On December 18, 2008, the Wall Street Journal ran the article “Compiling a To-Do List for Obama’s New Deal”. Now, seven months later as new stimulus funding discussions are in the news, I was struck by how eTown makes this earlier list relevant and actionable. First consider Transportation and Infrastructure. In eTown, residents and town hall are tied together through a web based service request system. Each resident becomes a sensor for the integrity of the transportation infrastructure and town hall is able to quickly address deficiencies while repair costs are still low. Another area, Energy Efficiency, is improved by replacing paper with digital communications and allowing interaction with a virtual town hall from home and business vs. travel by car and truck to physical energy consuming buildings. Similarly, School Building Repairs benefit from the same type of online service request system used for infrastructure with the added benefit of being able to share town and regional personnel, equipment and vendors to reduce the cost and time of maintenance and facility improvement actions. Finally, available Broadband and wireless communication connections enable the interactions of eTown. Digitized Records in the form of land and property information, codes and standards, plans and strategies, and meeting proposals and decisions provide the context for enabling residents, businesses and town officials to drive continuous improvements. In summary, eTown is the realization of the “New Deal” vision. Fortunately, the building blocks are all available and the stimulus incentives are in place for any town to become an eTown.
Welcome to etownblog.org, a Web site created as a public-service information resource regarding municipal cost savings through better, more efficient local government.
This site is hosted and moderated by Progeos, a web-based software company dedicated to municipal cost savings and improved services. As part of our mission we have devoted a portion of our resources to help create this conduit to information, collaboration and cost savings measures to help towns and cities across the United States.
Please read through the posts on this blog for links and stories about municipal cost saving measures.
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As you may know by now the federal government has been using www.recovery.gov to keep citizens informed about the spending of the federal stimulus dollars. But what is exactly on www.recovery.gov? The following will explain some of the features and highlights:
Once users reach www.recovery.gov they are greeted with a graphic that displays some of the featured programs and spending forecasts. Users can scroll through these featured stories to learn about how their tax dollars are being used. Also on the home page are a number of press releases about the latest available and spent funds, including a number of stories about recent education funding throughout the country.
To find out about funding opportunities a user can click on the Opportunities link at the top of the page. Here users can find links to recovery-related jobs, grants and business opportunities with the federal government. Towards the bottom of the Opportunities page users can find out what is happening in their own state. Users can visit a state’s recovery page to find out about local projects, available stimulus money and future grant opportunities. To access each state’s recovery web page visit this page.
The final section of www.recovery.gov that I would like to share with you today is the Investments page. Here users can view the general trends in stimulus spending and what sectors of the American economy are receiving stimulus funds. Users can also view spending by category, state or by agency. For state spending, users can click their state on the interactive map to view the federal stimulus dollars being spent.
Overall, www.recovery.gov, coupled with your state’s recovery website provide a good starting resource to local municipal leaders to learn about how federal stimulus dollars are being spent and about future funding and business opportunities. For more information visit your state’s recovery site to learn more about how your municipality can apply for future stimulus dollars.