Houston's Department of Administrative and Regulatory Affairs (ARA) manages Transportation permits, payments and inspections via e-Gov solution.
Citizens often depend on taxis on a daily basis, expecting them to be operational and available when needed. What they probably don’t realize are the efforts behind tracking, licensing and managing taxicab companies and other transportation related businesses.
Recently, the City of Houston, TX implemented GovPartner’s Transportation Module allowing the Department of Administrative and Regulatory Affairs (ARA) to manage transportation related permits, payments and inspections for transportation service related companies. In this particular jurisdiction, the City has specific license and permit types for taxicabs, limousines, private school vehicles, scheduled ground transportation, charter sightseeing vehicles, pedicabs and low-speed shuttles operating in the City. GovPartner’s Transportation Module manages not only the licensing of these vehicles, but also the inspection schedules, fees, renewal notices, and relationships between companies, vehicles and drivers.
With the Transportation Module in place, ARA is able to regulate and manage multiple processes including:
- Annual inspections of vehicles
- Issue related commercial drivers licenses
- Collect and manage fees from drivers and operating companies
- Issue and manage renewal letters
- Manage inspection status and schedules
- Keep track of historical inspection records
- Issue medallion stickers and inspection renewal stickers
- Red flag and put vehicles, drivers and/or companies on hold
- Offer the option to pay fees in installations
- Centralize history of cab fleets for maintenance and failed inspections.
With the City’s old method, a series of unrelated databases and spreadsheets were used to manage each required process. The automation of transportation processes allows ARA to not only centralize and archive data, but also to incorporate this piece with other GovPartner software solutions already being utilized by the City. Previously when ARA ran a revenue report, several reports had to be created independently, and the results were manually combined. Through GovPartner software, ARA is now able to easily incorporate Transportation revenue with other streamlined departments already running on the GovPartner software - saving the department time and resources, and resulting in more accurate and current results.
ARA started using this module on August 15, 2011 in conjunction with the department moving to the One Stop Permitting Center.