Washington, D.C. (May 20, 2008)
The Washington, D.C. Alcoholic Beverage Regulation Administration (ABRA)
has selected Accela Automation®
from Accela, Inc. to enhance and improve its IT infrastructure and the
information available to the public via the ABRA Web site.
The agency is replacing a legacy system and joins the Department of Health
and the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs as the third agency
in the District to select Accela Automation to provide staff, businesses,
residents, and visitors a more user-friendly, easily accessible system
to conduct business via the Internet.
ABRA has responsibility for issuing alcoholic beverage licenses and permits
and conducting inspections and investigations involved with determining
violations and enforcing regulation compliance. Its primary goals are
to improve one-stop business service to customers seeking licenses, improve
processes for issuing licenses, and provide better public access to licensing,
enforcement, and adjudications records information.
The suite of Accela applications that will be deployed include:
Accela Licensing & Case Management™ automates
and fully integrates a wide range of licensing and case management processes
for regulatory agencies, including occupational and professional licensing,
contractor registrations, health professional licensing, alcoholic beverage
permits, and much more. It supports document management, automated license
renewal, and flexibility in creating unlimited types of licenses based
on an agency’s unique regulations, requirements, and internal procedures.
Accela GIS™
seamlessly integrates with Accela Automation to aid enforcement activities
by providing powerful real-time visual analysis of all land-use, zoning,
and enforcement information associated with a property or license. It
allows creation of multiple map layers, automated map analysis, and selection
of radius buffers for license area limits to e-mail or print notifications.
It is built on the ArcIMS™ platform by ESRI®.
Accela Wireless™
is a mobile government software application that integrates field investigation
capabilities. It ensures field staff has access to license and enforcement
information and is able to collect and upload critical data, photos, and
documents and pass them on to other agents. Optimized for Intel Centrino®
Mobile Technology, Accela Wireless is compatible with PDAs, laptops, and
Tablet PCs running on the Microsoft Pocket PC 2003, Windows Mobile 5,
Windows 2000, or Windows XP operating systems.
Accela Citizen Access™
provides real-time, direct access via the Internet to government services
and information. Citizens and licensees have access to apply, renew, and
pay for licenses and permits, check their status, and look up regulatory
information directly from the Internet 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Accela welcomes ABRA as a new client and we look forward to providing
the agency with the best technology available to meet its objectives,”
said Maury Blackman, Accela president and CEO. “It is very gratifying
to see the District of Columbia utilize Accela Automation across agencies
and users as it was designed to do. It will provide a blueprint for other
jurisdictions looking to coordinate information and services to better
serve the public.”
About ABRA
ABRA is an independent District of Columbia government regulatory agency
that was established in 2001. Prior to that, ABRA was a division of the
District's Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs. For more information
about ABRA, please visit http://abra.dc.gov/abra/site/default.asp.
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