deep understanding; swiftly cuts to the core issue; skillfully separates root causes from symptoms.
• Action Oriented: Takes on new opportunities and tough challenges with a sense of urgency, high energy, and enthusiasm. Takes immediate, decisive, independent action to resolve issues or problems. Persists as needed. Quickly and consistently identifies and pursues beneficial new opportunities.
• Plans and Aligns: Plans and prioritizes work to meet commitments aligned with organizational goals. Outlines clear plans that put actions in a logical sequence; conveys some time frames. Aligns own work with relevant workgroups. Takes some steps to reduce bottlenecks and speed up the work.
• Optimizes Work Processes: Knows the most effective and efficient processes to get things done, with a focus on continuous improvement. Pays close attention to a variety of metrics and benchmarks; determines both major and subtle ways to optimize processes. Swiftly resolves process breakdowns; takes steps to ensure that problems do not recur.
• Courage: Steps up to address difficult issues, saying what needs to be said. Shares own ideas and points of view openly, regardless of potential criticism or risk; shows conviction when faced with adversity and challenges; raises difficult topics to be sure they are addressed.
• Self-Development: Actively seeks new ways to grow and be challenged using both formal and informal development channels. Demonstrates a strong commitment to development by regularly practicing and applying new knowledge and skills; is quick to share new learning with others. Creates a thorough, detailed development plan.