| Open Government Plan Participation |
Over two and a half years ago one of the first newsletters released by our company made reference to the new Open Government Plan. A plan which focuses on gaining the input from interested parties to help tackle some of the challenges faced by government. With this new forum through which to engage the public, citizens have a chance to interact with key decision makers in a way that surpasses previous methods of communication including contacting local or state representatives. The value of the opinion you wish to share will be much higher as it will be heard directly by those who would implement the change than by an intermediary who would suggest to others to pass a bill to help implement the change.
Finding the solution to problems such as improving public services and increasing public integrity relies heavily upon the thoughts of the citizens as these citizens themselves are key to solving the problems propounded. Without such input, spending in local services may be diverted to certain public services which, although may be important, may not be as important to the citizens within your locality. For example, in a region considering cuts to either parks or mass transit, it may be that the cuts to mass transit would allow more cost savings but the citizens desire the use of mass transit more than parks. In addition, there may be a situation where local community groups are willing to step up and groom the parks to keep them open rather than see them closed during peak summer hours. It is important for citizens to be in close contact with their local community leaders or they can never offer areas for improving services or prioritizing the services which are most important to them.
Especially important are opinions that may investigate efforts previously unexplored or that engage more recent technology which had not in been previously available to aid with existing efforts. Some perfect examples of unusual methodology to improve situations include the recent development of utilizing crowd-sourcing to help with volunteer efforts in Haiti or the use of Data.gov for independent contractors to investigate the water quality and cleanup efforts made during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. These are examples involving emergency response efforts but just as easily could be used to suggest improvement in public services. Thinking outside the box could provide the perfect boost needed to suggest ways to improve financial efficiency or better respond to public opinion.
No matter what the situation is you would like improved or the nature of the improvement you would suggest, the government want to hear how your particular expertise may help tackle some challenge currently at hand. At the link provided below you can read the questions currently at hand and offer your opinion as to how matters could better be resolved:
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| Visualizing Recent Economic Trends |
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Although statistics are frequently given within news reports it is often hard to track trends over long lengths of time or to compare numbers based on weighted averages. Often detailed historical analysis is given infrequently or contains a bias based on which news source is providing it. However, recently the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a series of charts detailed the economic recovery over the past few years. Hopefully this analysis will help provide insight for policymakers attempting to predict where the future years will bring us. Please use the link below.
Visualizing the Economic Recovery
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| Client Implementations |
Fletcher & Fletcher is pleased to announce we are in the process of implementing our web-based budgeting solution for Highlands County, FL and City of Sarasota, FL. Within the next two months we expect to have our software implemented within a virtual server provided by each municipality. We will be providing full reporting capabilities utilizing Crystal Reports and expect to provide GFOA award winning final budget documents as well.
We want to thank our clients for their continuing loyalty and hope that the next budget cycle sees improvements above and beyond what they have come to expect from our old client server budgeting system.
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