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Q&A
Details on Housing Connect technology, hosting, and maintenance
0:23:36
·
3 min
Council Member Sanchez asks for clarification on Housing Connect's technology infrastructure, hosting, and maintenance processes. Acting Commissioner Tigani explains the various aspects of the system's management.
- HPD owns the technology with HDC as a partner
- The system is hosted on hardware in a city building, with OTI involvement
- A vendor maintains the system, supported by HPD's Office of Technology and OTI
- Changes to the system involve collaboration between HPD, HDC, OTI, and the vendor
- The process for addressing issues, such as missing buttons, is explained
Pierina Ana Sanchez
0:23:36
Thank you.
0:23:38
Can you can you explain to the to the public where where is Housing Connect Connect hosted?
0:23:44
And who has control of the technology?
0:23:46
What does it mean for HPD to make changes?
0:23:49
Is that a third party or is that internal to the agency?
0:25:05
Got it.
0:25:06
Thank you.
0:25:06
Can you share the size of the contract with the vendor that helps to maintain Housing Connect?
0:25:15
Thank you, noting that.
0:25:19
Just in terms of process, let's say that a constituent has identified that there's a radio button missing.
0:25:25
There's there's no submit button here.
0:25:28
Is that something that HPD and HDC work out together with OTI or that you have to go to the vendor to get changed?
Ahmed Tigani
0:23:52
So we HPD is the owner of the technology with H HDC as our partner in this work.
0:24:00
The actual technology is hosted on hardware housed in a city building.
0:24:07
We work very closely with OTI on that.
0:24:11
And we are looking actually across our various systems, both the ones that we have and new ones that we're building on what the most nimble and flexible technology is.
0:24:20
So there's a lot of discussion about moving to cloud technology as a hosting solution.
0:24:27
We just always have to make sure it's meeting our security requirements, that it allows us the ability to make adjustments.
0:24:34
The team that maintains it is the the vendor that we have on board that acts as a maintenance partner.
0:24:42
We have staff within HPD's Office of Technology that also supports this work.
0:24:47
And we have colleagues at OTI, especially on the hosting component of it that supports it.
0:24:54
So all three partners.
0:24:55
And then on the in when when changes have to be made or build out, it's the same partners and now we have some additional support from HCC moving forward.
0:25:11
I don't have that number, but we're happy to get that number to you immediately.
0:25:36
So we would go to the vendor and this is actually something that happened recently.
0:25:40
We've this happens people will notice either glitches with the system or will either get email from applicants.
0:25:49
Often we'll get feedback from marketing agents on, you know, there's a front side of the system.
0:25:54
There's also a back side of the system where the matching happens and applicants are drawn down.
0:25:59
And if they see errors, they'll contact staff directly or incoming through our customer email or our phone line.
0:26:08
Once we see that there's an issue, HPD Tech and our PruTech maintenance, team work together to correct that issue.
0:26:17
Sometimes it may involve being able to do it live, so they'll work in a test environment and then be able to migrate the solution into the live version of it.
0:26:26
Or they may have to take down the the portal for a certain number of hours, which a notice is provided.
0:26:32
We send the email to marketing agents and put information up on our website.