Bacon's Rebellion

A Million Here, a Million There…

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by

James A. Bacon
in

… pretty soon it adds up to real savings.

The Virginia Department of Transportation has developed a teleconferencing capability as a tool to cut down on the expense of VDOT officials traveling to Richmond for meetings all the time. According to a recent communication I received from Commissioner Philip Shucet, the state has spent $1.025 million on teleconferencing technology since 2001. VDOT “conservatively” estimates a savings of $10.475 million in avoided travel and time costs. That’s a 10 to 1 ratio. Not bad.

Better things are to come. That $1.025 million includes significant upgrades only now being put into place to improve coverage as well as the quality of the video and sound equipment. Shucet may be in charge of building and maintaining roads, but he also believes that any rational transportation strategy includes implementing alternatives to using the roads.

There has been some discussion on this blog regarding the potential for squeezing more efficiency out of state government. If VDOT can save money through teleconferencing, so can most other state agencies. And teleconferencing is only one idea of many.

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  1. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    As we wring out hands over sprawl and gridlock, VDOT does to be making real progress. They’ve been very open about what they’re doing and what they see as the issues–Secretary of Transportation Whitt Clement was an RT-D guest columnist last year and Commissioner Shucet has penned op-eds from time to time. I never noticed much in the way of a response to the things they’ve written, making me wonder if we might have better leadership on the operations side than we deserve.

    I’m glad VDOT is teleconferencing, but a state government committed to efficiency wouldn’t just let one agency reap these benefits while the others kept driving around the state, one person per state vehicle. It would encourage other agencies to use the facilities, spreading the cost and the savings. It might just be a “blip” among the billions and billions spent, but it would send a message and create a climate.

    Maybe it’s actually happening and I’m just not aware of it. Of course, as many meetings as occur in economic development, you’d think one might be a teleconference.

  2. E M Risse Avatar
    E M Risse

    Will:

    For a review of what Whitt Clement, Philil Shucet, and others say see “The Perfect Storm” (12 July 2004) at db4.dev.baconsrebellion.com

    EMR

  3. Phil Rodokanakis Avatar
    Phil Rodokanakis

    Has anyone in Richmond heard of WebEx or Microsoft’s Live Meeting? A simple Google search using keywords such as “Online Conferencing Solution” produces a number of vendors that already provide such services.

    Instead of reinventing the wheel, why not use a commercial service? I’m sure that the $1 million they’ve spent already could have bought them countless of WebEx sessions.

    And I agree with Will; why is VDOT be the only state government agency experimenting with teleconferencing?

  4. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    That’s the trouble with state government. You can have an innovator like Shucet pressing the envelope on new ways of doing things. But migrating those innovations across the bureaucracy can be very difficult. I contend that the pace of re-engineering will be really slow under the best of circumstances. If the state deals with its problems by increasing taxes, then most people get fat and happy, and there’s no pressure to reform either government processes or dysfunctional patterns of land use.

  5. Will Vehrs Avatar
    Will Vehrs

    I’ve always wondered what is discussed at the Governor’s cabinet meetings. Don’t they do what lower level agencies do: each division head reports on stuff they’re doing and occasionally the big boss will say, that’s cool, why don’t all of you do it that way? Everybody jumps. If the big boss checks back, sometimes the cool thing will actually get done in more than one place.

  6. Becky Dale Avatar
    Becky Dale

    You realize, don’t you, that state public bodies cannot have an electronic meeting except under special rules in FOIA. Local public bodies may not have any electronic meetings. The section on electronic meetings in FOIA is under revision (SB711 and SB1196 have passed through the Senate General Laws committee). The proposed definition of “electronic meeting” is one using communication means that are audio or combined audio/video. So a meeting conducted online (video only) would not fall under the definition. They mean to limit meetings to those that are audio or video/audio. However, it could be argued that since a chat room would not fall under the definition, it’s not regulated by the rules. The rules would apply to only meetings held by audio or audio/video means. I pointed this out to the committee members but no one seems to care enough to fix the problem, which they could easily do by writing a restriction instead of a defintion.

    Under the proposed rules, a quorum must still physically meet in a central location before other members can join in electronically. Notice must be posted seven working days in advance.

    VDOT meetings of employees would be not public meetings, would not have to abide by the rules (or be open to the public at all). Commonwealth Transportation Board is a public body, would have to abide by FOIA.

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