| What is an e-Community? | Company News |
Ann Arbor, MI (June 25, 2001)
PSI Group Executive Director Charles Kaylor conducted an eGovernment Community Assessment Forum for the City of Ann Arbor in City Council Chambers. The event, broadcast on local cable television, was convened to get the opinions of key community stakeholder groups regarding how the city should invest in technology in order to provide better access to information and services.
Representatives from several sectors of the community were present:
- Real Estate and Development
- Business
- Community
- Schools and Students
- Communications
- Residents
- City Staff
The purpose of the forum was two-fold: a) to have a conversation among and across these various stakeholder groups regarding the current state of preparedness of the city as a whole to participate in the "networked world"; and b) to discuss what e-government efforts these stakeholder groups would like to see City government make.
Some of the specific issues raised in the Forum:
- Compared with many communities of its size, Ann Arbor is a very "connected" community. By most measures of in-home access to the Internet (and use of that access), the city is ahead of national averages.
- Infrastructural capacity exists to have broadband access to the Internet, but what measures could the community (and City government) take to ensure that the divisions between those with and without Internet access do not cause entrenched problems.
- Prevalent concerns for residents (and to a lesser extent businesses) are security, privacy and trust. As such, the City's e-government efforts should always be made with these concerns in mind.
Recommendations for City e-government services:
- Participants representing all sectors are interested in having the City accept online payments (provided that traditional means for accepting payments go unchanged.
- All basic city forms, policies and the like should be accessible online.
- Similarly, procedures and applicable forms for permitting and licensing should be accessible from the City website.
- Applications for City services should be available (such as scholarships, SMART, etc.).
- City government should make every effort to partner with business and community organizations to provide broad access to its e-government services from a range of locations.
- The City should make every effort to make the functions and services that available online transparent and searchable using natural language search engines.
- The City homepage should provide regularly updated current information (such as weather-related closings, traffic information, news, and emergency information).
- The City should have a action request system that is responsive and effective.
[ back to top ]
|
|
