Zoning Application Portal Product Owner

Job Description

THE AGENCY
The Department of City Planning (DCP) plans for the strategic growth and development of the City through ground-up planning with communities, the development of land use policies and zoning regulations applicable citywide and sharing its perspectives on growth and community needs with sister agencies in collaboration with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).

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THE DIVISION
The Pipeline and Commission Operations (PCO) division is responsible for scheduling, organizing, and running Review Session and Public Meetings of the City Planning Commission (CPC).The division advises the CPC, Chair, and DCP staff on the land use review process. PCO tracks land use applications through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) and the non-ULURP process from filing to vote, reviews CPC reports on individual projects seeking approval, and maintains the agency’s Zoning Application Portal (ZAP) database that tracks and monitors land use applications. Work performed in PCO is highly deadline driven, detail oriented, and requires developing an in-depth knowledge of the City’s land use and public review processes. For these reasons, PCO is critical to the agency to ensure efficient and appropriate prioritization, review, approval, tracking, and reporting out on projects across the agency that serve to meet our housing and economic development goals, among others.

THE ROLE
PCO is seeking a detail oriented, motivated ZAP Product Owner to maintain, troubleshoot bugs and errors, and coordinate enhancements and communications concerning the ZAP product suite, including the Microsoft Dynamics CRM internal database, the Applicant Portal, through which applicants apply for all land use and environmental actions, the LUP Portal, through which Community Boards and Borough Presidents submit recommendations, and ZAP Search, the publicly searchable interface. Primary responsibilities include:

System maintenance
- Understand and maintain lists, views, and entities in the CRM system, such as Zoning Resolution actions and their respective section numbers, project milestones and tasks, and contacts
- Produce dashboards, templates and reports to assist planners across the agency in their work
- Coordinate maintenance operations (system updates, bug testing and fixes) with planners, technical division staff, and Microsoft, as required

System enhancement
- In partnership with the PCO Pipeline Manager, PCO leadership, DCP’s Planning Support division, and the ZAP Technical team, with input from ZAP users across the agency, design enhancements to address new challenges and workflows.
o Specific enhancement examples currently in design – an enhancement to the Applicant Portal to allow applicants to initiate projects online rather than through email and development of a notification system to allow anyone to subscribe to automatic notices for alerts in particular community boards across the city. See the Get Stuff Built report for more information.
- Coordinate and schedule all enhancement requests with the ZAP Technical team, including the preparation of user stories in Azure DevOps,and prepare and participate in requisite training for new features, as warranted.

Data management
- In partnership with the PCO Pipeline Manager, PCO leadership, and Planning Support, conduct routine performance measurements and reporting, including ZAP-based metrics for the annual Mayor’s Management Report.
- In partnership with the PCO Pipeline Manager, PCO leadership, and Planning Support, identify and present key findings from performance measurements.
- Ensure the maintenance of complete, high-quality data from internal and external sources and develop sustainable data quality routines and standard operating procedures (SOPs).
- Conduct regular reviews of project records, closing outdated projects, and conducting regular data cleanup, as warranted.
- Using data analytical skillsets, suggest enhancements to the ZAP data library for research, record retention, and reporting purposes.

Customer service
- In partnership with other members of the PCO team, respond to timely customer service requests from applicants, community boards, borough presidents, agency planners, and members of the public
- Manage distribution of service requests across a team through the agency’s Helpscout system
- Ensure that bugs logged for the CRM system, Applicant Portal, LUP Portal, and ZAP Search are coordinated with ZAP Technical Team and fixed in a timely manner
- Lead training of the system for new internal and exte