Oakland County rated No. 1 digital county in America; two eGovernment awards

The Center for Digital Government recently recognized two of Oakland County’s eGovernment programs for its 2009 Digital Government Achievement Awards – its Video Center and the Blogin’ Café.The Video Center is located on the county’s website and the Blogin’ Cafe was featured at last year’s Arts, Beats & Eats festival in downtown Pontiac. The awards recognized these programs as first-rate ideas and collaborations on digital solutions that benefit citizens. Oakland County sees this as a sort of electronic evolution of government that provides more with less. The idea is that the old ways of deeply rooted government processes where certain people look at certain sheets of paper decade after decade can be turned on its head thanks to the new economy.Now it can do such work with fewer human resources while still dispensing more information to more people. This new automation provides more information in a convenient way.”Many times they’ll go to the web first before they pick up the phone or get in the car,” says Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland County. “We believe the needs of the consumer are changing.”They also see this as a way of effectively cutting costs without reducing services in a time of ever-present budget shortfalls. It’s a line of new, innovative thinking officials are aggressively pursuing and why Oakland County was recently rated as the No. 1 digital county in America.Source: Phil Bertolini, deputy county executive and CIO for Oakland CountyWriter: Jon Zemke