October 16, 2006
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Chris Myers, an advocate for accountable, quality, and citizen friendly public education, will be announcing an innovative Web site to help the Toledo Public Schools save money.
"The Internet has evolved into a medium for people to come together to share knowledge and ideas; this is the idea behind Internet 2.0. Government can learn something from sites like digg.com, flickr, myspace, youtube, Wikipedia, even the OpenSource movement and harness the knowledge its citizens possess to assist in solving problems." Chris said. He added, "This site is my attempt to harness this potential of the community to help the district financially."
Chris said, "Toledo Public School administration and even some school board members have said the district can do no more to help the budget. Since they seemed to have thrown up the white flag of surrender, we need to apply more heads to the problem and this Web site will be the forum to do so."
Chris will announce his site and ask the community to participate. He will also detail the reasons behind it at the press conference and answer questions from the media.
The press conference will be held at the Toledo Business Tech Center, 1946 N 13th St on October 17, 2006 at 2 PM.
As an additional note, after the press conference tomorrow I will link the URL for this new website as an update to this post.
UPDATE: As promised - the website: ideasfortps.com - Chris prepared a written statement which I have included in full in the comments.
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A copy of the prepared statement from Chris Myers for today's press conference:
Today we are at the Business Technology Center a place where innovative companies such as Corillian and IPAYX which centered its operations trying to give Toledo a foot up in technology. IPAYX in particular has been ahead of everyone else in electronic bill delivery and it is great to have a company that is on the leading edge here in Toledo. Today I ask why can’t government be on the leading edge of engaging its citizens in using technology?
We are here today to announce ideasfortps.com. But this idea is not about technology, it is about people coming together to help out the district. I get frustrated when I hear some administration officials and some board members say that nothing else can be done to improve the budget. I took this as a challenge and started this site. To give the district credit they only have a few minds working on the problem of dealing with the budget issues and a few minds only have so much capacity for problem solving.
In the past year, technology and trends have changed. There has been a flurry of Web sites made popular by people coming together to share ideas, to network and to contribute their talents. Web sites like digg.com and youtube.com are sites where user rated popular stories or videos rise to the top. The OpenSource movement and Wikipedia are where people come together and contribute resources or knowledge for the betterment of a product or solution. This trend of the Internet facilitating people coming together to network and share is what is called the Internet 2.0. This inspired me to combine the ideas of the Internet 2.0 to help the society; we can call it Government 2.0.
In the spirit of Internet 2.0 I created ideasfortps.com. It is a forum for people to come together and submit ideas to the district. But it is interactive because users can comment on the ideas submitted and even rate the different items on how good of an idea they think it is.
Participation is needed. In order for this site to be successful, I need many minds coming together to comment, rate, and even submit their own ideas. Anyone with an Internet connection can do this, including, students in the district, staff, administrators, business employees and owners, or anyone that that cares enough about the district and wants to help out.
Now TPS can have 50, 500, or maybe even 5,000 minds working on their budget problems. The district will be better off for it as well as the city. And, maybe the district and other governments can learn a new way to dialog with residents and embrace the concept of Government 2.0 using the ideas behind the Internet 2.0.
Community ideas pay off. During my scouring of the Internet for ideas that other districts have implemented to save money to populate ideasfortps.com, I came across Tucson Unified, which through their BrightIdeas program have saved 2.1 million dollars from community suggestions. While Tucson is twice the size of TPS, significant savings can come from ideas submitted from the community. Currently on the site there is a buffet of ideas that total 10 million dollars on the site. Not all of them could be implemented, but I am hoping that more savings will be submitted once it is opened to a wider audience.
So, today I encourage anyone hearing this announcement to go and visit the Web site, comment and rate the ideas there or even submit your own. Together we can do this. Let’s show the district we do have good ideas. User privacy will be protected, so you have nothing to lose and everyone has everything to gain.
In closing, please help get the word out. Your assistance is important in making this project successful. Thank you.
I got the chance to check it out before it became public and I'm impressed by what Chris has done. After the election I hope to have more time to be able to be more involved.
:-)
”Chris said, "Toledo Public School administration and even some school board members have said the district can do no more to help the budget.”
I have an idea, let’s ask the rank and file workers, the grunts. I suspect that they can point out LOTS of waste and inappropriate spending. They can almost anywhere you go. The problem is that those at the top aremore than likely the problem, and egos being egos…
”UPDATE: As promised - the website: ideasfortps.com - Chris prepared a written statement which I have included in full in the comments.”
Bookmarked!
And, I need to go over and post my idea ;-)
I encourage anyone to participate to help refine the ideas there.
This is only the first site demonstrating ways citizens can help and participate in their government.
Chris Myers
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