opengov
Sorry, Ruby. I know you wanted to write about this topic in the upcoming year, but looks like the town and UNC are a little ahead. :)
UNC School of Information and Library Science to partner with Town of Chapel Hill
Posted Date: 6/27/2011
The Town of Chapel Hill is poised to benefit from a grant received by UNC-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science to increase the digital curation workforce, focusing on the public information and the integration of public policy with information technology.
As we've mentioned before here on OP, the Town of Chapel Hill is preparing to revise its decade-old Comprehensive Plan (CP). In addition to documenting something of a shared vision of the community, it is also used as the basis of the Town's LUMO (Land Use Management Ordinance) which contains the actual policies and regulations with which all developers must comply. In an attempt to ramp up the process of creating this community document, the Town Council is trying a new approach: they decided to empanel an "Initiating Committee" (IC) that will lay out the process through which the actual CP wil be created.
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.
When I first learned about the proposed framework for downtown, I was amazed to see such big, new ideas being proposed by the consultant hired by the Town of Chapel Hill and the Downtown Partnership. This proposal presents an opportunity for Chapel Hill to do something visionary and to once again have a thriving urban center that is the envy of other communities. But.
The only way that this Big Idea will evolve into a Good Idea is if Chapel Hill can make this vision our own. Not only that, but I also think this plan might have trouble being approved in Chapel Hill without generating significant community investment in its approach. Or, as I said in June:
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