Municipalist

Murder in North Carolina: How government's continual tech cluelessness is costing lives

In my best Charlie Gibson tone of elitist condescension, and disgust, here is my gotcha' question for the week, for Bev Purdue, the governor-elect of the great state of North Carolina: Please describe in 60 seconds or less the state of the capacity of the players throughout your state's law enforcement system to share information, to be notified quickly and efficiently about important details concerning dangerous criminals, and to use that information to then prevent mayhem in the streets of your otherwise lovely state?

University of North Carolina student body president Eve Carson was murdered on campus in March. One of the co-defendants was a probationer allowed to continually get in trouble with little or no consequences. An email alert system that would have notified authorities of this guy's behavioral pattern long before the murder was shut off with little explanation. The Charlotte Observer is all over it:

Lloyd's program would have twice warned probation officers that Atwater had been arrested: a trespass charge in February 2007, and firearms and drug charges that November. Had probation officers known of these arrests, they could have watched Atwater more closely, tightened his curfew, put him under house arrest, or asked a judge to lock him up for violating the terms of his probation.

But no one received those e-mail alerts. Despite rave reviews from probation officers, the program had been spiked a year earlier – in February 2007 – by Robert Guy, head of the probation system, and Bob Brinson, the top computer official at the Department of Correction ...

North Carolina may boast of Research Triangle Park and state-of-the-art technology companies, but probation officers have spent hours each month looking up their clients on a computer system that predates Windows. It's so old that the computers don't have a mouse.

[Update: Actually, it is the Raleigh News & Observer that REALLY is all over it, with video, multi-part series, etc.] The takeaway from this is that advocates for those in government to immediately dive into use of Web 2.0 applications to engage citizens and constituents and each other toward an efficient and meaningful end should never forget: Government is a vast, arid planet of unaccountability and incompetence. Beyond comprehension.

Except for Wall Street, Detroit, etc.

Those who love to verbally assault Washington need to take a look inside their own state capitols. To what extent will or can use of even very basic social technology change any of this state of affairs, especially when we are talking about people who will never, ever see the value of even trying? Is sitting and waiting for a generational overhaul the only answer?

Then again, maybe we just had one.

Here is the News & Observer on how several other states handle similar challenges. And how a state senator had learned that such crimes that could have been prevented but for outdated technology "had happened many, many times before."

And here is Municipalist's interview from March with Chapel Hill, N.C. town council member Sally Greene speaking about her blog as well as her decision to blog for a local media site about a brief note she received from Eve Carson several months before Eve's murder.

Online crime reporting options gain fans in police departments across the country

See this gorgeous Web site? It is owned and operated by the good people of the City of Reno, Nevada. Lately they have been very busy not only making the site's presentation look great, but finding new ways to actually use it to connect and better serve citizens. One of the department's latest moves is to install an online crime reporting system. Last month the city upgraded the system to allow for direct online reporting of information about suspects, when previously citizens had to speak to an officer. The value here is that this frees the cops to tend to the serious stuff. And Reno's system will even accept online reports in Spanish and French, says Reno PD's Lori Heidenreich.

Here is a City of Reno news release. [Also making the move this year to online crime reporting: Riverside, California.]

Heidenreich answered our questions:

History: The Reno Police Department's online crime reporting system came into being as a response to the need for alternative ways for residents to report non-emergency issues.  The Reno Police Department was already taking desk reports and telephonic reports for these issues, but wanted to expand the alternatives so that citizens could file their reports without having to come into the station.  It also gave the citizen the ability to file the report after office hours.

As it stated in the press release, the online reporting system is designed for situations in which there is little or no evidence, such as burglary, destruction of property, disturbing the peace, graffiti, harassment, identity theft, lost property, suspicious circumstances, etc.

Many times the citizens need to file a report for insurance purposes only.   Each report that comes in via the online system is reviewed by a Community Services Officer.  If we have additional questions we call the citizen back for clarification.  Once the report is approved by the CSO, it is forwarded to the Detectives division, just like every report whether received in person or over the phone.  By taking these reports online or at the desk, this allows the officers on patrol to be available to respond to crimes in progress and life safety calls.

In approximately 2005 or 2006, the Reno Police Department started accepting online crime reports through our Web page.  This was a beginning, but was not very user friendly as the information had to be manually input to our crime reporting system and most times did not include all the necessary information for the report.

In December 2007, the Reno Police Department put in place a new online crime reporting system called Cop-Logic.  This system is very user friendly and has been received very positively by our citizens.

Public response: The initial response was a little slow, but we are now receiving approximately 200 to 300 reports a month through the online system.  The response from the public has been very positive.  The only negative responses we received were regarding us not accepting reports that contained suspect information.  This generated less than five responses in the 10 months we have had the system in place.  We discovered that we were rejecting approximately 50 to 75 reports a month for this reason, so last month we expanded the system to accept reports with suspect information.

Biggest benefit: The biggest benefit for the citizens is that officers are  not tied up handling non-emergency issues and are available to respond to life safety calls for service and crimes in progress.  This also allows the officer to be more proactive in his/her beat, therefore possibly stopping some crime before it even happens.

Another benefit is a cost savings to the citizens.  A study was completed that estimated the average cost for an officer to respond to a call is $45.00.  By taking 200 to 300 online reports a month, the city is saving approximately $9,000 to $13,500 a month.  The initial cost of the program was $23,000, so in just a few months the cost of the program was recovered.

A third benefit of the system is that the citizens are given another alternative way to make their report and it can be done at whatever time is convenient for them.  The online system also sends them an e-mail response containing their case number and a PDF copy of the report in case they need to print it for their records.  This saves the citizen from having to go to the Records Department to receive a copy of their report.

One of the biggest benefits for the Police Department, beside the cost savings, was that the Coplogic System "talks" with our Police Reporting System (Tiburon) and the information is downloaded daily into our system.  This saves the Community Services Officer the time of having to manually  input the information into our system.

Other cities that have online crime reporting: There are agencies across the country that have been implementing an online crime reporting systems. If you go to the Coplogic website, it will give you a list of the agencies that are using their system.  [More info on Coplogic users here.] The list includes all size communities, ranging from 1,000 to 1,019,000 in population.

Etc.: One exciting thing about Coplogic, is that it will accept reports in other languages, such as Spanish or French, and translate it into English.  We are currently working on making a Spanish link on our Web site, so that we can utilize this function in the future.

Delaware, USA.gov top Brookings rankings of government Web sites

Delaware.gov and the U.S. government's official Web portal, USA.gov, topped the federal and state rankings of government Web sites in the annual study by Darrell West, who recently moved from Brown University's Taubman Center for Public Policy to the Brookings Institution. The study evaluated 1,537 state and federal websites against 18 best-practices criteria, such as online publications, disability access and foreign language or language translation to gauge the state of e-government in the United States. State and federal agency sites were ranked in its report, State and Federal Electronic Government in the United States, 2008, which was completed during June and July of 2008 at Brown University but published by Brookings.

The top state sites from the study: 1. Delaware; 2. Georgia; 3. Florida; 4. California. 5. Massachusetts; 6. Maine; 7. Kentucky; 8. Alabama. 9. Indiana; 10. Tennessee.

The top federal sites: 1. USA.gov; 2. Department of Agriculture; 3. General Services Administration; 4. Postal Service; 5. Internal Revenue Service; 6. Department of Education; 7. Small Business Administration; 8. Library of Congress; 9. Department of Treasury; 10. Federal Reserve Board.

Hat tip: USA.gov's DotGov Buzz.

FDIC's new site tries to get us to stay calm

Our money is safe! Hallelujah! Great, eh? Turns out this deal called the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is protecting bank deposits up to $100,000 for individuals. Even better: FDIC has decided to hire personal financial guru Suze Orman to front a new Web site debuting this week to tell us all about it!! To calm us down!! You fill in your data and it tells you how you are doing!!! Like we NEED CALMING DOWN. Where in the world did they get THAT IDEA?

Note to the FDIC: Where have you been? Talk about an institution that should be blogging, in good times and in bad. Why wait for the crisis? Suze: Love the watch.

Palin and e-government: 'She is a trailblazer'

More clues about Gov. Sarah Palin's knowledge and interest in government use of the Web, from anti-tax activist Grover Norquist in the Washington Post:

She is a trailblazer in the fight for financial transparency in government, posting her state's spending on the Internet.

From the state of Alaska official Web site, here is the explanation of what the state is doing.