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3 responses to “The Digital Dominion — Not Too Shabby”

1. 

   larryg

   November 9, 2013

   Well I waited to give others a chance to comment …but no takers… so far.

   this is a bit of a strange award in a way because it rates places like Va beach (and I could not find their specific accomplishments) – but it rates them
   on how well they themselves have leverage technology to deliver more/better transparency and access to govt AND how well they incubate technology for the private sector, citing the deployment of citywide WiFi.

   Our planning commission has posited (not unanimously) that Libraries are obsolete and people should be able to get whatever they need in electronic form but when advised that people without computers came to the library – they relented a bit and advocated deploying throughout the county “internet access” cites with WiFi – to include all schools, community centers and conceivably fire and rescue stations and even green box waste sites.

   Of course, those who suggested this – had no clue that it would mean a huge expansion of maintenance and operations of buildings, HVAC, and IT staff to do that which ran counter to their rationale for getting rid of the tax-consuming libraries….

   but to actually do what the lightly-thought-out suggestion was – is that a legitimate function of government to spend taxes on?

   I wonder if in addition to say a referenda question of countywide 24/7 fire and rescue or county-wide parks and rec – if people would approve a proposal to deploy a county-wide network with physical field sites where
   one could get a computer , printer and scanner ?

   or even just a WiFI access point like you’d see at Starbucks where you could just bring your laptop in your car?

   The other thing is how the county itself actually uses technology and I give KUDOS to Henrico – one of the few counties in Va that provide video archives of their BOS meetings side by side with a clickable agenda that takes to to the exact place in the video where that item is discussed.

   you can see the real-time meeting via internet – anywhere – and you can see all the archives anytime – and I don’t have a list of counties that have this but I know locally we do not… and I’m told it’s not cheap – and requires
   an additional person to manage it.

   but not even Henrico has clickable, drill-down budgets like Commonwealth Datapoint http://datapoint.apa.virginia.gov/. But Commonwealth Datapoint stops, for instance at the 5 categories for schools so there is no breakdown, for instance, for instruction.

   which is what I’d like to see for each jurisdiction – a clickable, drill-down ability for the budget from the top – down into, for instance, the major spending categories under “instruction” rather than having to do laborious repeated back and forth scans in a PDF – some of which – are not PDF but scanned in pages – which are not keyword searchable.

   Another issue… Hearings. I’ve never completely understand under what circumstances public hearings are required but if we are going to have them and people are allowed to even email comments – why not have an actual “Hearing” portal where people can submit their comment during the “open” period (with county tax id authentication or similar) and everyone able to scan down the comments to see what others have said?

   we need government to allow people interact with govt on public issues.
   we need to have online public hearings which would allow all those people
   who do not want to sit for 3 hours to make a 3 minute comment to be able to be “heard” – at THEIR convenience and if that is from home at 3am, they should be able to share their views via a “hearing” and they should be
   able to view the comments made by others.

   I’ve mentioned this to those involved in maintaining local and regional govt websites and they are totally wary of doing it …. that it would have to be “managed” and there may be nasty comments that would have to be removed, etc…

   to which I say – if BR can run a site about govt – successfully on a wide variety of issues – why is this not doable?

   why not also deploy a poll daddy on a govt site.. that only allows those with tax ids and one-time votes from same IP addressed – like Survey Monkey currently does?

   finally, we have this ridiculous argument against elected public bodies “meeting” via “go to meeting” or similar…because of meeting notice requirements.

   why not have people register to the county to receive email announcements with “notice” on online meetings and a link to that meeting so people can watch it – and an archive of it that people can reference later?

   there’s a wide variety of technology that companies are now using to conduct business that governments could also use – if THEY WANTED TO.

   it would actually make govt more accessible and more transparent and a better ability to participate. When you see a BOS hearing room – standing room only – you’re looking at thousands of citizens who would also comment if they had the means to do so – other than stand for 3 hours in a hot meeting room. We have the technology to “hear” them right now, why
   not?

   Imagine the Henrico meals tax issue – conducted as a moderated online forum of only Henrico county taxpayers…

   would that be good government in action or virtual animal-house-like food fight? Remember – I’d require each person to be uniquely identifiable by the county and the ability to remove their comments and suspend or ban them if they could not behave.

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2. 

   wesghent

   November 9, 2013

   The saddest part of no-tax viewpoint is ignorance of both economics and business acumen. Virginia became a cut above the solid, stolid South by defying Byrd conservatives (mostly rural and south side) and insisting on better public education, highways and eventually racial integration. Progressives realized it takes money to make money, even in the public domain. Eventually this became reflected in our higher education also, and VCU, ODU, JMU and GMU , plus community colleges, emerged. By now we should be wiser, an “educated citizenry,” but the old conservatives migrated to the Va. GOP, hooked up with the religious right , and again became a deterrent to progress and prosperity. Perhaps a good motto is, “what you fight for is what’s worthwhile,” because that’s what we have on our hands: a fight to make Virginia what it was always meant to be: a leader, a first among equals. Look around and you’ll see no state that’s better endowed, but leaders have to pick up the tab from time to time; chincey doesn’t pay off. With another Clinton administration on the horizon, it’s good to have their stalwart in our governors mansion. Even critics say that Terry is a master promoter; I say let him loose to make the Old Dominion first again. With NoVa and HampRoads leading the way, and RichVa as our permanent museum of past glory, but not of things to come.

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3. 

   larryg

   November 9, 2013

   The funny thing about Byrd was he was a “pay as you go” guy who despised the New Deal.

   but’s here the funny thing – Byrd believed the way you paid-as-you-went was with fuel taxes and so Virginia entered an era where new roads were paved all over the state – and unemployed folks – employed to build them – and all of it came from gas taxes that Byrd DID advocate for.

   So Byrd actually did something very similar to Roosevelts WPA.

   http://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Highway_Bond_Referendum_1923#its2

   Harry Byrd also played a big role in giving jurisdictions the exclusive right to tax real estate and not the state which used income and sales taxes.

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