New System Reduces Service Time To Airports By Up To 85%

TK Gwin, CDOT Division of Aeronautics

 January 14, 2014 

Colorado Division of Aeronautics

What was improved, briefly

The Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) partnered with the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) to develop a new web-based customer service system.  This new system allows CDOT to provide better customer service to public-use airports while reducing staff time and effort needed to serve those airports, including a reduction in the elapsed time needed to provide grant “drawdowns” to grant recipients.  Providing these drawdowns used to take 2 weeks on average; now, that average is now just 2 days -- an 85% improvement!

Background

CDOT’s Division of Aeronautics administers grants to public-use airports within Colorado to provide statewide support for the aviation community; approximately $20 million to $25 million in grants is awarded each year. These grants support programs and projects to improve aviation safety, capacity, and economic growth which cannot be accomplished by individual airports or by the pilot community.

The Division of Aeronautics began developing an improved method for providing these grants and related assistance to public-use airports in 2012, with the aim of providing better customer service while reducing staff time needed to administer grants.

CDOT partnered with OIT to develop a new web-based service system that would enable CDOT to provide a full menu of online services each aviation grantees, thereby providing better customer service at a lower overall cost. The system that was developed is called WIMS (the “Web-Based Information Management System”), which utilizes the Salesforce platform. This new system enables CDOT to keep succinct and complete records of our program from Capital Improvement Planning (CIP), fuel tax collection and distribution; grant applications, administration, and project close out. Additionally, WIMS keeps all correspondence and transactions in one file; we can even attach phone messages that have a bearing on a specific project.

One key benefit is that CDOT now has direct contact with each airport, and those airports can change a grant-related submittal instantly without correspondence. This improvement has numerous other benefits to CDOT and our airport customers, too. For instance, the average time to approve payment for a grant drawdown is now 2 days (reduced significantly from the prior average of 2 weeks).