CivSource spoke with Arul Isai Imran, product manager for the app about what services it provides for workers in the field. He explains that by using the app on any iOS enabled device, workers in the field will be able to upload inspection and investigation reports, interact with GIS data and annotate field images.

“Previously, when you had workers out in the field, a laptop can be too cumbersome or smart phone access too difficult without an interface. We’ve created this to get around those issues and provide more flexibility,” Imran said.

The feature set is designed to automate repetative tasks. Workers that repeat the same kinds of comments on reports can save these into the application and create a list to choose from rather than adding comments manually each time. The application also supports GIS data allowing workers to annotate specific addresses. All data created and submitted in the field can then be uploaded instantly to the system in the main office or department.

So far, the company has had over 100 downloads of the application preview in the iTunes App Store. Anyone can download the app to try out the features. Imran explains that this preview version allows users to get comfortable with the application and also provide feedback on needed features. If an agency or offices wishes to link the app to their main system, they can work with the company to onboard.

The company will also be making tools available for developers who wish to build onto the app or develop their own and plans to hold a developers conference in March. Versions are also being created for Android and Windows smart phones and tablet devices.

The Georgia ruling, Cardinale v. the City of Atlanta was the result of a lawsuit filed by Matthew Cardinale, a local first Amendment activist, against the City of Atlanta over failure by city council members to record non-roll-call votes at a February 2010 retreat. The decision reverses a Court of Appeals ruling that existing open meetings rules which do not require meeting minutes to reflect non-roll call votes.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Carol Hunstein said, “While the act provides for public access to agency meetings, it also fosters openness by, among other things, requiring agencies to generate meeting minutes that are open to public inspection so that members of the public unable to attend a meeting nonetheless may learn what occurred. …To adopt a contrary holding that agencies possess discretion to decline to record the names of those voting against a proposal or abstaining in the case of a non-roll-call vote would potentially deny non-attending members of the public access to information available to those who attended a meeting.”

In New Mexico, the Senate has approved an amendment to the state’s “Sunshine Portal,” that will require the state to post the names and salaries of a state contractor’s employees. The bill is somewhat controversial, as opponents of the measure feel that it is unfair to require privately contracted employees to have their salaries disclosed on a public website, however the measure is largely supported by transparency advocates.

The bill is the latest move by state lawmakers to increase the transparency of state government. As CivSource reported recently, the state also asked for input on the state budget from citizens in an effort to increase civic engagement and create more awareness about state budget priorities.

Federal health care reform has been controversial since it was first introduced. Upon its passage, several states mounted legal opposition claiming that the bill was too costly to implement at best and unconstitutional at worst. Some of those challenges have had limited success, the Supreme Court is expected to take up the issue and make a final ruling later this year.

Some states however, moved forward with implementing requirements as passed. Now, in a few of those states implementation is facing new hurdles as both advocates of the law and its critics raise questions about how the law is managed in practice.

Pennsylvania is moving forward on plans to create a health insurance exchange, one of the key state level requirements of health care reform. Even before health care reform required the creation of an exchange the state was aggressive in monitoring and challenging insurance rates and coverage in the state. Observers felt that the health insurance exchange would further codify this process and put more power in the hands of consumers.

However, once the plan was released insurance exchange supporters have lambasted state government saying that the plan is a giveaway to insurance companies. According to a piece in The Morning Call, leaders of the Pennsylvania Health Access Network, a coalition of health reform supports are saying that the plan as written favors insurers and will not provide any more affordable options for consumers.

Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has asked the federal government for $33 million to implement a state run exchange, but his plan shows multiple privately run exchanges. These exchanges would be managed more by the insurers themselves than as an overarching state run exchange. As CivSource noted last year, some insurers already have a running start on this, WellPoint is creating its own privately run exchange to compete with federal and state managed exchanges. Governor Corbett filed for a challenge to the law when he was attorney general, and critics of the plan cite the multiple exchange concept as a way of letting corporate insurers retain control of the marketplace while still filling the exchange requirement.

In Ohio, consumers and lawmakers are facing similar top-down mixed messages on how to implement health care reform. Governor Kasich has been on record opposing health care reform since the law was passed. However, his state also moved forward on plans for an exchange and other requirements in order to guard against ‘federal takeover.’ Now, the state’s two key health care appointees are locked in a battle on implementation as one supports health care reform and the other does not.

The Mansfield News Journal is reporting that the state is taking a two track approach to health care reform requirements: moving forward on some while simultaneously stalling out on others until the Supreme Court ruling.

Greg Moody, leader of the Office of Health Transformation is using guidance from health care reform to focus in on creating preventative care initiatives and finding ways to lower the cost of health care statewide while improving service delivery. On the other side, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who heads Ohio’s insurance department, has called health care reform a “catastrophic law,” and is doing everything she can to halt its implementation by boycotting the law through the Department of Insurance.

Ohio is part of the group of states challenging health care reform at the Supreme Court. For her part, Taylor has already returned a $1.3 million grant won in Governor Ted Strickland’s administration in order to provide consumer’s with information about their rights to insurance and how to file complaints. She has also indicated that her department will not be applying for or accepting any new funding to implement health care reform requirements – including a health insurance exchange currently being debated in the state legislature.

Payrolls may have increased further had it not been for the significant number of layoffs of government workers. The continued layoffs are notable, California has been cutting positions for years and moving others to part-time only. As CivSource reported previously, the state has already laid off tens of thousands of people.

State payroll accounts for about $18 billion of the overall budget, a figure which successive governors have been trying to keep in check for decades. Forced furloughs were the most recent way Governors tried to save money. However, as state budget observers have noted recently, furloughs are only a temporary and largely ineffective budget solution.

According to McClatchy, the largest increases came at the Department of Mental Health and the Department of Motor Vehicles with state workers in those offices clearing salaries well above $500k.

Payroll increases are a double edge sword for states simultaneously looking for ways to cut the budget while fostering economic growth. The McClatchy account noted that the increases contributed, “$140 million in wages to the Sacramento economy in 2011, contributing to a budding recovery. Previous forced furloughs dampened much of the city’s economic activity. Despite this, state workers are being thrust into the limelight over high salaries during tough economic times. Public workers salaries are often the subject of criticism from those that dislike the idea of government jobs.

The bills will allow anyone to make an Open Public Records Act (OPRA) request. Previously OPRA request were limited to state residents only. The bill also allows for requests to be made through means other than the existing OPRA form, provided that the request contains the required information and indicates that it is an official OPRA request. Finally, the bills expand OPRA responsibilities to auxiliary governmental organizations like the League of Municipalities. The state would also be allowed to email records, cutting the administrative costs of responding to requests.

Weinberg wants to bring OPRA into the digital age in order to make the state more responsive to modern modes of information transfer.

“In this day and age, if I submit an OPRA request on a cocktail napkin, so long as it contains the necessary information, that should be enough,” Weinberg said in a local press account. “The guarantee of transparency under OPRA shouldn’t stop at our borders, nor should it be dependent on pro forma mechanics.”

New Jersey officials have been sending mixed signals on transparency over the last few years. Governor Chris Christie ran on promises of increased state transparency but has done little to support that. As CivSource reported previously, the state comptroller released a report noting that less than 10% of state governmental entities were transparent. At the end of 2011, state lawmakers went further and pulled law enforcement payroll information off the Attorney General’s website.

The Wisconsin Rapids Tribune is reporting that thousands of dollars are already being spent state wide to simply provide facilities suitable for a special election. Additional data from TPM says that the overall cost for the recall could be $100 million or more in a mix of campaign spending and costs to taxpayers.

Municipal clerks throughout the state have explained that the net cost of the recall will depend on which date the recall is held and if potential Democratic rivals will have a primary. Holding both a special primary and special election will add significantly to the bottom line whereas a special election held in addition to an already scheduled election will keep costs low. Given the amount of outside money flooding into both Democratic and Republican war chests, a low cost solution is unlikely. Although the resulting budget damage may have serious ramifications.

The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board which is tasked with validating the signatures on recall petitions is also facing some steep pushback from signatories. Originally, the Government Accountability Board planned to post the names and addresses of those who signed petitions for recall online. However, residents that are victims of domestic violence or other attacks and those that would simply like their privacy are raising objections to posting this information online.

The Walker campaign was already given the signatures and now has 30 days to challenge their validity. 540,000 valid signatures are needed to force a recall. Recall supporters claim to have doubled that.

CivSource spoke with Kim Nelson, executive director for e-government at Microsoft, about LiveBallot an application that is part of the company’s DemocracyLive product which will provide online ballot access for residents of Florida and Virginia. The solution is already in place and since voting began for the Republican primary in December, over 1,200 Florida voters from 40 countries have accessed their ballot using LiveBallot, through an online web portal.

“Florida and Virginia submitted their applications on the basis of using LiveBallot,” Nelson explains. California was also awarded funds from DoD to use LiveBallot and will be opening their portal up for voting ahead of their primary in June.

The MOVE Act requires states to transmit validly-requested absentee ballots to overseas voters no later than 45 days before a federal election, when the request has been received by that date, except where the state has been granted an undue hardship waiver approved by the Department of Defense for that election.

LiveBallot gives states the ability to meet the requirements of the MOVE Act, by allowing citizens to access the portal, view and print their ballots. In the past, many overseas voters have not received an absentee ballot in time for it to be voted, returned, and counted. With LiveBallot, voters use unique identifying information to access their voter-specific ballot. Upon return, the signature on the ballot is matched with voter registration records to verify the voter’s identity.

“It’s important to note that LiveBallot only allows voters to view and print their ballots. This is not online voting,” Nelson explains. “Each state has their own requirements for how ballots may be returned and residents are made aware of that but it is important not to confuse this as an online voting mechanism.”

California, Florida and Virginia election officials received Federal Voter Assistance Program (FVAP) funding guaranteed by the MOVE Act to purchase the LiveBallot technology.

Under the terms of the bill, municipalities would be prevented from paying for communication networks with tax or government revenue or from subsidizing subscription prices. The bill also requires that local governments hold public hearings and a special election before becoming a broadband provider.

The special election requirement goes a step further than the North Carolina legislation of the same flavor. Three cities in Georgia, Tifton, Marietta, and Acworth currently provide publically funded broadband networks but, Rogers calls them unsuccessful and the government an unfair competitor to private business. He claims that the bill would “level the playing field.”

“The private sector is handling this exceptionally well,” Rogers said in an Associated Press account. “What they don’t need is for a governmental entity to come in and compete with them where these types of services already exist. We’re not outlawing a local government entity from doing this, but if they’re going to compete, they can play by the same rules and ask the voters if it’s okay before they go out and spend all these dollars.”

Rogers claims are dubious at best. According to the National Broadband Map, Georgia ranks 20th in the nation for broadband access. According to the forward of a report by Rich Calhoun, Program Director of the Georgia Technology Initiative, “As I traveled through the state to talk with leaders in municipalities, counties and community anchor institutions, I found that many places throughout Georgia indicated that they did not have access to affordable or sufficient broadband services. Telecommunications firms who have made significant investments in Georgia indicated that in some areas of the state the return on investment would not qualify for further investment at the present time.”

According to data in a previous CivSource piece on the state of municipal broadband, “just over 50 cities in the US have their own fiber networks and fewer than 100 have cable networks.”

However, incumbent broadband providers have a significant interest in ensuring that they are the only players in the broadband market, despite open unwillingness to build the infrastructure needed to foster a broadband economy in the United States. The requirements of the bill most notably – special elections – will erect high cost barriers to creating municipal broadband networks even for more affluent cities in the state. Ensuring that a market with little to no activity will go uninterrupted by communities attempting to provide needed infrastructure for themselves.

Rogers claims that these requirements only make governments “play by the same rules,” as the private sector. Although we are left to question when was the last time a private sector provider held a special election before it began an initiative or was barred from using or raising capital to start a project.

The vote came after weeks of protest from Democrats in the statehouse involving walk outs and amendments designed to slow down or derail the bill. However, after several days of protest, the Democrats eventually conceded and allowed the vote to go forward. The vote in the Senate will happen sometime late next week after what is expected to be several more days of protest from the public and Democratic lawmakers alike.

Just under half of states are right-to-work states. After the 2010 elections brought in a swath of anti-union Governors, several states – most notably Wisconsin and Ohio passed measures to strip union rights. The measures resulted in significant public backlash including successful recall elections in Wisconsin and a new recall action against the Governor.

However, some Governors, specifically Rick Snyder of Michigan have said publically that they do not think pushing right-to-work is worth the fights seen in other states. Snyder has said that while he sides with those pushing legislation, he doesn’t think it makes sense to push at this juncture. Indiana, is home to some of the strongest union forces in the country and they are expected to use this time between votes to press hard on derailing the measure in the Senate.

In Rochester, the Rochester Police department will use advanced analytics software from IBM to mine, share and extract intelligence from critical data in order to improve police investigative and prevention programs. Law enforcement will then be able to identify local “hot spots,” and allocate resources in advance.

The application, IBM InfoSphere Identity Insight, provides users with specific data from existing law enforcement and public safety databases to aid in investigations and prevention. “The technology will allow law enforcement officials to see broad patterns about activity in their city and focus on prevention,” Cleverley explains.

In Las Vegas, police there will use IBM’s COPLINK crime analytics software, a product already in place in more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide. COPLINK allows officers to accelerate their investigations by enabling them to make non-obvious connections based on information that was previously spread across the department. COPLINK will also allow the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department to forge information sharing agreements with other law enforcement agencies that already use COPLINK inside and outside Nevada.

Las Vegas police were already using parts of the i2 crime analytics software from IBM – the broader suite which includes COPLINK, giving the department a more comprehensive crime analytics platform.

IBM is working to provide a broad spectrum of analytics solutions for cities Cleverley said. Last year, CivSource reported on another predictive analytics solution used by the Memphis police department. “All of these tools fit along the spectrum of analytics capabilities,” Cleverley said. “You can leverage analytics in a variety of different ways depending on the desired data and outcomes. Each city is using the tools in slightly different ways based on what makes sense for them.”

Cleverley noted that these types of applications can also help make the case for projects like the Public Safety Broadband Network. By giving law enforcement the infrastructure to handle data transfer, and communications at higher speeds throughout more locations officials will also see an improved user experience with applications like COPLINK.

“These tools can really help with the investigation process. For example, witnesses often recant in the hours after reporting a crime. What if law enforcement officials could replay a 911 call for the witness at the first visit, or show them some of the information they already have? It could save time, and strengthen the overall investigation process,” Cleverley said.

IBM has put together a YouTube video that demonstrates COPLINK’s capabilities here.