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Start spreading the news about technology – New York is seeing advantages to computers and modernizing information

It may not seem like much, but at $34 a ton, even ordinary street salt can break a budget in a city that slathers 300,000 tons a year on its roadways. So New York’s Sanitation Department dispatched a new generation of salt spreaders this winter, loaded with satellite tracking devices and sensors that can measure precisely how much salt is dropped per mile and report back when there is any waste.

By Winnie Hu, New York Times

http://www.oaklandtribune.com/Stories/0,1413,82~10834~2047297,00.html

Similarly, city environmental officials are using technology to conserve their resources in monitoring the city’s far-flung reservoir system in upstate New York. Last year, they deployed their version of the Mars rover — known as RUSS, for Remote Underwater Surveillance System — to take readings once done by inspectors in boats.

The Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is also rolling out an interactive three-dimensional map of the entire cityscape this spring that could someday all but eliminate the need for on-site surveys.

It is expected to be used for everything from collecting property taxes to bolstering security at big events to developing architectural plans for the city’s 2012 Olympic bid.

This is all part of a technological revolution under way in New York City government that is rapidly changing the way that its agencies carry out their functions and provide services to residents.

From rationing street salt to sending out daily e-mail messages on parking rules, once-lumbering bureaucracies are adopting the latest scientific advances as a means of cutting costs, increasing efficiency as well as ensuring greater accountability after a series of corporate and government corruption scandals.

Many of these changes have been promoted by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, whose pet project last year was the creation of a 311 hotline to centralize information about city services and take complaints from residents at the touch of a button. Under his administration, spending on technology across all city agencies has risen steadily to an estimated $1 billion this year, even as spending in other areas has been trimmed.

The move to modernize is also part of a larger trend, one that many cities, long known for their dusty ways, are embracing.

William Lehr, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that since the late 1990s, municipal governments, large and small, have been rushing to take advantage of what he described as a convergence of better and cheaper technologies.

"You don’t have to be the CIA or General Motors or Boeing to take advantage of computing and information technology anymore," he said. "Cheap computing, the Internet and wireless data services now make these capabilities available to small businesses, local governments and consumers."

Bloomberg and his commissioners view technology as an essential component for improving governmental operations.

"I have always believed, if used correctly, technology makes people more efficient," Bloomberg said in an interview. "It does not replace people. In the end, it’s in their interests."

But the new technology is also meeting resistance from critics who question the high start-up costs, and from some city workers who said they experienced glitches in the transition.

Last month, for instance, the Buildings Department started using mapping technology that was supposed to schedule plumbing inspections more efficiently, by grouping the appointments together by location. However, some inspectors were initially bounced from the East Side to the West Side and back.

"That was certainly one of the rough spots," said Mark H. Topping, a deputy buildings commissioner, adding that the system is now running smoothly. The new technology, with its seemingly boundless capabilities, has also raised concerns about privacy. Norman Siegel, a civil rights lawyer said employers will increasingly be able to keep tabs on workers at any moment, even during lunch hours or on weekends. "It’s going to raise serious and substantial issues about privacy for city workers as this technology is employed in the workplace," he said.

But others believe that the Big-Brother elements of the technology will have little practical effect. Harry Nespoli, president of the Uniformed Sanitationmen’s Association, which represents 6,000 city sanitation workers, said the satellite-tracking devices in the salt spreaders were meant to enhance communications within the department and, in that sense, were no different from the radios already in place.

Each of the 27 salt spreaders purchased by the Sanitation Department in December comes with a black box, which contains a Global Positioning System receiver for picking up satellites signals to pinpoint the spreader’s location, and sensors that record air and ground temperatures and monitor salt output.

The salt spreaders, which cost a total of $4.2 million, automatically relay all this information to a centralized database, which is watched closely by sanitation officials during blizzards. In January, the system showed that two salt spreaders, in the Bronx and in Queens, were dispensing nearly twice as much salt as was needed. Officials radioed the drivers, and the settings were adjusted.

"The idea is to build a better piece of equipment and be more productive," said Commissioner John J. Doherty, who next plans to put satellite tracking in garbage trucks.

While satellite tracking devices are hardly cutting edge — they have long been used by hikers and boaters — the technology has been slow to catch on in New York City because all the skyscrapers can block or distort signals from satellites in what engineers call an "urban canyon effect."

Such problems prevented the New York City Transit from installing satellite tracking in its buses in the late 1990s. Transit officials said that they have hired a consultant to move forward with plans to place the tracking devices in its 4,500 buses, as well as in vans used to transport the disabled.

Gino P. Menchini, commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, said that tracking technology has improved so much that the city is now studying a host of uses for it, including in police cars and ambulances, and even taxis. In addition, his department has been testing wireless communications.

One of the more sophisticated technology experiments is unfolding at the Department of Environmental Protection, which deployed three Y-shaped robots to float on the Schoharie Reservoir at a cost of $180,000.

Each robot, which is powered by solar panels, has a probe that can be lowered into the water to take temperature and pH readings. In addition, the probe tests for chemical and biological pollutants as part of an early warning system for terrorist and security threats.

In other cases, the technological improvements have sped up, and streamlined, long-held practices.

For example, the Health Department’s food service inspectors have switched over to hand-held Acer computers for reporting findings that were once recorded on paper forms, and then manually typed into a database — a process that could take days and was often fraught with errors.

Elliott S. Marcus, an assistant health commissioner, said that inspectors now enter their findings with a few keystrokes, and download that directly into a database, eliminating the need for data entry and microfilming altogether. "Instead of spending two and a half hours on a restaurant, now we can spend two," he said.

Marsha Beecher, a senior health inspector who started using the computer in 2002, said that using the new technology has kept her more focused on her job and sped up the inspection process. "Not everyone likes change, but I think the majority wanted it," she said.

Some city agencies have also turned to technology to make their operations more open to scrutiny, and safeguard against embarrassing lapses. For instance, the Buildings Department spent more than $800,000 to include hand-held computers, satellite tracking devices and electronic records in its inspection process after 19 plumbing inspectors were arrested in a bribery scandal.

The program, known as Pipes — Plumbing Inspection Portable Entry System — uses mapping technology to schedule appointments and track inspectors throughout the day for better planning and accountability.

Councilwoman Gale Brewer, chairwoman of the Technology in government Committee, said that while she supported satellite-tracking devices and hand-held computers, she would like to see even more investment in consumer-oriented technology that could be shared across agencies.

"I think some of these gadgets are fine, but that’s not the whole story," she said. "We are still very far in terms of providing consumer services, where you can actually do things online instead of in line."

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