City of New York
Queens Community Board 3
Technology Advisory Committee
Meeting Report
Meeting Time: March 31, 2005 from 7:30 to 9 PM
Location: Board 3’s District Office
Attending: Thomas Lowenhaupt, Committee Chair
Darryl Hoss, Committee Member
Jimmy Smith, Committee Member
Richard Cecere, Community Board 3 Chair
Jeffrey Saunders, Public Member
Eugene Atkins, Public Member
Giovanna Reid, District Manager
The following items were addressed:
1. Audio Access – We will take a first step toward providing audio access to community board meetings by recording the next committee meeting and making it available on the board’s website. To that end Eugene Atkins will research appropriate meeting-table microphones with the hope of having one available during the committees May meeting.
2. QPTV – Queens Public Television provides many opportunities for community communication. To better avail the board and district of these resources we are looking to place a board representative on QPTV’s advisory board. At the next monthly meeting we will seek a board member who will actively participate on QPTV’s advisory committee. Should no board member be so inclined, Eugene Atkins, an active member of the committee has agreed to serve.
3. RSS – We reviewed and passed on to the full board a proposed Really Simple
Syndication resolution. RSS will allow eased sharing of information between
websites. In particular, we are interested in the City Council and Office of
the Mayor using RSS so that we can readily access proposed legislation and
maintain up to date reports on crime, health, education, and other performance
statistics on our website. Without RSS these reports are sometimes posted in an
untimely manner and require too much staff time. With RSS they are updated by
the computer without any staff time. (See Attachment.)
4. Fiber Optic Redlining – The United States has fallen behind in providing
broadband access to its businesses and residents. Countries like and Korean and
Japan have far larger penetration of advanced communications systems. This
provides better options for businesses, home entertainment, government service
delivery and community governance. Verizon is re-wiring some of the communities
it serves with fiber optic cable. We will contact Verizon and seek to have our
district as one of those wired early.
Attachment 1
The City of New York
Queens Community Board 3
Technology Advisory Committee
It is requested that Queens Community Board 3 consider and pass the following resolution.
RSS Resolution
Background
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is computer software that enables the automatic distribution of information over the Internet. Any computerized data can be distributed using RSS. For example, the "recent changes" page of the city’s website, the 311 or 911 statistics, city council bills, comptroller audits, disease reports from hospitals, etc., can be made more accessible using RSS.
Once information is made available using the free RSS software, an RSS-reader (also free) can check for changes and react in a specified way. For example, a community board could program its RSS-reader to check the Police Department’s website every Monday at 7 AM to see if new crime statistics had been posted for its district, and then to post the statistics on its website.
With three employees and no dedicated information technology support staff, it's quite difficult for a community board to operate a website. If RSS is used by all city agencies, the board can then program its RSS-reader to automatically consolidate updates from all city agencies on its community website.
Be it resolved:
that better communication between city agencies and between city agencies and the public can be facilitated by the use of RSS.
Therefore:
Queens Community Board 3 requests that all public information be made available in RSS and/or other comparable syndication formats.
Resident Bottom Line: RSS makes it possible to review information from a large number of city websites in a very short time.
Community Board Bottom Line: RSS permits the simple, rapid, and inexpensive distribution of reports, alerts, calendar listings, and other information to residents.