NIH Parking Office—"New PARTS, Less Time in Line"

On October 24, 2003, the NIH Parking Office began using new software—the Parking and Transhare System (PARTS)—that handles a wide range of functions and greatly streamlines the administration and management of the NIH parking and Transhare programs. These programs provide NIH people with parking hangers for cars and Transhare public transportation subsidies.

Developed by CIT, PARTS replaces a decade-old dBase system that involved cumbersome database searches and slow processing of parking permits. A key goal of the PARTS project was to enable the Parking Office staff to efficiently process customer requests, thus eliminating long lines at the Parking Office.

How PARTS Works

The new system automates the distribution and management of Parking Office products and services. According to PARTS's chief developer, John White, "We put all the vital information up front for the Parking Office staff. In most cases, a single click of the mouse displays the screen needed, and another mouse click means the staff is ready to process the next person in line." According to the Parking Office's project sponsor Gary Freeman, PARTS has already reduced the time needed to serve customers by 50 to 75 percent, and the Parking Office lines are now practically eliminated. (From "New PARTS, Less Time in Line," January 2004 issue of News2Use, published by the NIH Office of Research Services.)

Several highlights of PARTS include:

•       Barcode Scanners

When the Parking Office clerk scans a customer's NIH badge with a barcode scanner, the PARTS system immediately looks up that person's record in the NIH Enterprise Directory (NED). By using a complex but customizable set of rules, PARTS also indicates to the clerk the products and services the customer may have. This is important because certain parking and Transhare benefits are mutually exclusive.

•       Custom "Business Rule Engine"

The design and implementation of a custom "business rule engine" in PARTS is an important innovation, given current parking and security restrictions at the NIH. As parking and Transhare situations change, rules and regulations can be easily added, changed or removed from PARTS.

•       .NET Web Services

PARTS is one of CIT's first NIH-wide deployments using Microsoft's .NET architecture. PARTS is designed to accommodate most systems or devices using .NET "Web services." With Web services, any user client—such as Windows, a Web browser, handheld devices, and even telephones—can easily access data depending on the proper authentication.

Since the Parking Office staff requires a lot of client-side interactivity and processing, the PARTS system has a native client for the Windows systems they use. White says that because "most of the business rules are in the database and accessed through Web services, writing new clients is relatively quick compared to other architectures."

The Future

White envisions other enhancements to the PARTS software—such as the NIH police instantly accessing important information by typing license numbers or other identifiers into handhelds, or integration with the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's "SmartBenefits" subsidy program.

"It's really pretty cool," says White, "when you can make someone's job a bit easier and contribute to NIH's security process at the same time. The PARTS team really scored a 10 on this one."