2010-10-22 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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department, but the more operational? Okay, the whole county is, we’re going to move to video conferencing so we’re not doing it piece meal. How does that happen within the county? Obviously it would impact the procurement and contracts. MS. CRAWFORD: I would say that in your example of video conferencing, we have not formally established a county-wide policy or a sort of a mass purchasing. While there might be some savings in going with a large scale video conferencing procurement and establishment, we did not go that direction. It really has been the departments, I think in their capacity, to take advantage of it. For instance, the Fire Department has stations all around the island and they found that it would greatly enhance their efficiency and save staffers time to video conference trainings and meetings, and they managed to set their priorities for equipment purchases so that they could do that. In general, the policy I could say, at the county, is that we support, that for increasing video conferencing as a way to reduce the cost in mobile traveling to meetings, but have not tried to formalize a certain type of procurement around that. MS. NICHOLSON: Would it make sense to you because that would maybe decrease the number of vehicle requests. I don’t know. You’re the experts on this, but it just seems to me to work more holistically, might make more sense. And I don’t know who would do it if it’s not sort of the folks that are working on procurement who would have these sort of larger issues unless it’s coming from the mayor’s office. MR. TAKABA: There are sights, county sights scattered throughout the island that has a video conferencing set up. So for instance the council room has a video conference facility. The mayor’s office has one. The mayor’s office in Kona, the council office in Kona. I’m not sure about other districts, but slowly I think we should be working up towards getting like regional areas that different departments can use. The example that Nancy gave on Fire Department is an unusual request. I don’t think departments request their own video conferencing facility. It’s more like we should be encouraging them to use what is currently available. MS. NICHOLSON: So what is the correct method for doing that when Gilbert sees these requests coming in for this equipment, and so he knows that this department is looking at it, and this department is looking at it? But if departments already vetted it you sort of act on it. Where is that intersection between the request from the various departments and going like maybe as a county we should embrace this a little bit more? How does that happen? MS. CRAWFORD: I think that’s back in the budgeting process. Because at budgeting they’re putting in that request. And we’re probably more aware of where there are already systems, the questions that we would ask. For instance if somebody who works in the county building comes in and wants to get some video conferencing equipment, we’re going to be asking about, we have video conferencing equipment. Is there some compelling reason that you can’t take advantage of what already exists? Because we actually, as Bill said, we’ve got very extensive video conferencing available now. Like in the Finance office we don’t have our own video conferencing but we don’t have reason to use it often enough to warrant having our own, so we would go down to the council room and use that. Or others who have it, Prosecutor’s Office has video conferencing 13