Last week, government technology provider Accela launched a new application for inspectors of all stripes. Accela Mobile Inspector is an app available on the iOS platform for permitting, licensing, and code-enforcement professionals. The application follows several other releases on the company’s automation platform designed to provide support for repeat processes in government work.
Federal health care reform is facing more hurdles, this time with states that agreed to move forward implementing requirements before a Supreme Court ruling on the law. Some lawmakers and health insurance advocates in Pennslyvania are pushing back on the state’s plan for its health insurance exchange saying that as currently written the plan skews [...]
New Jersey is looking at two bills that would reform exiting open meetings and open records laws in the state. Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen) introduced the bills which are designed to broaden access to government records and increase transparency. The bills follow a year of harsh criticism over the state officials love/hate relationship [...]
The US Department of Defense (DoD) is giving states funds to support the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment (MOVE) Act. The act builds on existing voting rights for individuals in the military or American citizens living abroad, by ensuring that they are still allowed to vote in their local US elections and have those votes [...]
Some Georgia lawmakers are taking a page from North Carolina’s playbook in order to limit municipal broadband projects in the state. Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers is sponsoring a bill that he says is designed to keep government from unfairly competing against incumbent broadband providers. The bill makes the same kinds of arguments included [...]
Indiana is on the verge of stripping union rights and becoming a right-to-work state. The Republican-controlled House passed a bill on Wednesday that would ban unions from collecting mandatory fees from workers. The bill follows similar measures in other states like Wisconsin, which have drawn mass protests. The bill now goes to the Senate where [...]
Rochester, Minnesota and Las Vegas, Nevada are teaming up with IBM on using predicitive analytics for law enforcement. The efforts are part of IBM’s broader Smarter Cities initiative which uses analytics and other tools to provide big data to officials about how their cities and states look and operate. CivSource spoke with Mark Cleverley, Director, [...]
Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is turning his focus to infrastructure for 2012. In an early morning address to local business leaders, the Governor underlined the need to keep his state’s infrastructure in good working condition as a cost saving measure. He also repeated his plan for a New International Trade Crossing bridge connecting Michigan and [...]
Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin is sending $37 million back to the federal government. The money was an award for the state’s health care exchange under the early innovator program. The move follows an earlier announcement from the Governor that Wisconsin will not move forward on health care reform requirements until the Supreme Court rules [...]
Toronto is working on its next city budget with the help of its citizens. City officials opened up part of the budget to public debate and input through a series of outreach initiatives designed to get people more involved in municipal activities. The city held public roundtables, posted an online survey and asked citizens to [...]