2011-06-24 Cost of Government Draft Report

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Limit attendance at off-island conferences/meetings and/or hold off-island 10. conferences/meetings via Skype or video conferencing. Hold department and division meetings via video conferencing. Utilize multimedia communication in lieu of face-to-face meetings to reduce on and off-island travel. Justification: As technology has improved, holding meetings through video conferencing or Skype has become an accepted way to do business. It would be more efficient and save the County money to conduct business using available technologies including web-based meetings venues and video conferencing. The County has the video conferencing capabilities and the IT Department indicated it needs to provide training to more County personnel in the use of this technology. If the County requires that attendance at conferences/meetings be achieved by utilizing technology, considerable time and expense will be saved. As part of our fact finding efforts, the COGC Commissioners queried County departments on the status of efforts to implement department specific recommendations from former Cost of Government Commissions. It was determined that very little follow through had occurred with regard to implementing the previous commissions’ recommendations. As such, this commission is concerned that the many recommendations contained herein may not be implemented or acted upon in a timely manner. Therefore, we have taken the following further steps to support the follow-through. a) A presentation of the final document of recommendations will be conveyed to the Mayor, County Council, and Department Heads before the end of the COGC term in June 2011; b) The written final document will be posted online for public view. c) The final document will be submitted to the two major newspapers on the Big Island (Hawai‘i Tribune Herald and West Hawai‘i Today). d) The COGC requests that the Mayor assign an administrative assistant to track the status of the tasks approved by the mayor and submit a report on a quarterly basis to him on all actions related to the recommendations. e) The quarterly reports shall be provided to the next term COGC at their first meeting. Also as part of its investigative efforts, the COGC received a presentation from the County’s Green Team. As identified by the Green Team, delivering essential local government services requires significant use of energy and resources. The COGC supports the efforts of the Green Team to identify reductions in resource use that will lend to cost savings and meet substantially objectives in County operations. In particular the COGC supports the recommendations the Green Team has put forth in its draft report Chapter 6: Priorities for Action. 5