PowerPad

Given how up-to-date and on top of things our IT department seems to be when it was announced that the Mayor and members of Council were getting new tablets, we in The Other Dunwoody assumed it would be one of these 1983 classics. Au contrare! Our Lords and Ladies are to be equipped with the latest iPad[1] that Apple has to offer.

Those few sad regular readers might suspect this will become a rant railing against wasteful spending in our new City, but this is no grant-grubbed police robot, this is a tool. And not just a tool for those who touch it, but for those citizen taxpayers who bought it.

Turns out this tool isn't compatible with the pathetic excuse for online streaming that our outdated if not otherwise incompetent IT staff has been foisting on mere citizens for years. Now they're foisting it on the Mayor and Council and as we all know that is the City Within The City that really matters. And matter it will when those that matter find out what they cannot do with these shiny new toys. Heads will (and well they should) roll.

While blinding anger is a necessary call to action, Council would be well advised to consider a few things. First fire them all. IT jockeys are a dime a dozen and since they are on contract this should be administratively straightforward. Second, set clear measurable goals. Like "get the CAD system online by [date certain]" or "publish speed sign data in CSV format by [another date certain]" or "establish system to publish all signed city contracts by [date certain]" or ... you get the idea. In a word, transparency.

And lastly, don't expect you have to do everything in-house. You probably don't anyway, our current train wrecks are poor management decisions on technology and by technologists. Since we love all things Plano, let's steal one more thing from them: their Swagit technology. They enjoy the benefits of modern core technology : HTML5/H.264 instead of the deprecated orphaned Silverlight crap Dunwoody uses. What's better are the usability features Swagit offers. Wouldn't it be way cool to be able to click on an agenda item and immediately fast forward to that part of the Council meeting? Well we won't be able to do that in Dunwoody with our current set of technologists.

Perhaps a fix is on the way. Let's all hope we have another instance of "when it affects Council it effects a change".

[1] FWIW, the original PowerPad was compatible with the Apple IIc.