open government
There will be much talk over the coming days about the true legacy of Mandela. What it is, and what it isn't. And possibly whether or not it has any relevance to democracy and politics in Orange County.
First, Mandela himself, and his immediate legacy. For me, a middle-aged white Brit, of American parents, a former Thatcher groupie, but now more center-left, the lasting legacy of Mandela will be his achievement in creating the space which allowed South Africa to transition to black majority rule without massive bloodshed.
We've had several discussions lately about what some of us would like to see from county government in terms of communications and information technology. Perhaps the county naming a new Chief Information Officer will be an opportunity for a new focus in the county on open data, open standards, and information access. What do you think? The first item on my wishlist (half jokingly) would be to have him work with Public Affairs to find a better solution than using Microsoft Office to format emailed press releases. Why? Because Microsoft's use of proprietary stylesheets makes the formatting of documents break when text is copied into other programs, unless I go through and manually edit the code.
I know the folks in county government are hard working people with a lot on their plate, so I hope any suggestion is given (and received, too) as well-meaning constructive feedback. From an Orange County press release:
Last week The Carrboro Citizen reported on Orange County leaders congratulating themselves on making major technology improvements over the past two years. "“Today’s servers are tomorrow’s mainframes, and we do have to have that kind of continuous upgrade of systems,” board Vice Chair Steve Yuhasz said." He's right of course, but it sounds like many of the changes were to internal infrastructure, so it's hard for us average residents to tell the difference. I'm wondering what technology OP readers would like to see the County improve?
One improvement that I did notice was the update to the web-based GIS system. Mostly it caught my attention because the County's site was down and/or malfunctioning for a while following the upgrade. It is now easier to use than before, which I would characterize as a step up from requiring a graduate degree to use, to merely requiring a lot of patience and guesswork.
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