I really appreciate the work that Andrew Gilmartin’s been doing with his attempts to bring my home town’s government into the 21st century. His goal is to increase public participation in the Town of South Kingstown, and to this end, he’s petitioning the town to adopt modern technology for publishing information and inviting the community to participate. One of his early posts, “A call for a new kind of town hall” explains:
We need our public documents, meetings, and other artifacts online. We need to be notified about additions. We need to be notified when they have changed. We need to be able to comment upon these online and have this commentary considered. These new tools of participation are not ancillary. They are as primary as the existing ones.
Doing this is not a great technical challenge. The software development industry routinely uses these tools everywhere and everyday. Doing this does not require a great operational cost. The tools are free, the storage and computational costs minuscule, and the support costs reasonable. The most challenging cost is to the school’s and town’s processes. It is not that more work will be required of officials and staff but that the work is done differently. The difference results in making visible to online tools the workings of the school and the town.
Despite the fact that the South Kingstown Town Council flatly refused to even study his proposal, Andrew is still pressing on, and I hope he succeeds. As someone who grew up in SK, graduated from high school here, and got a college degree here, I can tell you we need this. I’ll be reflecting on Andrew’s experiences when we next return to the polls, and I’ll be encouraging everyone else I know to do the same!
You can keep up with Andrew’s progress at South Kingstown, RI Now.