Questioning the Rule of Questions
Tonight I am questioning the new rule of questions. A few weeks ago council made a great move forward by requiring the publication of questions and their answers from Citizen’s Input time. That is a great idea and a laudable intention.
Having 13 years of experience in the IT field and specifically with the Internet, I made several suggestions and a full proposal to the PIO about how to proceed with that. They chose a different path, one which I felt wasn’t ideal, but at least it was still a step in the right direction. Several residents stood up at input time, asked their questions and then sat down. It seems like the Residents really embraced the new tool and wanted to use it fully.
Unfortunately, Council has now voted to create a limit of three questions. That limit is also unclear. Did you mean to limit citizens to three questions per person at input time? Did you mean that Council members only had to answer three questions? Did you mean Staff only had to answer three questions per week on the website? I’ve already reached three questions, so I suppose I’ll leave it there for your clarification.
Instead of continuing to question I would like to propose a solution to this dilemma. Install a real Question Management application, much like the one I suggested. Go out to bid on the project and have a real application installed with a service to manage the questions and their answering. Don’t limit the input and don’t limit the output.
I can provide studies that will show very clearly a cost savings trend by using these tools. Fortune 500 companies embrace these technologies to reduce personnel time in dealing with customer related issues. By moving to this sort of managed system you will save taxpayer money and improve communications at the same time.
At first you will see a high volume of questions as people seek answers. Once the questions are answered and available on line you will see a reduction in the frequency of questions. This will occur because Residents will help themselves to the information that they need. Lets make a wise investment choice here. Do not throw away the opportunity before us. Embrace it and move in the direction that will best benefit the residents of the City. Thank you.
May 21st, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Lloyd,
I watched and listened to your presentation to the city council tonite. I commend you on another great attempt to streamline the process. Unfortunately, I doubt very many sitting up their this evening understand the differences between what they have and what you were proposing…
I think Mrs Bertolini put it best … they have no intention of spending a dime on improving the process and have simply added a new task to the growing list held by Connie Barron.
Thanks for trying !!
Bruce
May 21st, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Thanks for the comment, Bruce. It’s not over yet. I’ll keep trying.
It is unfortunate that they have a misconception about when money is spent. The reality is that they do spend money right now to answer the questions. That money is not obvious and out front, but it is spent. It is also spent much less efficiently than it could be.
For instance, they provided a memo to Lynn Rosko tonight, which answered her question. They only posted a portion of the memo, because of space constraints. Those constraints are artificial and based solely upon the design of the formatting for the question/answer section in the website.
A little knowledge goes a long way to save the City money. My next step will be a call to all November Candidates. Let’s see where they stand on the issue of embracing the Internet for communicating with the residents.