JIMS: Maricopa Association of Governments
Maricopa Association of Governments and ASU CIC are developing an updated Job Information Management System (JIMS) originally created by the City of Tempe. JIMS is the one-source of government compensation, benefits, job descriptions, and policy information. JIMS is used by local, county, and state governments to support hiring and retaining of employees. JIMS allows users to find compensation information from communities across Arizona to ensure positions have appropriate salary ranges. The new JIMS will make it easier to upload and search for information.
Problem
Government human resource professionals spend hours benchmarking salaries, benefits, and policies against other similar agencies via phone, e-mail and paper. This critical task relies on accurate and timely data. Having accurate benchmarks helps agencies stay competitive in a difficult job market and allows them to hire and retain the best employees. One of the primary barriers to benchmarking is the amount of time to update and validate data.
Approach
In a cooperative development effort, the Maricopa Association of Governments (MAG) and City of Tempe are working to improve and expand upon the existing JIMS platform. These updates will ensure that the most critical application features are retained and improved upon; job information will be searched more easily than ever and policy information will be readily accessible. The new JIMS platform will also have expanded communication tools, simplified reporting, and enhanced search capabilities. The JIMS launch will be supported by an outreach campaign for the 91 Arizona municipalities.
Supporting Artifacts
The Amazon Working Backwards process produces three artifacts - a Press Release, a list of Frequently Asked Questions, and a Visual depiction of the user experience. These are solely for visioning purposes. You can find the JIMS artifacts below and a recording of our wonderful student worker Nilo walking through the prototype here:
| JIMS VISUAL | JIMS VISUAL |
| JIMS PRFAQ | JIMS PR+FAQ |
| Prototype | JIMS Prototype |
Next Steps
The ASU CIC has created a prototype of the solution and the Maricopa Association of Government (MAG) is developing JIMS using in-house resources.
About the ASU CIC
The ASU Smart Cities Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) is a strategic relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is supported by AWS on ASU’s Innovation campus - SkySong. The mission of the CIC is to drive Innovation Challenges that materially benefit the greater Phoenix metro area and beyond. The CIC will do this by solving pressing community and regional challenges, using shareable and repeatable technology solutions from ideation through prototype, as a service for the greater human good.
The CIC also provides real-world problem-solving experiences to students by immersing them in the application of proven innovation methods in combination with the latest technologies to solve important challenges in the public sector.
The challenges being addressed cover a wide variety of topics including homelessness, water conservation, vandalism, pedestrian safety, digital service delivery and many others. The CIC leverages the deep subject matter expertise of government, education and non-profit organizations to clearly understand the customers affected by public sector challenges and develops solutions that meet the customer needs.
For more information on the ASU CIC, to read about projects or to submit a challenge, please visit https://smartchallenges.asu.edu.