Feds more agile than local government. Are fears of Big Government's inefficiency based on reality?

One of our neighborhood volunteers was looking to attend tonight's Red Bank council meeting. The boro has a useful new website but still, with less than 12 hours to go until the meeting starts there is no agenda posted.
This, on the same day that the White House issues its new Open Government Directive that mandates transparency via technology from all Federal agencies. How is it that a massive machine like the Federal government can set such lofty expectations as - -

d. Within 45 days, each agency shall identify and publish online in an open format at least three high-value data sets (see attachment section 3.a.i) and register those data sets via Data.gov. These must be data sets not previously available online or in a downloadable format.


e. Within 60 days, each agency shall create an Open Government Webpage located at http://www.[agency].gov/open to serve as the gateway for agency activities related to the Open Government Directive and shall maintain and update that webpage in a timely fashion.

- - but here in a town of 15k people with a website that is costing ~$25k per year we don't have council meeting agendas posted online before the council meeting? 


Read the directive here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2009/12/08/promoting-transparency-government

Comments (2)

Dec 09, 2009
Brian Donohue said...
Regarding Red Bank's C3 system: On Saturday, (cold day) our furnace appeared to konk out and after checking things out I realized the electric power to the unit was dead. I couldn't isolate the problem but spent 2+ hours calling an electrician, calling the furnace dealer and, finally, a knowledgeable buddy who told me that it could be a partial power outage caused by a downed wire or something in the area. "Couldn't be,'" I replied. "Our town has this new C3 system designed to alert residents to things like power outages and no alert or update has been sent out. I checked my Blackberry and there's nothing."

But just to be sure, I put in a call to the Red Bank Police Department. The officer told me, indeed, a pole was down on Shrewsbury Avenue causing a localized outage.

If C3 isn't being used for things like this - especially to keep police from having to take phone calls from people like me - what's the use? I get better info from my fellow Red Bankers on twitter than I do from teh c3 system. It would take less time for someone to sends out a C3 update than to answer my phone call.

Dec 09, 2009
Jim Willis said...
I agree Brian with all your points, and want to update the above post about the agenda.

I signed up for the C3 alerts and after sending an email to council received an alert on twitter indicating the agenda had been posted around 11:30AM yesterday indicating the agenda was posted. I went to the website to view it and it was not there.

I followed up with an email to councilwoman Horgan who replied to me at 4:30pm (2 hours before the meeting) that the agenda was finally posted.

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