The other day I received a call from Carlie. She told me that I had been randomly selected from a group of 3,000 Chicago residents to participate in a survey about internet use and computers in Chicago. The residents were selected from a variety of zip codes to ensure a wide area of responses. I asked her who was funding the survey and she told me that the Chicago Department of Innovation and Technology, in partnership with Connect Illinois were paying the bill. This call prompted me to learn a number of intriguing facts.
(1) Carlie is a student at Rutgers University in New Jersey. When I asked her why someone from New Jersey was doing research on people in Chicago, she replied that Rutgers had partnered with the University of Chicago. Interesting that UIC partnered with an out- of -state school for a survey that focuses on Chicago, not to mention that it is funded by the City of Chicago.
(2) Carlie said that her group needed to reach 3,000 people who would answer the survey questions. Since the actual survey took about 15 minutes, I wonder how many people they will have to call before they find 3,000 people from different zip codes throughout the city to do the survey.
Carlie said they have about two weeks to finish all the calls and complete their project.
(a) Talking to 3,000 people at 20 minutes a call (5 minutes to explain the survey and the disclaimers) equals 2500 hours of talk time. If one person in ten finishes the survey, that means there are 27,000 people who decide not to compete the survey. If those calls take 30 seconds each, it adds up to another 225 hours of phone time. At the low end, there are 2,725 hours worth of surveys that have to be completed. If there are 8 hours of calls made per day, that equals 340 days of calls. If all the calls have to be completed in the next 12 days, that means 28 students have to work at this project full-time. How does their participation as callers on this survey help them with their studies? How much is Chicago paying for New Jersey students to make the calls?
(b) I discovered that The Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers is the group doing the work. Some enterprising reporter or investigator from the Better Government Association might want to call Dr. David Redlawsk, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute. He can conveniently be reached at (732) 932-9384 ext. 285. Alternatively, he can be reached via e-mail at redlawsk@rutgers.edu to get the scoop. A heavy hitter can get the answers. After all, who the heck am I to demand answers from this guy?
(3) The Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) was introduced in 2008 to add innovation to the charter of the former Department of Business and Information Services. Its mission states, “As the central information technology organization for the City, DoIT provides a number of technology and telecommunications services to departments, the Mayor, Aldermen, other city agencies, residents, businesses and tourists.”
(a) There is a spot on the website for recent news. The office has only issued two releases n the first seven months of the year. In January, a one line press release was published which stated that “The City of Chicago today was awarded the U.S. Conference of Mayor's Award of Excellence in public-private partnerships for the SmartCommunities Broadband Adoption partnership with Sprint Nextel.”
(b) The news released on June 3rd, though, is a killer! It is an Executive Order from the Mayor! The first paragraph says:
“It has been brought to my attention that several sister agencies have issued credit cards to individual employees who are authorized to use them to pay for government business expenses as defined in the agencies' policies. I have also learned that government employees have used those cards to pay for expenses such as dinners at expensive restaurants, gift cards, flowers, and, disturbingly, city-issued red light tickets. This is completely unacceptable to me and I am troubled by the disrespect this shows for the hard-earned dollars taxpayers give the City of Chicago.”
(c) I then found the log of credit card charges for City Colleges of Chicago, The Chicago Housing Authority, the Public Building Commission and the Chicago Transit Authority. What fun!
Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants Chicagoans to get more educated about technology so we can “find stuff.” I’ll alert someone who has never heard of Google. Oh, wait.. pointless endeavor. I can only conclude that he wants to find out how many of us are really looking for information about his “transparent” government policies, because one of the questions on the phone survey was, “Do you go on the City of Chicago website to look for government policies, documents or data?”
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