Peter Chun

Last week, the City Council revealed its new website after months of delay. But while most agree that it is a good step, the site has received mixed reviews from people dealing with the intersection of technology and government.

The Councils’ new site is meant to be more stable than the old site, which was notorious for crashing. It offers more details on committee hearings, including direct links and briefings. An RSS subscription is now available for the committee’s calendars, and there are plans to add RSS features throughout the site in the future. Council members also have the ability to update their own pages as they see fit, and can add such features as voting records, calendars and press releases if they choose. The Council’s communications office is training staffers and even Council members on how to do so.

Cathilea Robinett, the executive director of the Center for Digital Government, said the new web site is very sophisticated for a council site. “This is an excellent use of technology with several innovative features. Congratulations to the New York City Council for a citizen-centric and citizen-friendly site.” The center publishes a yearly survey ranking American cities on their use of technology to reach out to constituents. (New York City has not been in the top ten large cities since 2002, when it ranked fourth.)

Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the Technology in Government Committee, was happy about the new site as well. She says that it is now much easier to find legislation, and finds the additional information available for committee hearings useful. But her enthusiasm was tempered by what the site didn’t have.
(more…)

Nowadays, that person sitting on the bench next to you engrossed in their cellphone screen is more likely than ever to be watching videos or reading a newspaper. This is especially true now, with AT&T’s announcement this week (via CenterNetworks) of their expansion of broadband cell phone service in Brooklyn, Queens and Northern New Jersey. 200 new cell sites will offer high speed, third generation technology, or 3G, joining downtown Manhattan and the airports, which have enjoyed the technology since June last year. Users will need to subscribe to a plan to use the new technology, and they must have compatible phones. (The iPhone is not compatible, by the way.) While users can enter any web address, not all sites are formatted for mobile phones. Verizon, the national leader in 3G technology, has offered the service here since 2005. Maybe one day soon the person on the bus next to you will be reading the Eye Opener mobile edition?