Taveras Says He Will Make City Services More Efficient
Thursday, August 05, 2010
“Whether you are a small business applying for a permit or a resident paying your taxes, your interaction with the city should be efficient and courteous. Unfortunately, however, City Hall can be a confusing place for residents and businesses alike,” Taveras said. “As Mayor, I will make sure that City Hall works for its customers - the people and businesses of Providence.”
Taveras’ plan included the following:
- Bring the Office of Neighborhood Services into the communities they serve by establishing local offices in libraries, community centers and other local organizations. Citizens can then access government services in their own neighborhood rather than coming downtown.
- Create a state-of-the-art website – a citizen dashboard – so that residents can engage city government in a variety of ways without having to enter City Hall.
- Develop innovative ways for residents to interact with City Government, such as reporting potholes on smart phones, paying taxes online and connecting electronically with neighbors about important citywide issues.
- Establish a citywide permit parking system for year-long residents.
- Double the Mayor’s reward - and the associated fines and penalties - for information leading to the detection, apprehension and conviction of individuals involved in graffiti vandalism.
- Streamline city interaction by creating a one-stop 3-1-1 hotline to report broken street lights, lost pets, noise violations and the like.
- Place important city meetings including the School Board, the City Council, and more online on live streaming video and in online searchable databases that include forums for citizen feedback.
“There is no more important job as Mayor than ensuring that the roads are paved, the streets are plowed and the people of Providence can quickly and efficiently accomplish their business with City Hall,” Taveras said. “My plan to improve city services makes top-notch customer service a priority - the people of Providence deserve no less.”
Comments:
Matthew Jerzyk
2:33pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
Technology. Efficiency. Getting things done quickly. I like it, Mayor Taveras!
Rick Smith
5:31pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
This seems a lot like Steven Costantino's City services plan...
R. Parsons
5:40pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
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The "dashboard" is a direct, uncredited lift from Anthony Gemma.
Developing "innovative ways" to improve City services is a direct, uncredited lift from John Lombardi.
And to all Progressives who recently took a congressional candidate to task when they inferred from his "run RI as a business" idea that we all would become corporate "customers" instead of free citizens, witness the Progressive Angel's description of Providence residents as ... wait for it ... "customers."
My previous two posts have been taken down -- including the satircal jab that Angel's "Headstart to Harvard" journey may now be explained by this "original" plan of his(he was looking at the other kids' papers). Let's see how long this post lasts.
Matthew Jerzyk
5:50pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
Interesting. Angel Taveras' city services plan has been on his website for a month. Does Steven Costantino even have a website? Or any issues on it?
Matthew Jerzyk
5:51pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
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Re: Dashboard.
Similarly, this was on Mr. Taveras' website before Gemma was even a candidate for Congress.
Try again!
Matthew Jerzyk
6:56pm on Thursday, August 05, 2010
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Dear Mr. Parsons -
Here is irrefutable evidence that Taveras presented his "dashboard" plan even before Gemma was a candidate for Congress.
From an April 28th Leadership RI interview.
QUESTION:
At last week's Government Day at the State House, Mayor Scott Avedisian, inspired by the recent generosity of others during the flood, told the Zeta IIs that he believes our greatest state asset is our people. How will you unite the people of Providence and harness their goodwill, talents, and energy so that Providence will strive economically and socially?
ANWER:
I too believe that the people are the city's greatest asset. Government must not separate itself from the people and must be more involved in the neighborhoods and community centers. We need to bring the people into government at every stage and everywhere. This includes involving neighborhood leaders, community activists and business leaders in important policy-making decisions. This means opening up City Hall and ensuring that laws and votes and meetings are recorded and put on the Internet so that a 21st century citizenry can engage their government at work or at home. And, this means creating a state-of-the-art city website, or dashboard, where citizens can pay their taxes, or register their students for school or engage in a discussion about a street-wide crime watch. Government needs to give the people the tools to run their own government.
LINK:
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/209742/844dcf997d/218000591/512dbec0e5/
I eagerly await your retraction - since you are the Gemma communications director.
Thank you.
-Matt
Charles Hewitt
4:21pm on Friday, August 06, 2010
As the former top information technology (IT) executive (now retired) for the City of Providence, I feel compelled to point out a few facts. The City has made a lot of progress since 2003 with respect to streamlining its operations through the use of IT. The technology-based advances that Mr. Taveras proposes are, in fact, old news.
First, the "dashboard" already exists: http://www.providenceri.com. I suggest you visit this site. Through this portal one can pay parking tickets, taxes, and water bills; request services; download forms; and view job postings. The site was overhauled extensively in 2009, based on a detailed analysis of several of the best municipal web sites in the nation. There is still a lot that could be done to advance the entire web site, but the "dashboard" already exists.
Second, the idea of a 3-1-1 hot line has been around since at least the beginning of the current administration. Although technically feasible, the financial and operational implications of this service are daunting for a small city. The City has opted instead for a plain old telephone number, 421-7768, and a request management system, QAlert, to capture the requests and route them to the right department(s) for action.
Third, the idea of streaming City Council and other meetings using services like, for example, Granicus has been around for years. These services not only make government more transparent, but also enable significant behind-the-scenes efficiencies in the whole process of preparing, producing and documenting public meetings. Although many communities across the nation do this, the idea has yet to take root in Providence. The principal reason is push-back from elected officials. The notion that the Mayor alone can mandate the change is, well, naive. The City Council, at the end of the day, independently decides how it will operate, and so far, its members have decided to keep things just the way they are.
There are many ways the City of Providence can advance the perfomance of its operations further using IT. The proposals from Mr. Taveras, however, betray a lack of understanding of the City's current situation and opportunities. Moreover, his promotion of just the elements that are visible to the public has me concerned that his interest in IT-driven change is superficial. The hard work of IT-driven change is in getting people to adopt the changes and make them work. From what I've seen so far, Mr. Taveras lacks the leadership that a mayor has to provide to achieve success in this arena.
Matthew Jerzyk
4:33pm on Friday, August 06, 2010
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Dear Charles Hewitt -
Angel's proposals bring the best models of city government from other cities to use technology to improve democracy.
Anyone - especially my "geek" friends - who spends 5 minutes on the city website knows that the city's IT capacities are in the 1990s. In other words, the City is about 20 years behind the times.
Here's one example.
By "dashboard" it is not meant to just pay an outrageous fee to pay a ticket. Rather, the dashboard would inform a citizen the following things:
1. when streets are getting cleaned in their neighborhood.
2. where and when sidewalks, potholes and roads are getting repaired.
3. when/where school registration and PTO meetings are taking place.
4. when/where neighborhood meetings are being held.
5. real-time crime reports in their neighborhood.
6. providing feedback to public hearings on ordinances and zoning changes.
7. immediate emails & text messaging for emergencies such as fires, felonies and snowstorms.
8. processing ALL city business online in an affordable and efficient manner including late payments for taxes, parking permits, rentals of the Casino, etc..
9. processing ALL business applications on the dashboard including self-proprietorships, permitting, and licensing.
10. tracking the votes of local elected officials in an online searchable database of meetings, meeting minutes, committee votes and floor votes.
Other cities are doing these state-of-the-art things and the City of Providence has tragically failed to even attempt to.
Correct me if I am wrong.
-Matt
PS. People tell me that you have endorsed Steven Costantino so please disclose to the public if this is true.
Matthew Jerzyk
5:02pm on Friday, August 06, 2010
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Dear Charles Hewitt -
Also, you might want to inform the public of your $1,000 donation to Steven Costantino. Not exactly neutral are we?
Best,
Matt
P Diaz
6:52pm on Friday, August 06, 2010
Mr. Charles Hewitt,
With all due respect, I am trouble by your double meaning in this post. You write that the dashboard is already in place and that through it you can do this, that, the other thing but then at start backing up by saying that the site was extensively overhauled in 2009, which was last year, but that a lot more can still be done. Why would Providence overhaul it in 2009 only so that it is still disfunctional?
Answer me these few questions please. Why is it that to get a permit for a parade I had to visit City Hall, Department of Health, Traffic Engineering, City Hall? Is this not why we want a portal to avoid 3 weeks of running around to get things done is the portal just a nice way of saying we have a website? I am confused.
And I do not think Taveras said that he was going to install these technologies himself. I was there last night and I understood him to say through leadership.
Funny thing too, I remember distinctly that Costantino said "I agree with Angel" on two ocassions, Lombardi remarked the same way and oddly but I doubt he meant it in the same way, Young said it in his closing: "I agree with Angel there is not one solution."
Where is the portal at the state level for all the state function. Why did not Costantino create something like this while in the assembly. And if you are the IT support the city had during the creation of this portal, you should give the money back. The college kids could have done better.
I am amiss that Lombardi's folks on not commenting on this post since now Mr. Hewitt is suggesting that any failures of the website are due to the city council.
I will notify you that I am a Taveras fan by default. I do not like where the current administration has taken us at city or state level. And for those of you that think I am insincere let me tell you I saw my parent's exice tax in North Providence. Up over $400. Hum, that was not a state tax increase right. Okay.
Manny Taveras
7:50pm on Friday, August 06, 2010
Mr. Hewitt,
The city has made some progress since 2003. We have a website now with out dated department directors only a click away.
The new dashboard? Is this the same one that links you to old providenceri.com web pages? The link for services isn't even linked to Q-Alert. If you choose to email a director it gets sent to a back end user who has to manual choose how and when to send the actual email. The city hasn't even implemented the most important function of Q-Alert which is View Works. We still have staff members behind the scene's copying and pasting everything into emails.
Every modern website now can give you a lot more access than just printing out forms. We should've already developed the idea of atleast allowing users to place applications and status checks online. The "dashboard" needs to extend into a lot more than a splash page.
421-2489 (CITY) still exist and directs you to the same number as 421-2489 which is directed around by every other office who can't answer any questions. It's the same people that answer the phones. All this gets placed into the same systems with extra loops to nowhere, very efficiantly.
I would've expected a lot more from a professional who helped develop these ideas. The city of Providence needs someone who will take charge and take the next step in progress. It has made many advancements even as Constantina continued to hammer away at our aid.
Charles Hewitt
8:35pm on Monday, August 09, 2010
Dear Matt,
Your suggestions for improving the content of the City’s web site are good ones. I think they would all contribute to improving democracy in our City.
The current administration is aware of these and other suggestions and of the value they would have for the City. Furthermore, the administration is aware that other cities already provide some of these services through their web sites, and feels the City suffers in comparison.
So why hasn’t more been done about it? So far, just about all we have is a new home page.
It comes down to resources and the priorities of the City’s leadership team.
With respect to putting your suggestions into the web site, the technical task is fairly easy. I would expect it would take a qualified contractor just a few weeks to do so. Add a few more weeks to give all the pages in the site a common appearance.
The hard part is creating and maintaining the content of the web site after it is operational. This part requires the department heads that are responsible for the content – for example, the head of the Public Works Department with regard to street cleaning and sidewalk repairs – to keep the content on the web site up-to-date. This amounts to a new job for the department to do, and in reality means that someone who is already very busy has to do this as well. Adding an additional person to do the work is not an option. Unless the department head views the job as high priority and leads the staff in making the necessary changes in the workflow, this job is going to get neglected.
By its actions, the current administration has said there are more important things to do than put additional features on the web site or update the entire site to match the look-and-feel of the new home page. In fact, during the past eighteen months the current administration has committed a lot of the available resources to improving the process of reviewing building construction plans and issuing building permits. The goal of this change is to make Providence a better place for economic development by reducing the time to get a building permit and making the entire process more predictable. While technology is enabling this change, the most important elements have been the vision and leadership of the department head, Shiela McGauvran; the team of IT and department personnel which is implementing the new process; and Mayor Cicilline who made this program a priority nearly two years ago.
Your assertion that the City’s use of IT is about 20 years behind the times is simply not true. To judge the state of the City’s IT program by the look of its web site is a hasty generalization, like judging a book by its cover. A huge part of the City’s IT capability is not visible through the web site.
Take, for example, the City’s Mesh Network, the outdoor, wireless broadband network that enables the members of the Public Safety Division to use their computers in the field just as they do at their desks. The Providence Police, especially, have implemented a number of useful, innovative mobile applications using the Mesh Network. Providence was the first major city in the Nation to build a network of this type. Providence owns, operates and maintains the network. Other cities have implemented “hot-spots” in various places, but Providence was the first to do this citywide, border-to-border. Now, four years after first becoming operational, the Providence Mesh Network is still one of a small number of truly citywide, municipal mobile outdoor broadband networks.
I expect other departments will apply the Mesh Network to their operations. The Department of Inspections and Standards, for example, is interested in enabling building inspectors to report the results of their inspections directly from the field.
For another example, consider the City Recorder of Deeds Document Processing System. The process of recording a real estate deed or other official document used to take six months from start to finish. Today, thanks to the use of document imaging and indexing technology, the entire process takes a few minutes.
The successful results in the Recorder of Deeds have encouraged other departments to begin the transition from paper to electronic records. As a first step and as funds are available, the City is replacing stand-alone copying machines with scanner-copiers that are attached to the City’s computer network.
I could cite more examples, but I think the point is made. The overall state of the City’s IT is definitely not 20 years behind the times. In some respects, Providence is arguably setting the pace. In other respects there remain major opportunities for improvement. The choice of which ones to do next is a matter of policy priorities and resource availability.
In the above I’ve tried to speak factually and fairly, independently of my political affiliation, as one who retired in January after spending seven years overseeing the state and progress of the City’s IT capability.
Finally, yes, I am supporting Steven Costantino for Mayor. Providence’s next mayor needs to be able to get results, as evidenced by past performance and experience. Organizational transformation through IT is a team effort requiring everyone, from the Mayor to the people who actually deliver the results, to be committed and aligned in action. I believe Mr. Costantino is best qualified to lead Providence in advancing the way its government works.
Best regards,
Charlie