Vermont’s Technology Tiger

Vermont’s Chief Technology Officer and Tiger blogger declares we can gain both efficiency and effectiveness in Vermont. The change comes with what appears, on its face to be a re-launching  of Jim Douglas’s January 2007 E-State Initiative. You may recall the original E-State plan was going to totally “E” Vermont by 2010 (sixteen days left). This time around, the initiative is freshened and fluffed-up by federal stimulus funding and uses the continuing economic crisis as motivation.   It’s may be a complicated plan though because the details are being kept secret.

We administration officials didn’t give the reporters the specifics they’d like to have – and I’m not going to do that here. Plans are not done; legislators not briefed; specific legislative proposals not written;……….

Ever the modern technology salesmen, he does helpfully remind us of the wonders we may see. He points out wondrous changes this past decade the airline industry made using the technology of the World Wide Web for ticket bookings.  

We now have examples of how industries like airlines have used the web to dramatically change customer service both to reduce service costs AND to empower customers. Some readers may remember when you went to a travel agency to get paper tickets which were written by hand before you could fly anywhere

His pep talk is finished off with several obligatory warnings that raising taxes is not an option, as doing so “…. will quickly get us less income as taxpayer flight accelerates.”  And only a state employee pay cut will make state employees be part of the solution.  

10 thoughts on “Vermont’s Technology Tiger

  1. and let us sally forth to the moving picture show!  I hear tell that up’n’comer Calvin Coolidge is in the newsreel!

  2. Raising taxes among those most able to pay would cause a decrease in revenue (because rich people live here because of advise from their estate planners, not because of the high quality of life) but entirely eliminating the income of large numbers of people (incomes which are, of course, not only taxed, but which are used to buy products from local merchants and pay local property taxes as well as water bills, mortgage payments, etc) will, of course, not effect state revenue.

  3. Douglas and his administration have obviously mastered the “if we say it, it becomes true” strategy that his party is so famous for…  Sad thing: it works.

  4. According to Teri Hallenbeck’s article for the Free Press this week, the primary targets of the so-called Tiger Teams are Medicaid recipients and mental health care providers hired by the state.

    Julie Tessler, executive director of the Vermont Council of Development and Mental Health Services Inc., stewed in the audience when she saw the report. The mental health agencies were not consulted as it was being put together, and so had no chance to explain the statistics, she said. For example, salaries were increased to solve a problem with turnover, she said.

    But, of course, the Tiger Team looking at Medicaid assures Hallenbeck that the Douglas Administration can cut the program without actually cutting anyone off who currently receives benefits. Uh-huh. Sure. Raise the premiums and co-pays, and people will drop off without being “cut,” because they can’t pay the new rates.

    It’s a little hard to tell on the basis of one or two quotes, but it looks like former Speaker Obuchowski has bought into the Douglas Administration’s agenda for disguising the gutting of government services as “restructuring for efficiency.”

    NanuqFC

    Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

  5. We administration officials didn’t give the reporters the specifics they’d like to have – and I’m not going to do that here. Plans are not done; legislators not briefed; specific legislative proposals not written;……

    When Tom Evslin says that

    plans are not done

    it illustrates the point that plans are being made in secret only to be released when completed.

    In my March 14th “diary” on GMD I pointed out the fact that the massive expenditures of stimulus money are being planned behind closed doors with generally little to no public input or knowledge.

    How come only administration officials decide how these hundreds of millions of dollars are to be spent?

    PJ

Comments are closed.