I came across an excellent blog post the other day about a city government IT makeover. What is most striking is the ingenious way this vision takes advantage of a community's greatest resource, the people! I have pasted the first few paragraphs below, please click on the link to read the post:
Gov 2.0 Guide To A City Makeover
My name is Dustin Haisler and I’m the Assistant City Manager and Chief Information Officer (CIO) for the
City of Manor, Texas. Manor is a small community, located just east of Austin, of approximately 6,500 citizens. More recently, Manor has received a lot
press for some of our innovative projects; such as our
QR-code program,
citizen idea portal, and
pothole reporting system. In fact, we are in such a state of continuous improvement that we even added the word ‘beta’ to our city logo.
Over the past year, it’s been my pleasure to be one of the many evangelists of these new citizen-empowering technologies for government agencies across the country. In the process, I’ve realized that there are many bureaucratic constraints, fears and misunderstandings about how these technologies fit within municipal government. Further, I understand that type of innovation within government is sometimes seen as a risky concept; however, I would argue there is a science to what we do in Manor that can and should be replicated by other municipalities.
So let me brake down what we’ve done by starting at the beginning.
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