Developing Digital Restaurant Inspections

Interdepartmental Collaboration and Iterative Design!

Overview

1. Past
   • Why Change?
   • How?
2. Present
   • How’s it going?
3. Future
   • What’s next?

The Past

The Old Form

What’s wrong with paper?

1. Designed for submission to state, not field use
2. Only one copy!
3. Inspection history must be physically accessed, one staff person at a time
4. Relies entirely on staff training
5. Broad questions are hard to answer

What’s wrong with paper?

How can digital help?

1. Designed for submission to state, not field use
2. Only one copy!
3. Inspection history must be physically accessed, one staff person at a time
4. Relies entirely on staff training
5. Broad questions are hard to answer

1. Field form can be in one format, export to another
2. Backups!
3. Entire database available via browser, can be synced for offline field reference
4. Built-in standardization, validation
5. Database queries and aggregates

1. That old form cost money, so there was some serious incentive to get it onto a single page. It’s like 4 point font, though! Not the most user-friendly thing to work on in the field. With a digital form, the field experience can be tailored to what the inspectors actually do, without needing to worry about making the output form look right.
2. (Also 3) It was possible to lose information, and it happened. If you wanted the inspection history of a restaurant, you had to take the folder with you. If you were going on multiple inspections, you might take multiple folders. And if you had a rollover car accident on the way back to the office, that history was just lost. It really happened!
3. If I had a question about an establishment while someone else has the folder, I either have to spend time tracking it down in the office, or I may have to wait until the person comes back from the field.
4. The staff are well trained, but it’s still nice to have a big red flag if you overlooked something. Training is first importance, but building in these checks ensures that human error is minimized.
5. When a question comes in, there’s no waiting for folders to come back. Examples:
   1. The state wants to know, what’s the most common violation we’re seeing? Across all the food establishments, we might conduct over 700 inspections in a year. Leafing through that much paper and making a tally is not a good use of time, but there’s no way to answer that question without it when it’s analog.
   2. Foodborne illness was reported at a restaurant. Within minutes of the report, the digital inspection history was queried to see if any contributing factors were seen at the time, and the health department could respond thoroughly and appropriately.

The Process

Discussions

Begins with a question:

Can GIS do…?

Answer, usually

Probably! Let me look into it!

Define Needs and Wants

Needs

Can we meet 100% of these?

• Export to state form
• Flexibility for all current inspection activities
• etc.

Wants

Can we tack on any of these?

• Scheduling?
• Application and payment tracking?
• Include non-inspection notes, attachments?
• etc.

Many of the points on the needs and wants list involved separate discussions and testing. By making the list as clear and concrete as possible, we had a firm goal to work towards.

Sample Data, Other Forms

• Excel sheets
• Applications
• “Left side of the folder”

Inspections weren’t the only thing! The food service program had a number of other aspects related to the establishments that were also on paper. Tying them together in a single feature service would reduce double-work, such as when an application comes in that updates the phone number for a manager, that information can immediately be reflected in the reference data inspectors have in the field.

By reviewing all the different parts of the program, we could ensure that what we were building was flexible enough to accomodate these other functions, while still maintaining the primary focus of the needs list.

Inspection “Ridealong”

• Accompanied inspector in the field
• Observed entire inspection process

Alpha, Beta

flowchart LR

    subgraph alpha [Alpha Testing]
    direction TB
        1[Draft a version of the service] -->
        2[Create forms, etc] -->
        3[Staff testing with past inspections] -->
        4[Feedback:\nWhat works?\nWhat doesn't?] -->
        5[Adjust forms, schema, etc] --> 3
    end

    subgraph beta [Beta Testing]
    direction TB
        a[Publish new service] -->
        b[New forms] -->
        c[Staff testing in the field\nside by side w/ paper form] -->
        d[Feedback] -->
        e[Adjustments] --> c
    end

    subgraph check [Evaluation]
    direction TB
        i[Can we meet everything\non the needs list?] -->
        ii[Schedule a cutover date:\n01-Jan-2023] -->
        iii[Finalize schema, deliverables]
    end

    alpha --> check --> beta --> x[Deploy!]

    style alpha fill:None,stroke:#c0caf5,stroke-width:4px,color:#c0caf5
    style beta fill:None,stroke:#c0caf5,stroke-width:4px,color:#c0caf5
    style check fill:None,stroke:#c0caf5,stroke-width:4px,color:#c0caf5

The Present

The Form

Syncing Data, Starting an Inspection

Here is the Survey123 form. 1. We open it 1. We refresh the inbox to sync with the service 1. We can search for an establishment by address, name, etc 1. Selecting the establishment opens a new inspection form

The Form

Risk Factors and Good Retail Practices

1. We start at the establishment level, verifying and making changes to any fields here
2. We can see the existing Certified Food Protection Managers. Adding and removing individuals from the list of CFPMs at an establishment is often done at the time of inspection.
3. Moving on, we can get into the “notes” section. This is the “left side of the folder”. Previous notes will be visible here for staff to review, even prior to an inspection.
4. Then the inspection itself!
5. There are some initial inspection details, and you can see the “required field” indicator present on fields, one of the common Survey123 data validation tools.
6. Part of the inspection is to verify that the rist category is correct, so we pull the establishment’s attribute into this page of the inspection as a reference, which you can see in the tooltip.
7. The main portion of the form are the risk factors and good retail practices. The first 29 must be answered, the others are optional. This is an example of the digital design. By using Survey123’s grid layout and collapsible groups, we can present all the items in a way that saves space.

The Form

Violations, Temperature, and Sanitizer

1. For every item marked “OUT” in the main form, we need an entry in the violations table.
2. There is a huge library of violation statements based on the nature of the issue. Specifying a number between 1 and 58 will pre-filter that library to statements specific to that item.
3. The filtered list can then be searched to find the exact statement needed, and if necessary, amended.
4. Temperature and sanitizer measurements are taken throughout the inspection, each having their own related table. These items could often overflow the paper form onto the second page, especially for larger establishments like grocery stores.
5. Email addresses are pre-filled based on the CFPM present, the signed-in user, and can be added to as well. These are used for the report generation process.
6. Then we just have some closing items and signatures.

The Form

Validation

1. Once the inspection is over, we present the user with a summary page, to see everything they’ve entered more concisely.
2. We also include a couple of flags
   1. Everything marked “OUT” needs an entry in the violation table, and vice versa
   2. If we go back and change our inspection, we can see this flag change

After the Inspection

The Flow

We use Make (formerly Integromat) to handle some of the aftermath.

• Generate PDF of inspection
• Attach PDF to establishment point
• Email PDF manager, copy to staff
• Update certain parent table fields based on inspection
• Send calendar appointment to inspector for followup inspection, if necessary

Generated PDF

Looks a lot like the the form we started with, but this time, it’s 100% digital, and generated entirely automatically.

Back in the Office

Review an Inspection

We can search for a specific establishment, then see all its attachments, and pull up the most recent inspection. From here we can download or print copies of any attachments.

Back in the Office

Filter the Data

Here we are looking for high risk establishments inspected in the past 60 days by a specific staff person.

Back in the Office

Get Quarterly Totals

For regular reports to other agencies or supervisors, we can create separate dashboards for a bird’s eye view of the program.

Back in the Office

Individual Inspector Dashboard

We can also make dashboards that are specific to the logged-in staff person, so that an individual inspector can see where they stand with their assigned establishments.

The Wants List

Permit Application / Renewal

• Public form with same fields as establishments layer
• End of survey presents e-payment link

Permit / Establishment Management

As we learned more about the food program, it was clear that the office side management of the data was in need of some updates. We were able to fold those changes into the new system as well, and gave their administrative support staff a dashboard for working with the data.

There’s a lot going on in this image, but from left to right: - Public application / renewal forms show up - New establishment can be created directly from application - Existing establishment details can be compared against application for changes, etc - Permit and payment dates can be updated as needed - Can filter establishments based on whether or not payments / permits are in, etc

How’s it Going?

Numbers

• Over 900
  • inspections conducted
  • inspection PDFs automatically
    generated and emailed
• 217 digital permit applications

Additions

• Feature requests
• New views of data
• Forms for other inspection types
• Extra fields to track new information
• New validation methods

The Future

Project as Model

• Components being copied to similar programs
  • Temporary Food Service permits
  • Mobile establishments
  • All food-related work planned to be digital by 2024
• Paving the way for new things
  • Applying for grants
  • Planning around GIS capabilities

Questions?

Be in Touch!

josh@jcarlson.page

https://jcarlson.page

@jcarlson@mapstodon.space