The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) was created in 1971, and is the agency responsible for the regulation and licensing of almost 200,000 yellow medallion taxicabs and for-hire vehicles, their drivers, and the businesses that operate and support their industries. It is recognized as the largest and most active taxi and limousine regulatory body in the United States. The TLC’s Uniformed Services Bureau (USB) is charged with enforcing driver and vehicle compliance with all rules and regulations. Traditionally, the USB used manual, paper-based record keeping systems that often made capturing accurate information difficult.
With the help of NTT DATA, the Electronic Summonsing and Administration Program (ESAP) modernized TLC’s enforcement processes with a centralized information system that automates enforcement-related processes, including scheduling-logic for court hearings, approval workflows and reporting features. Delivered through New York City Wireless Network (NYCWiN) mobile devices, TLC inspectors now research a licensee’s background on location, sort through some 1,800 violation rules and create summonses with violation-specific hearing dates and more. By eliminating paper-based inefficiencies, ESAP is also saving more than money. The organization is improving officer safety by reducing time spent in potentially confrontational car stop situations.
As a result, the NYC TLC saw many improvements, including:
• More efficient summons creation
• More summonses issued per shift
• Improved enforcement of TLC rules
• Increased revenue through the collection of fines
• More refined data lookups and validations insuring greater data accuracy and reduced number of voided summonses
• Enhanced data collection and quality
• Information senior management could use for analytics and improving business processes.
The introduction of any new technology system comes with challenges, but the TLC and partners met them all head-on and completed the implementation in just nine months. One issue the TLC faced at every deployment milestone was the complexity of integrating multiple legacy systems. To combat this issue, compatibility testing was performed early and often, making sure that each system fully cooperated with the new interface.
Balancing the normal deployment challenges were a number of bright spots that are helping the TLC leapfrog most of its peers, including:
• “Dynamic Template”-based summonses which allow administrators to define an infinite number of new summons types, each with different data elements and print formats without the need for code changes
• Support for offline devices, letting officers create and print summonses even when the network is down
• Access to more than 400,000 driver and vehicle records in a local cache when the device is offline
The TLC also implemented automated rules and registration lookups on devices, which eliminates the need for officers to call the radio room for information.
For other organizations looking to roll out mobile systems for their remote employees, there are many things that you need to plan for, including:
• Complex data and systems integration – Over time, IT systems become a hodgepodge of different equipment of different ages and different vendors. Integrating different systems and data sets can be difficult and complex. Advanced planning is critical to accommodate the complex nature and provide for smooth implementation.
• Data analysis and cleansing – When combining data sets, there are bound to be overlapping pieces of data. In this process it is important to get rid of any overlapping data to ensure data accuracy.
• Ensure the system design allows for handheld devices to work when wireless networks are down. If the devices are unable to work while not connected to a network, the purpose of having remote or handheld devices is defeated. In addition, it is important to design the system so that users can perform complex rules and registration lookups efficiently.
• Mobile Systems are all about connectivity. This piece of the puzzle if often minimized and overlooked. Careful requirements analysis and up front engineering are critical to a program’s success.
Overall the implementation was extremely successful. With the help of NTT DATA and using ESAP, the TLC was able to move to an automated process with increased efficiencies for field officers in just nine months, becoming the first major city project to be successfully completed and deployed within that period.
