Case Study: San Diego County Office of Emergency Services achieves scalable, mobile, bilingual emergency communications with Microsoft Dynamics 365

County emergency services agency protects residents with enhanced information portal

The San Diego County Office of Emergency Services, which provides crisis planning and response for 3.2 million residents across 4,500 square miles, needed a more reliable way to deliver verified emergency information after its on‑premises website crashed under 12,000 page‑views per hour during the 2007 wildfires. The agency also faced the challenge of serving a diverse, bilingual community—including more than 700,000 Spanish speakers and nearly 82,000 residents who are deaf or hard‑of‑hearing—so mobility and accessibility were top priorities.

Working with partner Adoxio, the agency rebuilt its portal on Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online and Microsoft Azure, adding responsive design, push notifications, automated Spanish drafts with human review, American Sign Language videos, audio and large‑text options, and app sync. The cloud solution cut hosting costs by about 78%, improved reliability and mobile reach (AlertSanDiego stores over 2 million numbers and saw 1,963 new signups during the 2016 Border Fire), and enabled rapid, bilingual and accessible updates with millions of push notifications sent to residents.

San Diego County Office of Emergency Services

Robert Barreras

Senior Emergency Services Coordinator