Web-based processing application for Highway User Tax Fund improves staff efficiency by $46,000 yearly

March 17, 2013

What was improved, briefly

“WebHUT Backed”, new web-based computer application at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), was developed by a team of people from CDOT, the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) and a private-sector developer. The system improves the capability for CDOT staff members to evaluate and process nearly 40,000 annual updates submitted by local government staffs to CDOT regarding the local roadway system. This task previously took 3 CDOT people working full-time for 6 months to complete; after implementation of the system, this time and effort was slashed in half, resulting in savings of staff time that is equivalent to approximately $46,000 each year.

Web-based Processing Application for Highway User Tax Fund

Web-based Processing Application for Highway User Tax Fund 

Background

The new “WebHUT Backed” application was completed and put into production at CDOT in November 2013. WebHUT Backed is a web-based system designed to provide CDOT staff with the ability to evaluate and process nearly 40,000 annual updates to the local roadway system submitted by local government staffs in Colorado. This information is processed by CDOT and submitted to the Colorado State Treasurer’s Office for allocation of Highway User Tax Funds (HUTF) throughout the state.   Prior to this new application, the processing time for these updates involved 3 full-time equivalents (FTE) people working for 6 months to complete. With the new WebHUT Backend application, the effort needed to do this has been decreased by approximately 50%.

A key part of this savings results from the new application’s “business rules”. These automated rules are designed to eliminate errors in the data entry process by providing features like drop-down menus and accepted value ranges that alert a user if data entered is 'valid'. Employing the Lean principle of eliminating the waster of errors and rework, this new system saves time since errors are reduced at the point of entry, rather than being caught in a larger quality control process to detect invalid data. This also allows CDOT to ensure that data is more consistent.

In addition to providing change detection and presenting relevant information for review, this application includes a reporting feature that will capture significant changes to other CDOT business data, to help keep local roadway information correct and synchronized.

The application allows CDOT to keep historical changes in a digital format that can be easily accessed in the future. It also captures changes that CDOT staff performs to data submitted by local government entities, which can be reported back to those local governments. Having this information allows CDOT staff to eliminate manual searches of historical records archived in paper documents.


Project Team

The joint team which developed this new application

CDOT

OIT

 Data Transfer Solutions