Gino Menchini, New York City CIO
On the surface, events did not seem to be going New York City's way as the seventh annual Technology Forum opened on October 21. The city's beloved Yankees had just suffered a stunning defeat to the upstart Boston Red Sox the night before. Adding to the gloom was word that next year's city budget was once again going to be extremely tight.
When CIO Gino Menchini read out a proclamation from Mayor Michael Bloomberg declaring October 21 "Technology Day" in New York City, the warm response from the audience was their way of acknowledging they had an elected leader who not only gets technology, he does it as well. Clearly, Bloomberg's unwavering support for IT in city government -- backed by the exuberant Menchini to carry out his policies -- has emboldened New York's IT professionals in a way that is seldom seen in other jurisdictions.
Budget problems? Fugidaboutit!
But the 311 system just happens to be the most widely publicized of the city's many IT projects and initiatives. As Menchini likes to say, New York has a "target-rich" environment, as far as IT is concerned. That became apparent during the Excellence in Technology Awards program, when the city recognized more than a dozen individuals and projects for their achievements with technology. Many of the award-winning projects were developed while the city was awash in a fiscal sea of red ink and reeling from slashed budgets. Despite the constraints, a range of departments -- libraries, police, buildings, health, consumer affairs, education -- achieved some astounding benefits using IT.
At the same time, DOITT, the city's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, raised the bar yet again on GIS as an information infrastructure for government operations and services. New York proved just how useful geospatial data is during and right after 9/11. Today, they now have the Citywide GIS Group, a newly-hired in-house team of geo-experts led by Marsha Kaunitz, director and Colin Reilly, deputy director.
Citywide GIS publicized the recent launching of New York's first intranet portal for GIS, where city agencies can go for data, maps and Web application hosting, to name a few of its services. Future plans call for 24 x 7 support for geospatial applications, improved infrastructure and greater use of Web services.
And while NYC is no different from other local governments that are saddled with legacy systems, a session on open source showed how DOITT's staff is using Linux and other open source software to wring cost savings from aging and expensive systems.
Overlooking baseball and budget problems, New York City once again showed why there's only one city called the Big Apple.