The resort is one of a growing number of municipalities that see online interaction as a public service for its residents and property owners.
Hagerstown, with a population of about 30,000, is on the front line of providing e-government solutions, said Scott Nicewarner, information technology manager for Hagerstown. In the session, “Conducting City/Town Business Over the Internet” at the Maryland Municipal League convention in Ocean City on Monday, Nicewarner discussed how Hagerstown had found a solution to providing such services to its citizens.
Like many municipalities, Hagerstown’s major dilemma was a constrained budget. It wanted to have a website with citizen interaction, but needed to find a way to do it afordably.
It did that by using open source software through Fullmoon Software of Purcellville, Va., a vendor at the convention. By doing that, Hagerstown got a “much better result that we ever thought we’d have.”
Fullmoon Software, on the Internet at www.osgovsoft.com, describes itself as “absolutely the most innovative technology vendor serving the local public sector today.”
Open source software means that there are no software licensing fees. The software application code is made available to anyone at no charge. It is also unnecessary to purchase any hardware.
Ocean City, which does have an IT department, is not using open source software. It is using proprietary software and a third party, Electronic Data Systems.
Many municipalities might not have the budget to maintain an in-house IT department, said Trevor Chidester of Fullmoon Software. They can “outsource” the tasks to Fullmoon.
Outsourcing allows the smaller towns to offer a cost-effective solution they would be unable to afford otherwise, Chidester said. Like Hagerstown, those towns could operate their websites and services on them on a Fullmoon server in the company’s data centers.
Fullmoon’s staff handles all product upgrades, patches and maintenance on the software.
Fullmoon hosts their applications and the towns pay on a subscription basis, Chidester said.
To be able to have citizens make payments for municipal services over the Internet, one Maryland county paid $4.5 million for software. Hagerstown paid only $60,000 to Fullmoon.
“You might think it’s a daunting task, but by working with a vendor, even small towns should be able to do Internet payments,” Nicewarner said.
Internet interactions may also be used to obtain permits.
That would eliminate the need for citizens to go to City Hall to learn about zoning requirements, building code restrictions, tax rates and to fill out paperwork. The citizen could also find out the status of his request online.
By using open source software, a town could also enable its citizens to request various information, report incidents or complaints, such as potholes or noisy neighbors, or ask for a service. Hagerstown does not yet accept citizen requests by Internet, but hopes to do so.
Many citizens are used to the old way of doing things, Nicewarner said. Some are used to paying bills at City Hall at the same time and same day each month. Hagerstown, however, had an extensive marketing campaign about the online payments and saw that activity quadruple.
Hagerstown hopes to expand its Internet interaction with its citizens.
If those citizens wish to speak at council meetings, but are unable to attend, Hagerstown wants that to be possible via a computer and web camera.
That capability is on the city’s wish list, Nicewarner said. Fullmoon could implement the exchange between citizens and government in its mission to assist small governments and their interactions with the public.
Autor: Nancy Powell
Quelle: Ocean City Today, 01.07.2005
