Virginia on Top in Digital States Survey
Virginia, along with Michigan, Utah and Pennsylvania, led the way in the 2010 Digital States Survey conducted by the Center for Digital Government.
Michigan and Utah both received A grades, while Virginia and Pennsylvania each received an A-.
Virginia was particularly recognized for its best practices in Public Safety,
The Virginia Corrections Information System (VirginiaCORIS) is a cross-boundary project led by the state corrections department that unites offender management for more than 4,000 users — prison institutions, probation and parole officers, and the Virginia Parole Board — to manage more than 100,000 offenders at 115 locations. Launched in modules from 2008 to 2010, the system now communicates with and is used by the Virginia State Police, attorney general and courts. More than a dozen legacy systems, including one 32-year-old mainframe system, have been retired.
and Open Government
Virginia’s statewide business intelligence initiative provides the foundation for several innovative citizen engagement websites. For instance, www.open.virginia.gov lets users view performance metrics for the state government, research state and local government expenditures and revenues, and compare budgets to actual spending. Virginia’s Commonwealth Data Point, produced by the independent auditor of public accounts, also provides information on state and local government expenditures and revenues. Furthermore, it lets users track government credit card transactions, population levels in prisons and schools, and government work force levels. Virginia’s budget site provides current budget information for the state by linking to the executive budget document and providing searches of the budget bill database.
Support Grows for Fairfax Police Citizen Review Board
Virginia’s largest jurisdiction is moving towards instituting a civilian review board for its police department reports the Connection Newspapers.
Next month, the Fairfax County Police Department is expected to issue a long-awaited report about the potential for a citizen oversight board . The effort has been slowly building momentum since last year, when an as-yet-unidentified police officer shot and killed an unarmed driver on Richmond Highway. That led several neighborhood residents and open-government advocates to start calling for the kind of citizen review board that exists in many places throughout the country. Now, in advance of the formal review, the effort has received an endorsement from the chairwoman of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors.
How Many New Liquor Stores Would Your Area Get?
The Old Dominion Watchdog does the legwork to show how many new liquor stores would be in each jurisdiction in the state if Gov. Bob McDonnell’s privatization proposal succeeds. The number of new stores in a given county would range from 0 for several of the smaller counties in Virginia, to 98 new stores in Fairfax, Virginia’s largest jurisdiction.
Faster Access to New Laws
The Office of Law Revision Counsel has just launched a pilot project to make updates to the U.S. Code available to the public more quickly. The public will now be able to see how recently-enacted legislation is broken apart and reconstituted into the U.S. Code in a more timely way.
An In-House Evangelist for Data.gov?
From Nancy Scola at TechPresident:
Bill Alllison finds an intriguing job posting. GSA is listing an opening (or Request for Information, at least) for “an Evangelist for Data.gov Open Government”
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