24

Innovation Awards Program

This program promotes and supports a culture of innovation and is intended to recognize the implementation and accomplishments of new approaches, effective solutions, and/or creative and innovative changes made by the employees of Larimer County.

The program is offered annually, and employees/supervisors are encouraged to nominate others, or apply for the program themselves. The award(s) will be presented to the recipient(s) by the County Commissioners, followed by a press release to recognize the innovative accomplishments. In addition to the public recognition, the employee(s) and/or team(s) will receive an award of up to $5,000 paid in the form of Nectar points and/or 457(b) contribution.

The Larimer County Innovation Awards Program is a deliberately broad program that allows for flexibility in honoring creative methods, ideas, processes, and programs that have been implemented and are beneficial to Larimer County. Innovation is about accomplishing a specific purpose in a new or different way.

It is anticipated that competitive applications for the Larimer County Innovation Awards Program will generally fall into one or more of the following categories:

  • Connection to Larimer County’s Guiding Principles.
  • Novelty, originality, and/or uniqueness. 
  • Does the innovation represent a fundamental change in direction, policy, program or approach?
  • Results, significance and/or relevance.
  • The level to which the innovation addresses a need or problem or is beneficial to Larimer County.
     

The 2024 Innovation Awards program is currently accepting applications through Monday, May 20, 2024. For more details about the Innovation Awards Program, including rules, awards, and eligibility, check out the

2024 program booklet

.

If you have any questions, please contact Human Resources at humanresources@co.larimer.co.us.

GRAND PRIZE WINNER
Unified Communications as a Service (ZOOM)

The UCaaS/Zoom project was to replace the county’s Mitel/ShoreTel phone system with a Zoom Unified Communications as a Service platform to allow Larimer County employees to communicate more effectively and efficiently with each other and with the public.

  • The team replaced 2,500 desk phones with Zoom softphones
  • The project team added:
    • 72 Zoom Rooms countywide
    • Zoom meeting and webinar capability for all employees
    • SMS texting capabilities for all employees
    • Zoom Team Chat for all employees
GRAND PRIZE WINNER
LEDES - Law Enforcement Digital Evidence System

The primary issue the LEDES project addresses is the manual process surrounding the submission of digital evidence from law enforcement to the DA's Office. The DA Office has seen a 400% increase in digital evidence since 2016, and this automatic digital evidence script will help the DA office receive digital evidence timely, save countless human hours for both DA and Law Enforcement, and save taxpayers from having to request additional employees to handle all the digital evidence. Law enforcement evidence techs spend a great deal of time manually reviewing and downloading evidence from evidence.com, and subsequently uploading that data to a digital evidence system that submits it to the DA's Office for review and discovery. The new LEDES system automates much of that process and eliminates the need for law enforcement evidence technicians to download/upload data.

Additionally, in years past, when new digital evidence on a case was identified, the DA's Office had to request it from law enforcement. The DA had no automated way to know what digital evidence may be missing, and the process to determine that was completed manually by comparing evidence reports from law enforcement and the DA's Office. Now, the DA evidence technicians do not need to manually ask/search/find additional body camera evidence that would enhance the evidence for the cases they are prosecuting. This improves law enforcement's ability to share digital evidence with the DA and reduces the risk of missing evidence when preparing the case for trial. The DA's Evidence Technicians will be focused on trial prep work, and not manual evidence management and cataloging.

Additional Links:

GRAND PRIZE (COVID-19 CATEGORY)
Larimer County Virtual Fair

The 2020 Larimer County Fair was canceled due to COVID-19, but the event team was not going to be stopped so they recreated the entire Fair as a virtual experience.

  • They planned each experience, then created a daily schedule to play out over the original Fair dates on Facebook.
  • They had interactive sessions, entertainment experiences, and showed 4H live.
  • There was great interaction from the local community, especially parents with children at home seeking entertainment. It gave our residents the chance to enjoy the County Fair in a new format.
  • The Virtual Fair was zero cost to Larimer County. We found local sponsors, entertainers performed for free, and the team worked on this during work time, as well as their own time.

The Ranch actually won two awards at the International Associations Fairs and Expos (IAFE) for this unique event. We won first place in the Budget Friendly Tactics category for creatively using promoter gifts as fair contest prizes and second place in the Sponsor Exposure category for sharing logos and supporting our major sponsors during the Virtual Fair on Facebook.

It was a wonderful experience for all of us who worked on it and we had over 25,000 views during the time we hosted Fair. Once the Fair started we only had positive responses, versus the negative ones we got about canceling the real Fair.

GRAND PRIZE (NON-COVID19 CATEGORY)
Economic Workforce Development

In 2019 and early 2020, a group of economic developers across Northern Colorado embarked on an innovative approach to collaborative, data-driven economic development led by Larimer County Economic and Workforce Development (EWD) and the City of Fort Collins. When Larimer County created its Economic Development Department, one goal was to build a hub of economic development related data expertise. This project demonstrates the maturation and realization of that goal.

The Northern Colorado Regional Economic Development Initiative (NoCoREDI) represents a network of EDOs and Chambers of Commerce across 35 communities in Northern Colorado. The project involved 13 organizations and 23 individual contributors across Larimer and Weld counties in a detailed and innovative process conducted over almost a year. NoCoREDI identified the importance of economic development professionals in the region to explore data, rather than outsourcing data analysis to a consultant.

EWD developed the tools to support regional collaboration which resulted in the Cluster Strategy Playbook, which primarily focuses on how the region and its individual communities can work both individually and together to strengthen local businesses and the cluster ecosystem. From this collaborative research, they were able to produce the first network map of industry interactions in Northern Colorado.

This innovative graphical representation of our region's business ecosystem is a powerful tool for sharing and explaining how the NoCo economy is unique within Colorado and the U.S. This shared understanding led to the development of focused strategies and tactics to enhance the economy of Northern Colorado and position the region to be more competitive in the years and decades ahead.

Additional Links:

GRAND PRIZE WINNER
Pre-Trial Services Mobile App

In 2019, The Pretrial Mobile App was utilized for 47,025 check-ins and 7,238 court event follow-ups. Using the average time intervals of 45 seconds per check-in, and one minute per court event follow-up entry the total staff savings equates 42,500 minutes, 708 hours or 14 hours per week. The App allowed for a 64% reduction in staff time for these interactions.

The Pretial Services Mobile App was a big win for Pretrial Services (and CJS). This 30-hour development story has long-term impact on how we do business. The small development effort is directly saving staff 14 hours per week. If we add up all impacts from the innovation the entire team has contributed to Pretrial Services, and using our conservative estimates, we have saved 49.5 hours per week of staff time, helping to provide relief to an overburdened staff. The exciting part, is Pretrial Services is poised to make future efficiencies, with a current project in the BA Analysis phase (in the ITSC process) to move to an electronic bond application process. This process will also create significant staff time savings for Pretrial and will assist the District Attorney, Public Defender and Judicial Departments with some efficiency gains as well.

Additional Links

GRAND PRIZE WINNERS
Road Weather Information Systems

The Road & Bridge department installed roadside towers that contain monitoring equipment that provides real-time weather and road conditions. The information these towers provide can be easily accessed by the County’s management, employees, citizens on the virtual courthouse, as well as Poudre School District, who uses it to aid in school closure calls.

This approach is unique to Larimer County, representing a fundamental change in practices and decision-making for Larimer County’s snow removal program.

Sleep Tight, The Kids Are All Right

In 2018, Angela Mead developed a training curriculum titled “Sleep Tight, the Kids Are All Right” which is a comprehensive hybrid course designed to provide a safe space for Child Welfare Supervisors to acknowledge their fears, explore their struggles, and learn about and adopt strategies that can bring some knowing into the vacuum of the unknown. Angela developed the course from the ground up, and with the support of the Kempe Center, it is now part of the Colorado Child Welfare Training Academy and is available to supervisors across the state of Colorado. In fact, her work is being highlighted on a national level.

Property Tax Payment/Check Scanning Automation

The Treasurer’s Office partnered with the Information Technology Department to craft an end-to-end automated check-processing solution to replace the manual check entry process of over 100,000 property tax payments entered by Treasury and bank staff each year.

The new system has decreased on-site batch processing time for staff, improved workflow, saved funds by eliminating off-site services and delivery fees, and increased security for our customers.

Additional Links:


Applications are reviewed by Department Heads, and then by the Strategic Leadership Committee. The nominees associated with the top applications will then be asked to provide a short presentation outlining their innovation to the Guiding Principles Champions. Following the presentations, the winner(s) of the Innovation Awards will be selected by the Guiding Principles Champions.

The winner(s) are then recognized by the Board of County Commissioners during a Work Session. Professional videos of the winning innovations are produced and presented during the Work Session.

Human Resources Department

HOURS: Monday - Friday, 8:00am-4:30pm

200 West Oak, Suite 3200, Fort Collins, CO 80521
PO Box 1190, Fort Collins, CO 80522
PHONE: (970) 498-5970 | FAX: (970) 498-5980
Email Human Resources
Email Benefits Team