Lackawanna County earned top honors for building a County-wide municipal wireless network that was focused on helping the community in The Digital Government Achievement Awards (DGAA) competition.
“Our wireless broadband initiative has proven to be a tremendous success. It has improved efficiency and connectivity throughout Lackawanna County, particularly in areas of our community that were having less than stellar connectivity,” explained said Commissioner Jim Wansacz. “The project enabled us to reach-out to the community to share the network to help local businesses, schools, emergency services, and the taxpayers of Lackawanna County save money, create jobs, and live safer.”
“This is really tremendous. It is very important for us to continue to have state-of-the-art IT services to get our general and emergency information out to the public,” said Commissioner Patrick M. O’Malley. “This award lets companies know that Lackawanna County has the cutting edge infrastructure to compete for new jobs and provide sophisticated computing services and cost saving wireless capabilities to companies.”
“This is great news,” said Commissioner Edward G. Staback. “It shows the talent of our staff in advancing the County’s technology capabilities in a cost effective manner.”
“I’m very proud of what we have accomplished here, and the recognition that we are getting from other States and Counties interested in following in our footsteps is simply remarkable.” said Jeffrey Mando, Chief Information Officer for Lackawanna County, “We built this network to do something good for our community, and we are on the right path not only locally but also in assisting other States and Counties as well follow that same path.”
The DGAA recognizes outstanding agency and department projects at the application and infrastructure level. The program was open to all United States and international government agencies. The projects under consideration must be actively functioning, fully operational applications and projects.
Lackawanna County created a business model that is community and economic development driven with a focus on utilizing the network to serve its taxpayers. This model is on its way to becoming a national best practice.