Low-cost, high-impact ideas for using information technology as a management tool.

• Author: Cohen, Sheldon S.

Editor's note: This article is adapted from the Municipal Advocate magazine, Fall 1997, and reprinted with permission from the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

Anyone who has participated in municipal budget preparation and budget hearings knows that extended, tedious meetings are frequently part of the process. Budget meetings can become difficult due to lack of readily available information that suddenly becomes crucial to a decision: how much was spent on the police overtime budget, for example, or to cover summer vacations from July 1 to September 17 These late-night, time-consuming research scrambles can be simplified inexpensively through the strategic use of information technology as a management tool. Following are some basic steps:

* Install a personal computer and printer in the town hall conference room. Total cost: about $3,000, plus $200 per year for supplies and maintenance.

* Give members of the board of selectmen, finance committee, capital committee, or other official bodies secure access to those applications on the town computer system needed for legitimate purposes of their office.

* Allow the town staff to use the same personal computer and printer for day, night, or weekend meetings.

These steps are affordable to both small towns and big cities. Key officials can have read-only access to the police budget - or any other revenue or expenditure - and do a search by date range for any information needed at any time. In this way, it is not necessary for the police chief or town accountant to bring to budget meetings all of the information for the whole year. Rather than trying to guess what questions might arise about a particular department or program, officials can simply access necessary information as the need arises.

Training is the key here: each staff member and appointed or elected official needs to be fully trained in each application he or she wants to use. This helps to ensure that staff can use the system knowledgeably and not require extraordinary support.

Small Investments, Big Payoffs

Cities and towns all share a common predicament: time is short and money is hard to find. But with a few small and targeted investments, such as the example above, municipalities can - relatively quickly and inexpensively - maximize their use of information technology to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of municipal management. It is important, of course, to fit these decisions into the bigger picture of how a...