Back in the “technology dark ages” of 1986 when I first ran for the Littleton City Council, a group of Littleton citizens was agitating for a website, to be run by volunteers, that would list community events and activities. The then-city manager was resistant, fretting that if the website succeeded, the city would be pressured to take it over. He saw (correctly, as it turned out) that success eventually would require hiring a webmaster, which would in turn add to the city’s budget.
How times have changed. Today most Colorado cities and towns not only have a webmaster, but offer websites that are interactive. Aurora, in particular, has taken that effort to a fine art.
In Aurora, you don’t have to travel to the police department to file a report about a fender-bender, head to court to pay a traffic ticket or run to the library to renew a book. You can go online to do all of these things. You can also apply for a building permit, sign up for a recreation class, book a tee time, pay your water or utility bill, reserve a room for a meeting or watch a streaming video of recent city council meetings.
You can view an interactive map of your neighborhood that will show you the location of nearby schools, parks and golf courses, while also providing information about individual properties such as assessed valuation, taxes, etc.
If you’re a retailer, you can pay your sales taxes through the Internet.
Aurora’s array of online services is so impressive that the city has been named the most technology-advanced city in America by the Center for Digital Governments, beating out larger cities such as Chicago, Miami, San Diego and Washington, D.C.
Mark Pray, information technology director for Aurora, says one of the things he’s most proud of is that Aurora “does with 50 IT employees what bigger cities do with six times as many people.”
Pray credits the vision of elected officials, a demand for efficiency from top management, and a “push for excellence” from other departments for changes in how the city does business. The information technology department, he says, has been transformed from a “back office that supplied financial information on a mainframe computer” to an office that interacts daily with citizens on the Internet. It’s a change that has greatly improved employees’ job satisfaction, he says.
More interactive features are on the horizon in Aurora this year. “The last frontier for local governments is bringing technology to the field,” Pray states. So in 2008, Aurora will emphasize helping code enforcement officers work more efficiently. Armed with laptops, they will soon be able to view a history of run-down properties on a secured website and print a warning or ticket without returning to the office. Aurora building inspectors already use a similar system; they get their daily assignments online and work remotely, minimizing travel to and from city hall.
Eventually, Pray believes that Internet services, shared between governments, will be a reality. “Citizens don’t care about geographic and political boundaries,” he points out. When they want to reserve a park for a picnic, they don’t care if the park is owned by the state, a city, a county or a special district. “They just want to use the park,” he says, predicting that governments will be completely transformed by shared information technology services. “The concept is exciting. It will save on costs and speed efficiency,” he says.
Aurora was not alone in winning an award from the Center for Digital Government. Colorado cities ranking in the top 10 of smaller-city categories were Arvada, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Lakewood, Pueblo and Westminster. All are to be commended for moving access to services out of city hall and into the community. Stay tuned for even more innovations that seemed unimaginable back in those dark ages of the late ’80s.
Susan Thornton (smthornton@aol.com) served 16 years on the Littleton City Council, including eight years as mayor. Her column appears twice a month.
