“One account, one experience” is the mantra adopted by Fairfax County government officials who have begun the complicated process of merging a variety of online customer payment portals into a single customer-friendly site.
The ultimate goal is to provide a “seamlessly interactive” experience for county residents and business owners, requiring only a single login password that will span multiple services, from paying vehicle taxes to renewing a dog license.
“We want to transform the experience,” Matthew Harrison, the county’s new chief information officer, told the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors at its information technology committee meeting last Tuesday (Nov. 25).
While an end date for completing the transformation is unknowable at this point, county staff plan to start rolling changes out in incremental steps by late 2026, Harrison said.
Making that deadline, and doing so without a calamitous rollout, will require a wide swath of the county government to participate, he said.
“Without a commitment to collaborate … we are not going to be successful,” Harrison said. “This is going to be several years of work. We need to get the foundation right.”
Board Chair Jeff McKay agreed with that sentiment.
“This should be an all-county, all-hands-on-deck exercise,” he said. “The resources needed … are so worth it.”
Springfield District Supervisor Pat Herrity, who chairs the information technology committee, credited Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn with pressing to consolidate a wide array of payment platforms across county departments.
“It’s a great one,” Herrity said of the effort, praising staff for focusing on “small, good, achievable goals.”
Staff seemed to be in alignment with a one-step-at-a-time approach to moving forward.
“There’s a lot of work. Although it looks simple … there are so many complexities on the back end,” said Anita Rao, chief of application solutions in the Department of Information Technology.
Alcorn said he was pleased with the progress that had been made so far.
“This is great,” he said. “I think it’s going to do great things.”
Some supervisors raised concerns at the meeting about the security of information provided to the local government, particularly related to identity, payment and personal data.
Ellicia Seard-McCormick, the deputy county executive for administration, said information would be siloed on a need-to-know basis among staff, and data would remain in-house, not outsourced.
“We’re going to keep all of the same standards” currently in place, she said.
Harrison said county staff plan to use judicious amounts of artificial intelligence for teaching the new system to be more intuitive as it begins to process thousands and thousands of transactions.
While supervisors have the ability to mandate that different county agencies merge payment portals, they may have to use persuasion in other areas. Fairfax County Public Schools, the Fairfax County Park Authority, the Fairfax-Falls Church Community Services Board and potentially the county court system would each have to agree to partner in a collaboration.
County Executive Bryan Hill said the planned changes will alter job descriptions for some employees, but he doesn’t anticipate a net loss of total jobs.
Any major alterations in work responsibilities would have to be negotiated if the employees involved are part of a collective-bargaining unit, Hill said.
