 |
Home | Contact Us | Press Room | Site Overview | Help | Login | Register |
 |
 |
| About NCSL | State & Federal Issues | Legislatures | Legislative Staff | Meetings | Bookstore | Legislators & Staff Only |
| NCSL Home > Legislative Staff: Staff Sections & Networks > NALIT > | Add to MyNCSL |
NALIT NewsletterSummer 2005Inside This Issue:Chair's Corner Chair's Corner NALIT activities are in the normal summertime rhythm, and I’m pleased to say that there are many exciting updates to tell you about. These past few months as NALIT Chair have gone by fast, and I’m really looking forward to our next year. We’ve laid groundwork over the past few months that will be helpful to our various projects through 2006. While we got a late start this year, I feel as though we’ve really made up for it with the hard work put in by so many of you. A few committees are working diligently right now to address core objectives prior to our meeting in August. One committee is the Outreach Committee. This committee’s purpose is not only to reach out to new members, but also reconnect with current members who may not be as active as they once were. In addition, this committee is working on ways to bring IT representation from several new states to this year’s professional development seminar in Rapid City. Besides bringing in new members, this committee is tasked with the chore of recommending ways to actively engage current members and make sure that new people keep coming to NALIT events. Ann McLaughlin, from Delaware, is the chair of the Outreach Committee. If you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to contact Ann to share your ideas. One thing that might be especially helpful to the Outreach Committee is if you know IT staff from other states (who currently aren’t involved with NALIT). Perhaps you could volunteer to help contact them on behalf of NALIT and give a testimonial about your experiences with the organization. Another committee that will have a lasting impact for NALIT’s immediate future is the Survey Committee. Andy Harvey, from Nevada, is the chair of this committee. The Survey Committee’s assignment is to evaluate the survey of technical data submitted by all of the various Legislatures. We all know how useful it is to find out who might be using a certain software, or who has a certain policy in effect for their IT department. NALIT has had a database for several years, courtesy of Sharon Crouch Steidel and the Virginia House of Delegates IT staff. This committee is examining ways to update this survey and find ways to make sure it remains a useful tool in the future. They are evaluating all aspects of this, and will present some initial findings at the Annual Meeting in Seattle. The ultimate goal is to find a way to keep this information just a few clicks away, but not make it so burdensome that people don’t keep individual state information updated. How handy it will be to find out information about all the states who are using a particular program, at any time you want to look it up. And keep in mind that this will not replace the NALIT listserv or our other informal communication channels, but rather this will be a starting place for technical research. Perhaps it will give you ideas of who you might be able to contact for further information. Think of this as a directory of who’s doing what. The Annual Meeting Planning Committee has finalized the schedule for our meeting in Seattle. It’s another great line-up of sessions, and I’m happy to announce that NALIT is once again co-sponsoring joint sessions with other staff sections. This is an excellent opportunity for NALIT to continue the transformation from “the techie folks” to a trusted resource that the other staff sections can rely on for information. Along these lines, a few NALIT folks will act as technology trainers in a follow-up to an NCSL and NALIT session, “Technology for Legislators.” This training opportunity will allow NALIT members to interact with legislators and other interested people, and act as trainers on any technology related issues. Every opportunity like this helps to keep NALIT visible and active within the NCSL organization. Finally, the PDS Planning Committee is starting to plan out the meeting in Rapid City. Lou Adamson and Scott Darnall, our South Dakota hosts, are working with the committee to ensure that this seminar will be another in a long line of successful and informative meetings. In wrapping up, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the past few months as your Chair, and I am very excited about our plans for the upcoming year. Remember that NALIT is all about you, the members, so if you have any thoughts or feedback, or just want to find out how to be more involved, please let me know. I look forward to seeing you in Seattle and/or Rapid City.
Wireless Under the Golden Dome Those of you who came to the Vermont State House last fall during the NALIT Professional Development Seminar will recall that our 180 legislators have no personal offices and precious little space to call their own. They share a dozen workstations in the legislative lounge to check email, write the occasional note, and browse the Internet. During busy times, there are long lines waiting for each machine. To alleviate the problem, the Vermont Legislature implemented wireless this past year. The new wireless system gives legislators the ability to work anywhere in the State House, the office building next door, or, on sunny days, the front steps. The legislators love it. By the end of the session, almost 75 of them brought in their personally owned laptops and signed up for the service. A dozen or so actually purchased laptops specifically for this use. Our wireless system is unusual in that the same network is used by legislators, legislative staff, state employees, and the public. The system is independent of state government networks and provides access to the Internet only; therefore it does not require any special security measures to protect our internal systems. All wireless users have free access to the legislative web site so that all may participate in the legislative process. However, access to any other Internet site requires a subscription, which covers the costs of maintenance and operation. The legislature pays an annual fee per connection for the legislators and the staff; other state government departments do the same for their users. The public can purchase a yearly, monthly, or daily subscription with a credit card. Legislators use the system primarily to access our web site, where almost all legislative documents are posted, and to check their email through a secure web interface. The web interface works well for most legislators, but some find the web client limiting. We have recently begun installing the full GroupWise client on laptops, which has been very popular. A number of legislators have asked for the same client on their home machines. Legislative staff can make use of our secure Citrix gateway to gain full access to our internal system and services. This allows, for example, a lawyer to sit in committee and draft amendments as they are debated. Again, this is very popular – our legal staff is often stretched very thin during the session and this almost allows them to be in two places at once! Agency secretaries, department commissioners, and many other state employees spend large amounts of time in the State House and use the wireless system to keep in touch with their offices, essentially telecommuting during the session. The press uses it to submit articles, lobbyists use it for email, activists use it for web research, and the public uses it to keep up with what is going on. The system was installed and is operated by an outside contractor. Engineering a system that can provide uninterrupted coverage in a large granite building built in the 1850s was a job far beyond the capability of our IT staff. The core of the system is a panel, installed over top of the House chamber, which contains seven transmitters and 64 antennas. This panel can support up to 500 simultaneous users, far exceeding the number of systems likely to be used in the House Chamber any time soon. Located throughout the State House and the office building next door are 17 repeater units, which receive the wireless signal from the House Chamber and rebroadcast it to each other and to the users. This provides uninterrupted coverage for the entire State House campus. The system provides connection using 802.11a, b, and g standards. This system, as currently implemented, is simple, secure, and seems to be making our users happy. We have few security worries because the wireless system is totally separate from our internal systems. We have few maintenance worries because the system is supported by the contractor. We have few equipment worries because legislators use their own laptops. What more could we ask?
The Need for Application Portfolio Assessments By Peter Capriglione I became manager of our business applications section a little over two and one half years ago. I was surprised and impressed to learn that our application section – 14 staff members – supported more than 90 in-house and purchased applications. While some of the applications are straightforward and others are more complex, they all are important to the users who are responsible for keeping data current while performing their legislative duties. Applications can be as simple as a parking garage program so police can manage North Carolina General Assembly parking spaces. Others programs are much more complex, such as those that must gather information from multiple databases – legacy, homegrown and purchased – and generate various forms of output. Information from these complex applications include: employee information for our personnel office, bills and amendments from our legislative drafting system (GARDS), map data for redistricting, documents for the Internet and Intranet sites, reminders to the senate and house committee notice system, which in turn helps members’ legislative assistants write timely committee notices, which leads to an electronically transmitted item for inclusion in the calendar, which is then released by the principal clerk’s office … and on and on it goes. More than 90 percent of these applications were developed in the past five years. We have developed systems that report massive amounts of data, compiled over many legislative sessions, to an audience with a diverse set of needs. However, those needs require the same basic information to comprise reports, populate documents, and present information in many different formats. My question was whether all of these systems had been developed in an efficient and effective manner. That is, “Are we making use of common functions, where applicable, to allow us to streamline development, ease the maintenance, enhance the process and enable us to maintain our high rate of responsiveness to the growing needs of our users in the area of data retrieval, reporting and processing?” There can be resistance to the thought of rewriting applications just for the sake of rewriting. The old adage “if it ain’t broke don’t …” came into the thought process. Coming from the system management area, where hardware is rotated out every three to five years and there is a need for more data and “features” that are available at gigabit speeds, I had reason for pause. I wanted to make sure we were not going to be caught in the quagmire of having outdated applications when the tools of the trade will be changing and the demands of our users will be increasing. As NALIT experienced through the process of attempting to develop common standards for legislative systems, it can take years to work through all of the technology hurdles that require a good deal of analysis in order to produce systems that conform to legislative standards and, more importantly, meet the needs of the legislative community. As I await the final report from the task force that was put together to look over our entire application portfolio, I continue to look at what we do. I realize the legislative environment offers many challenges and has an extraordinarily high set of standards, whether realized or not. I need to listen to the people that do the work and involve them all in the decision processes to determine if and when we move forward or maintain the status quo. Whatever the case, we need to keep continually aware of the rapid changes in technology, in both the hardware and software areas. Moreover, we also need to be attentive to the growing needs of our user community to insure we deliver the highest quality of service and better functioning applications in order to maintain a high level of responsiveness to the business of the legislative environment.
Managing Electronic Records By Terri Clark As Kansas looked for ways to reduce spending, printing expenses were identified as an immediate savings. Recognizing the expense of printing agency annual reports - usually bound documents in full color - the 2003 legislature passed a bill allowing agencies to file their annual reports electronically. Simply providing the legislature a link to the report stored on the agency website met the requirement. While this initiative worked to reduce printing costs, questions arose concerning agency website archives. Are the websites maintained over time? Is the content archived, and how? Is it still available publicly? How are documents migrated forward as software is upgraded? Passage of this bill highlighted the urgent need for archival preservation of digital records and publications. As we investigated the issue, many other digital documents were identified as being at risk of being lost. Even though these documents may still use the printed copy as ‘certified’, i.e., committee meeting minutes, we are moving toward authenticated digital copy. To address these concerns, Kansas has implemented Electronic Recordkeeping Guidelines. These guidelines help agencies develop a method to maintain and archive their own electronic records. We are also developing a central repository for agency electronic publications named Kansas State Publications Archival Collection (KSPACe). These initiatives have executive support from all branches of government. In addition, we’re closely following a national program from the Library of Congress. It’s important to note that although these are ‘inter-agency’ projects, they are critical to the legislature. The task of drafting the guidelines was assigned to the Electronic Records Committee (ERC). ERC membership includes the state archivist, the state librarian, state universities, multiple state agencies including the legislature and judicial branches, and some county government participation. Cooperation across all branches of government has been critical to implementation of the electronic records guidelines and KSPACe repository. Key points of the guidelines include:
The guidelines naturally led to the creation of an Electronic Recordkeeping Plan template. This tool helps agencies assess risk associated with their records and determine the best methodology for preserving and allowing access to records. The KSPACe central repository effectively shifts responsibility for maintaining digital publications from the agency websites to the state archivist. KSPACe was developed using the open source software DSpace, jointly developed by MIT Libraries and Hewlett- Packard Labs. The KSPACe pilot project was initially funded by a grant and is currently maintained by the state archivist staff. The original plan called for agencies to load their own reports and apply the correct metadata but this proved too cumbersome. Publications are now loaded by the state archivist staff with initial metadata; the state librarian supplies the final metadata. The ERC is now working to expand the scope of the repository. On the national level, the Library of Congress has created the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The NDIIPP is working to become the change agent for digital preservation. Of particular interest to states is a toolkit being designed to help determine capability to preserve digital records and offer preservation strategies. We plan to apply this toolkit to the KSPACe project. NDIIPP also has a ‘matching fund’ grant program to assist with preservation initiatives. There are many considerations and risks associated with electronic records, and the types of records and publications available electronically grow daily. Although email is recognized as an important element of any electronic record discussion, the unique nature of email deserves an independent discussion. Clearly state government must be proactive in preservation of electronic records. Links:
NALIT and You! By Ann McLaughlin One of the best investments of time and energy you can make as a legislative professional IT staffer is to join NALIT. NALIT is a group of your peers: full of ideas, suggestions, experiences to share and understanding of your challenges. This article will highlight a few of the advantages of being a NALIT member. NALIT and NCSL are offering excellent sessions for IT staff at the NCSL Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington from August 16th through August 20th. In addition, there are social events where you can meet and talk with your peers from other states and from countries around the world. Luncheons, a Dutch treat dinner, a welcoming reception and business meetings – the opportunities are many. Check the program online or in this newsletter. Once a year, usually in late September or early October, NALIT holds its Professional Development Seminar (PDS). This year, the PDS will be hosted by our friends from South Dakota in Rapid City from October 5 through October 8. This is our opportunity to focus on what we do back in our legislative IT worlds. We can look to the future, find ways to fix the present and learn lessons from the past from our fellow IT staffers. Sessions are divided into technical and management tracks. Everyone is welcome to attend whichever session is most pertinent to them. These sessions are full of information from members of NALIT and professionals from the IT industry. This year, some of the suggested subjects for sessions are public wireless, personnel matters, voting systems, application development processes, archives, disaster preparedness and many more. Looking for another great resource? The NALIT section of the NCSL website http://www.ncsl.org/nalit is full of information. Here you can find fellow IT staffers listed in the directory. Do you have a question you would like to put before your peers? Sign up for the listserve, post your questions, and have them answered. NALIT members have participated in a survey full of information about what is happening in legislative IT in other states and the results are available online. The NALIT Survey Committee is scheduled to review the existing information, the method of updating information, and will ask states for their latest information later this year. The site also has archives of presentations and papers from previous NALIT sessions as a helpful research tool. Visit the website and see what you can gain from it! During the upcoming months, members of the Outreach Committee will be working to encourage people to join with us in NALIT to enrich your careers, share your knowledge and become one of a group of people who are always willing to help each other. The Outreach Committee members and their email addresses are listed on the back page of this newsletter. Let us know how we can help you learn, and be learned from, through NALIT! You’ll also find a listing of the NALIT officers who you can contact as well. Hope to see you in Seattle or Rapid City!
Call for Nominations Election of new NALIT officers for the upcoming year will take place at the NCSL Annual Meeting in Seattle on August 16-20. We encourage anyone interested in nominating someone or being nominated to serve as an officer to contact the Nomination Committee by August 1, 2005. The Committee will present a slate of officers for a vote of all NALIT members present at the NALIT Business Meeting on Thursday, August 18, 11:45 am-1 pm. Members of the committee are:
Serving as an officer or director for NALIT is a great way to get involved in a great organization. We encourage you to give it some thought and then contact a member of the nominating committee. Looking forward to working with you!
NALIT 2005 Professional Development Seminar Come to Rapid City, South Dakota on October 5-8, 2005 for the NALIT Professional Development Seminar. Rapid City is close to some of the most intriguing and beautiful attractions in America: the inspirational Mt. Rushmore National Memorial, the visionary Crazy Horse Memorial, and the tranquil Black Hills. The NALIT seminar provides the unique opportunity for legislative information technology staff to exchange experiences with and learn from colleagues and IT experts in other legislatures. Seminar Sessions
If you have suggestions for additional sessions or would like to be involved in any of the seminar sessions, please contact Pam Greenberg at pam.greenberg@ncsl.org, Lou Adamson at lou.adamson@state.sd.us or Scott Darnall at scott.darnall@state.sd.us. Social Events On Thursday evening, October 6, we’ll board buses to Deadwood, where the entire city has been designated a national historic landmark. We’ll start with a reception, then allow you time to have dinner and explore the attractions on your own. Our closing event on Saturday evening, October 8, will begin at the Crazy Horse Memorial with a dinner of authentic Native American cuisine. There will be time to explore the memorial’s museums and sculptor’s studio, then we’ll head to Mt. Rushmore National Memorial. At dusk, we’ll watch the lighting of the gigantic sculpture of four great American presidents - Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln. Make plans to join us for an informative and enjoyable seminar! Check the NALIT Web site at www.ncsl.org/nalit for updates and details as our planning process continues. Brochures and registration information will be mailed to NALIT members in August.
Bill Tracking Made Easy By Luke Jambois Although most people have never tried to track legislation through the legislative process, those who have know how daunting a task it can be. Even with the advent of the Internet and creation of legislative web sites, this task has improved very little. That is why over the past eight years the Nevada Legislature has been cultivating a system into what is now called Personalized Bill Tracking (PBT). Before PBT, users were required to keep a list of the bills that they were interested in and then regularly check the web site for any new information on each bill. This may seem to be reasonable to a person that is following one or two bills, but for someone tracking more bills, it could easily become a full-time job. The goal of Personalized Bill Tracking is to help the general public track legislation that interests them. PBT does this by reducing the time it takes to track a number of bills and by increased accuracy in what the user sees. Personalized Web Site The users can then select reports that deal only with their selected bills. Instead of sorting through details on all 1,400 bills, PBT allows the users to focus their reports to a select few. One of the most used reports is the Date Planner. This report shows a list of all upcoming committee hearings for the user’s tracked bills along with dates, times, room numbers, and agendas. There are also several other reports that deal with past committee actions, floor actions, and bill status. Email Notifications Overwhelming Public Response Over the past two legislative sessions, the total number of PBT subscribers has risen from a few hundred users to around four thousand. In the future, the Nevada Legislature has plans to further integrate PBT with the traditional legislative web site, allow users to create customized reports, and make PBT content available through web services so that organizations will be able to further customize content to their own organization. The legislature also hopes that these new features will continue to expand the site’s popularity and increase the public’s ability to participate in state government. For more information on Nevada’s Personalized Bill Tracking feel free to visit http://www.leg.state.nv.us/pbt or email Luke at ljambois@lcb.state.nv.us
Upgrading Voting Technology By Tim Rice In late 2002 the Illinois Senate asked the Legislative Information System (LIS) to investigate and propose a solution that would bring ownership and control of the voting system to the General Assembly. The first step was to investigate what other states had been able to accomplish. A site visit was made to Carson City, Nevada, because of the similarity in systems to be replaced and specific interest in the methods used to accomplish that. We came away quite impressed with what they had done and greatly encouraged that we would be able to meet our goals. Further research confirmed this, and work was begun in earnest in March 2004. The first phase of the project involved replacing the software and the PC that controlled the voting system hardware. This was the focus of the most concern with the existing system (reliability, availability, and serviceability issues) and needed to be stabilized. The areas that needed immediate attention were:
This phase started with a lot of nitty-gritty work. A guide for interfacing with the existing hardware had to be developed by recording and analyzing all the communications that occurred. When the 2004 spring session went overtime, restricting access to the chamber and the existing voting system, an application was developed to simulate the existing environment, allowing development and testing to continue. Once session ended, there was constant testing at each step of the development process, culminating in filling the chamber on several occasions with staff to simulate the functions of the Senate (we even brought in our children once during the Christmas holidays). The new system was implemented on January 12, 2005, for the beginning of the 94th General Assembly. As the first phase consisted of the controlling software, it was transparent to the members and almost everyone else, with the exception of the staff who directly use it. However, the new system now controls everything that occurs. Calendars are loaded into the system and used in the chamber. Roll calls are taken, recorded, and distributed to the necessary applications. Special messages are produced and displayed. The large displays in the front of the chamber and the smaller ones used by the President, the Secretary, the floor leaders, and in the outside corridors are all controlled by the new system. The President’s console, the Secretary’s console, and the members’ voting buttons use the new system. Requests to speak, turning microphones on and off, and activating the video cameras that broadcast to the Internet are all processed through the new system. In short, the new software is controlling all of the existing hardware. When the Senate adjourned the spring session on May 31, the new software had successfully handled everything that was required of it. In the meantime, work was well underway on the next phase of the project. Phase two involves replacing the President’s console and the Secretary’s console with touchscreen panels providing contextual views. Touch-screens will also be used to replace the floor leaders’ static displays, having been successfully piloted during the last month of session. In addition, after doing research on replacements for the two large ‘scoreboards’ in the chamber which show the measure under consideration and the roll calls, a vendor (Barco) was chosen and new displays ordered. These 10’ x 7’ LED displays will be dynamically reconfigurable (unlike the current units) and have the ability to display video. Schedules call for all of the second phase work to be done by this September. Beyond that, alternatives are being considered for a third phase to replace the hardware connecting the voting stations on the members’ desks with the rest of the system. Based on the experience we have gained in the Senate, we are also beginning discussions with the House on what services we can offer, starting with their existing system and adding the enhancements they want. All these changes and improvements have been made possible by the work done in the initial phase. The successful completion of that project was a giant step in achieving the goal of having in-house control of the Senate voting system. Not only does it provide a basis for the next steps to be taken, it has given confidence in the success of those steps. For those interested in numbers, the actual coding for phase one took 800 man-hours (not including about 240 hours for the groundwork of determining the hardware interface); 160 of those hours were to develop the simulation application, 640 to develop the actual voting system application. In addition, over 1000 hours of testing was done, all but 50 of it involving the simulator. Scripts were run against the code to check changes and find errors and anomalies, sometimes for days at a time. This tool was a major contributor to our success, both because of the sheer volume of testing that it provided and because it meant that access to the chamber was not necessary to continue working. Just as Nevada and others helped us get started on this project, we want to leverage our experiences to assist other legislatures. One opportunity to do so occurs this fall. The American Society of Legislative Clerks and Secretaries (ASLCS) will be holding their 2005 Professional Development Seminar here in Springfield September 22-27. We also will be participating in a session on Friday, August 19, at the NCSL annual meeting in Seattle. The session description is noted in the NCSL Annual Meeting Preliminary Agenda. Finally, we are always willing to schedule individual site visits, if that would be beneficial. We’ll make the resources available to give you the information you need. Whether in person or not, though, we will be happy to share the lessons we have learned and help other states achieve their goals.
NALIT Seeks Bids from States to Host Seminar St. Paul; Baton Rouge; Sacramento; Richmond; Springfield, Ill.; Carson City; Harrisburg; Burlington, Vt.; Rapid City …What do all these cities have in common? Each has been the host city for a NALIT Professional Development Seminar (PDS). Hosting the NALIT PDS can be a lot of work but also very rewarding. The NALIT Site Selection Committee is currently seeking bids for seminar sites for Fall 2006, 2007 and 2008. The committee will review bids and recommend a site. The recommendation is then submitted to the entire NALIT Executive Committee for a vote. Criteria for site selection include:
If you are interested in hosting the NALIT Seminar, or if you would like more information about hosting, please contact Pam Greenberg at pam.greenberg@ncsl.org for a site bid form and more information, or contact members of the site selection committee, including Duncan Goss, Vermont (Chair) dgoss@leg.state.vt.us; or Michael Adams, Colorado, michael.adams@state.co.us; Scott Darnall, South Dakota, scott.darnall@state.sd.us; Jim Greenwalt, Minnesota, jim.greenwalt@senate.mn; or Ann McLaughlin, Delaware, ann.mclaughlin@state.de.us. The deadline for seminar site bids to be considered by this year’s committee is August 12, 2005.
Washington Develops Electronic Bill Book for Committees By Ken Conte One of the Washington House of Representatives’ most well-received and effective innovations during the last several years is its committee “Electronic Bill Book.” This system was initiated during the 2002 legislative session as legislators became familiar with and began using the relatively new laptops and network connections in the hearing rooms and on the House floor. Staff of the House Health Care committee took the first steps by developing a method for displaying committee documents electronically from a shared file drive. The project was intended to permit legislators and staff to have easy access to materials prepared for committee hearings from any location connecting to the legislative network. Secondarily, it was intended to reduce the labor-intensive staff work needed to prepare pre-meeting information packets and paper bill books used at each meeting and to reduce the reams of paper consumed. Eventually, this project became known as the “Electronic Bill Book” or EBB. In its earliest version, the EBB used PDF documents with Acrobat file structure to present documents electronically to the committee. These documents generally included hearing agendas, bill analyses, bills, amendments, and other similar documents. The project was extremely popular with the Health Care Committee members, many of whom quickly preferred using their laptops in hearings instead of the heavy three-ring binders that committees traditionally used. These legislators also spread the word, and, as other legislators began asking about electronic access to committee documents, a new pilot project was initiated. A team from the Office of Program Research and the Legislative Service Center (LSC) was assembled to develop a system that would allow any interested committee to use the electronic document access and display features that had served the Health Care Committee so well. The LSC team leaders worked with committee staff to determine the requirements for EBB and to develop priorities for the first round of development. The pilot started with well-defined goals and had leaders who remained focused on the main objectives: developing a system that would be uniform for all committees, be easy to use for staff and members, enhance administration of committee hearings and public participation in the hearings, and take advantage of the Legislature’s current information system technology to the extent possible. As developed, the EBB:
By the 2004 session, three committees had been selected to test the new EBB. One committee using the system chose to go entirely paperless. Training for both staff and members was facilitated by excellent documentation developed by the LSC team. Second stage enhancements that added new systems features such as mass printing were successfully implemented. During the 2005 session, all committees were given the option of participating in the EBB pilot. Most committees used EBB to some extent, some by both making documents available and displaying the documents on screen during the hearing and others by only making the documents available for laptop use. Ultimately, most committees reduced their paper consumption and found that staff were responding to fewer requests for documents and other information. In fact, the EBB became so popular that the demand to file documents not traditionally included in the paper bill books became a management concern. At that point, some protocols were identified for naming documents and determining when document filing was appropriate. The House Appropriations Committee provides an excellent illustration of the use of the EBB in place of paper bill books. Using the EBB for its one-day House bill cut-off hearing, the Committee heard 65 bills, reported out 55 bills, and considered over 200 amendments. The EBB made this hearing more efficient by eliminating the need to prepare and constantly update 35 paper bill books, by making it easier to adjust the agenda throughout the hearing, and by making it easier for members to navigate through a very large number of documents and a very ambitious agenda. The EBB team includes many people who contribute to the smooth running of the House’s legislative business. This important project is a great example of excellent team work between the committee staff and the information technology staff to provide a new way of conducting that business.
Editor's Corner Hello again fellow NALIT members. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying summer activities. As we all know, there is no end to new ideas and innovations in technology. Therefore, I offer you this newsletter so you can stay up to date with technical and managerial aspects of information technology in other states. The articles provided by the authors provide some thought provoking ideas and topics that can be built on for discussion at future sessions at the NCSL Annual Meeting and the NALIT Professional Development Seminar. In fact, several of these topics are on the agenda for these meetings as shown in earlier pages. The planning committees have been working hard to develop these and other topics, and to find speakers who will present solutions that are applicable to legislative environments. There are many talented, hardworking, and professional technology people that work for legislatures throughout the country. The newsletters, the annual meetings, and the PDS events are coordinated by people who serve as NALIT officers and committee members, and they do their best to bring this information to you. As my duties as secretary come to an end, I must say it has been a pleasure creating this newsletter for you. I enjoyed hearing from the authors and working with them to make a product that keeps NALIT members informed. I thank them for their time and patience during article submission and editing. I do hope that others step up and contribute to the good of the NALIT cause. This truly is a group where camaraderie is high and new members are welcome. Please contact officers listed on the last page if you want more information. Thanks, and hope to see you at future meetings,
|
© 2008 National Conference of State Legislatures, All Rights Reserved
Denver Office: Tel: 303-364-7700 | Fax: 303-364-7800 | 7700 East First Place | Denver, CO 80230 | Map
Washington Office: Tel: 202-624-5400 | Fax: 202-737-1069 | 444 North Capitol Street, N.W., Suite 515 | Washington, D.C. 20001
