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AWWA CSC92094
- One for All and All for One: Oregon Utilities and Cities Benefit by Sharing Resources
- Conference Proceeding by American Water Works Association, 01/01/1992
- Publisher: AWWA
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A cooperative effort in sharing programming and analyst resources between five utilities and municipalities in Oregon is paying dividends for the agencies. The users in the partnership have neither a software house nor an in-house professional staff to handle their data processing needs. Instead, an entity called Group-4 Utility and Municipal Data Systems was formed to service those needs. In the 1970s, a software vendor originally developed and installed the custom programs in nine government agencies. The software was for utility billing, and it was installed satisfactorily--but the software vendor went out of business. Administrators of several of the utilities got together to create a programming organization to fulfill their needs. The formation of Group-4 was established and an intergovernmental agreement was signed. Some of the employees of the software vendor were hired to work exclusively for the new organization. Soon, other utilities joined Group-4. This paper describes how the group functions, how its services are billed, and the results of the cooperative effort.