Professor Shannon Jenkins at UMass Dartmouth, who serves on the Dartmouth Finance Committee, asked me to post this request here. Her class at the campus has a project that will help the town and Prof. Jenkins would like us to help them.
Here is what she wrote,
This semester, I am teaching PSC 400 which focuses on State and Local Policy. The class has been divided into two teams, and each team is going to be doing an applied policy analysis for the town of Dartmouth. Because this class is cross-listed with the Sustainability program, one team will be looking at ways to make the town more green and to save money at the same time. The second team will be focusing on openness and transparency; ...
... they will be working with the Web Site Development committee in finding ways to more effectively provide information to town residents.
Each team will be interviewing people inside and outside of town government and looking for examples of best practices in other communities, locally and across the state and country. For both of these projects, we are interested in finding out what people in town have to say. For the sustainability project, we're interested if folks have ideas on how to make town operations more green (keeping in mind that ultimately these green projects also have to save us money). For the openness and transparency project, we're interested in what kind of information people look for from town government (both generally and on the web) and what they would like to see added to the town website. If your readers would like to post suggestions to your blog entry, we will review them.
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Shannon Jenkins
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
If you would rather email Prof. Jenkins with your comments, send me an email and I wil give you her contact information.
Posts
16 comments:
Bill, is your email listed somewhere on this blog? I can't find it.
Thanks Shannon, The college is a great resource in our community. This will be a great learning experience for students and will help Dartmouth!
The posting of RFP’s for all goods and services required by Dartmouth on the town website along with the vendors who request and win the contracts would help with transparence. This would not be complicated nor time consuming.
Thank you for involving Dartmouth in your class project. We all will benefit from this.
The most important and transparent thing that can be done is to just give the information. No analysis, no opinions. The public should be presented with verifiable ,unbiased information like with ballot questions. There are very strict regulations on how a ballot question can be formed and I think the town should use those guidelines when releasing information on its website. Just the facts please.
I would like to see the business of the town run through the website. Permits filed, paid, documents submitted, and inspections scheduled online. Requests for bids online. Documents published by each department available to the public online. Videotape of board, commission, and committee meetings available by VOD. Ability to pay for all town bills online.
The towns of Barnstable and Arlington have sites that have functionality that I think we should shoot for or exceed. Dartmouth uses a Tyler Technologies software called Munis for their financial information. Tyler makes other modules that work with this package. Document management and many others. Are Tyler the people who can do this automation across the town for us?
Bill, your original post says that I can email you directly. Is your email listed somewhere so that I can in fact do that?
Bill, why not post your email on the front page of your blog?
It would get flooded with questions about the Ethics Violation. Isn't that right BILL??
Bill's email is on the top of this website. I know it may be a real challenge for you to find it, but try real hard.
I LOVE Diane Gilbert. She is the best thing that ever happened to Dartmouth!!!!
ANON 12:14 - Thank you for being kind enough to try to help me get Bill's email. I seriously wanted to email him about this study. I never blog because it is just too nasty. Thank you proving my point on that one. Regardless, at risk of being bullied because I asked a question (is this grade school all over again?), I still do not see Bill's email anywhere on this site. When he says to email him, I thought he meant it. If anyone sees his email here or on the town site, please let me know. Bill himself has so far ignored my question.
Sorry for the delay in getting back to your comment. I was at work today and then out with my wife. You can email me at trylaxnow@hotmal.com
Oops, just to prove that the finger is faster than the eye, I hit send before I checked that. The correct email is trylaxnow@hotmail.com
Please feel free to email me at trylaxnow@hotmial.com.
Bill, Thank you! I have already attained Ms. Jenkins's email and have emailed her directly. Thank you again.
Thanks to everyone for your comments. We're keeping track and checking back, so if anything else comes to mind, please keep 'em coming.
slj
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