CPEC City Scan Project Garners National Acclaim

Hartford Program Promoting Citizen-based Performance Assessment of Municipal Government Earns National Technology Award

HARTFORD, Conn., September 18, 2000 -- City Scan, the grass roots initiative of the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council that equips ordinary citizens with high-tech tools to make a difference in their neighborhoods, was presented with a MOBY Award last week at the Go Mobile Technology Conference in Las Vegas. The national honor recognizes CPEC’s innovative use of mobile computing technology.

The MOBY Awards are presented by Mobile Insights, the leading information source for the mobile computing and data communications markets. The conference, attended by information technology executives, leading industry vendors and national technology media, took place at the Bellagio.

“This prestigious honor provides even more momentum for the City Scan project and validates CPEC’s belief that technology can and will play a vital role in maximizing citizen participation in municipal government,” said Michael P. Meotti, President of CPEC. Meotti attended the conference and accepted the MOBY Award on behalf of the CPEC/City Scan team.

The City Scan Project is considered a national model for citizen-based assessment of the performance of city government. The initial phase of the program took place this summer, when CPEC outfitted seven Hartford Public High School Technology Academy students and graduates with Pocket PC’s, custom-designed software and digital cameras. Their mandate: canvass five Hartford public parks and complete a comprehensive, high-tech assessment of physical conditions, providing the City with a first-of-its-kind resource for municipal improvement.

The Pocket PC software, provided by River Run Software Group of Greenwich based upon its OnSite application, featured customized pull-down menus that provided students with the opportunity to note physical conditions such as graffiti, potholes, etc., on a touch screen. The conditions were matched to digital maps, and both still and video images were created. The results are currently posted on the web at www.cpec.org/cityscan/index.htm.

City Scan is funded through a $435,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In addition to River Run Software, other supporters are Microsoft Corp., which donated Casio Pocket PC’s powered by the Windows operating system; and the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund of Connecticut, which funded the purchase of digital video and editing equipment. It was CPEC’s effective usage of customized River Run software that earned CPEC the MOBY Award.

“We were very pleased that the solution deployed by CPEC based on our OnSite software has been recognized by such a prestigious organization as Mobile Insights,” said Dr. Trilok Manocha, president of River Run Software. “We are right now working with CPEC to see how we can improve the solution by providing additional features that can benefit communities even further.”

In addition to the parks project, CPEC equipped resident volunteers of the Parkville neighborhood in Hartford with the same cutting edge tools to complete an assessment of street conditions in the venerable Hartford neighborhood. Those results will be posted on the web at a future date.

The City Scan project is designed to be on-going, so that conditions can be continually monitored and updated, said Meotti. Recruitment efforts are being made right now to place another team in the field. Results of the initial field work will be formally presented to city officials this fall.

City Scan will expand to Stamford next spring, and CPEC is exploring further expansion to other Connecticut cities and towns. In addition, Meotti said, the program is being closely monitored by observers of municipal government and grass roots organizations across the country.

City Scan has received significant notice in the national media. A complete package of feature stories and related links was recently featured on the PBS NewsHour On-Line edition (www.pbs.org/newshour/extra); the story was reported on Civic.com (www.civic.com), a leading web site for the municipal government community; and a feature story was posted on Microsoft’s “Presspass” page (www.microsoft.com/presspass), a favorite resource for technology media.

With funding from Microsoft and River Run, CPEC recently completed a two-minute video of the program, which was displayed at the Las Vegas conference. For a copy of the video, please call CPEC at (860) 722-2490, or Dennis Buden Public Relations at (860) 646-6920.

Hartford-based CPEC is an independent, nonpartisan and not-for-profit organization that provides information, technology and programs to increase the capacity of citizens to be involved in public decision-making. Originally founded in 1942 as a center for public policy research and analysis, CPEC is now engaged in fostering local school and government excellence and accountability through increased citizen involvement.