Over the past number of years, Howard County has grown to become one of the most wired communities in the nation, and just last year Howard County Government was ranked among the top ten most digital counties in the nation by the Center for Digital Government and the National Association of Counties (NACo). Technology has played an increasingly important role for local governments, and in Howard County, open dialogue between residents and officials have helped strengthen County operations, programs, and services.
In a continued effort to engage our “wired” residents and industry private sector, Howard County has launched “Howard County Ideas,” a crowdsourcing project that encourages the public to submit specific ideas, vote on existing ideas, or add comments online with the overarching goal of fostering innovative solutions to increase County Government efficiency and effectiveness.
We are currently looking for ideas and suggestions to help enhance the County’s Department of Technology and Communication Services’ Strategic Plan.
Here’s how you can get started:
1. Register your email and create a username
2. Verify your email
3. Submit idea(s) to enhance the DTCS Strategic Plan
4. Invite your friends and colleagues to join in the conversation!
To submit an idea, please click the new idea button below. You will then be asked to add a title and choose a campaign for the new idea. You will also have the option to add tags to the idea. To vote on an idea, simply click the up or down thumb to the left of the idea title/description. And to add a comment, click in the box below the idea.
If you would like to see all ideas created with a specific tag, you can click on the word or phrase via the tagcloud in the left navigation area under "What we're discussing". You can also view ideas sorted by Campaigns from the left navigation area. To return to this page, click the All Ideas link.
Thanks for your participation!
Ken Ulman
Howard County Executive
Recently Healthy Howard came out with their new website. www.healthyhowardmd.org one place with everything you need to know about Healthy Howard.
I think we should have the same sort of website for PELU. This would be the first step in implementing the PELU recommendations.
Love the snow plow page, can you make it work with smart phones?
Instead of having three half days on June 7th, June 8th, and June 11th, have a full day on June 7th and half day on June 8th, at least for elementary and middle schools (assuming high schoolers have finals). It would save money on buses from having to run for all schools on Monday and keep working parents from having to take an additional day/half-day off work.
A home energy audit is often the first step in making your home more efficient. An audit can help you assess how much energy your home uses and evaluate what measures you can take to improve efficiency. But remember, audits alone don't save energy. You need to implement the recommended improvements. ENERGY STAR provides extensive information about home improvement projects to enhance energy efficiency, lower utility bills, ...more »
A home energy audit is often the first step in making your home more efficient. An audit can help you assess how much energy your home uses and evaluate what measures you can take to improve efficiency. But remember, audits alone don't save energy. You need to implement the recommended improvements. ENERGY STAR provides extensive information about home improvement projects to enhance energy efficiency, lower utility bills, and increase comfort.
You can perform a simple energy audit yourself, or have a professional energy auditor perform a more thorough audit.
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In the western side of the county, even in other scattered areas, bicyclers are using the same roads as motor vehicles. Whether bicyclers use them for commutes, recreation, or sport, using the same roads isn’t always safe, yet it’s the only option. Most of the western roads are hilly and curvy, making them difficult for bicyclers and cars alike to remain safe at any speed, even the slow speeds. I’m proposing that ...more »
In the western side of the county, even in other scattered areas, bicyclers are using the same roads as motor vehicles. Whether bicyclers use them for commutes, recreation, or sport, using the same roads isn’t always safe, yet it’s the only option. Most of the western roads are hilly and curvy, making them difficult for bicyclers and cars alike to remain safe at any speed, even the slow speeds.
I’m proposing that the county add small shoulders to accommodate known bike routes so everyone has a safer designated path in which to bike. This limits the need for cars to swerve over the center line whereby endangering unseen or unanticipated oncoming traffic or other hazards including large farm equipment. Isn’t this why most of these same roads are designated impassible?
Adding these bicycle shoulders has been done by other surrounding counties, and doing so has worked well. Yes, it’s expensive, which also means more tax money would probably be needed if not already planned. But it’s also safer. If there’s one thing I don’t mind spending more tax money towards it’s the sensible and safer accommodations. Who knows, it may also help some of the water management issues along the same roads.
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I would like to see a county network that you could opt into for elderly people with dementia or for mentally disabled adults and/or children, so that it is easier to keep track of people. We've traced some people using FB, but not everyone is on FB. It needs to be totally optional, of course.
I would like to see affordable non-shared office space for small businesses.
I was curious when Howard County last considered and priced out a mainframe for a technology refresh or did a review of it's capabilities? Before any readers stop here and move on, I'd like to point out times have changed over the last 15 months, and it's worth a closer and more serious look. Most IT shops are not aware of the recent changes, hence the reason I'm asking. Mainframe prices today are often close to what ...more »
I was curious when Howard County last considered and priced out a mainframe for a technology refresh or did a review of it's capabilities? Before any readers stop here and move on, I'd like to point out times have changed over the last 15 months, and it's worth a closer and more serious look. Most IT shops are not aware of the recent changes, hence the reason I'm asking.
Mainframe prices today are often close to what IT may spend to deploy a distributed application for even one department. Yet a mainframe is capable of providing additional services to multiple departments, sharing one of the most secure environments available. I have personally been involved with other government entities who have done the analysis and realized significant savings, one in particular cut their operating costs by as much as 80%. In almost every case, early adopters have consolidated their environments, and streamlined operations to unprecedented levels with savings of at least 30%. By example, if our IT budget is $10M a year, would it not be compelling to cut the spend to $7M?
I'm not familiar with the existing IT environment within the County, but if we're running 30 to 50 servers or more, additional research would be prudent. We have nothing to lose. The perception of the mainframe is decades old. For those unfamiliar, the most recent mainframes leverage Linux; they have the ability to closely integrate Intel blade servers running Windows applications, specialty devices to accelerate data queries, security, and specialty processors to handle Java applications. All of these things have a compelling impact on cutting costs while increasing performance and services to users.
I realize the mainframe does some things better than the distributed environment, and vice versa, so it's important to realize a "right fit for purpose" when looking at what applications are running on what platform. The mainframe excels at cloud offerings, social computing apps, databases, online transaction processing and batch. Distributed excels at processor intensive apps. If we're moving ahead with initiatives that would favor a mainframe, I think it would be of benefit to evaluate all options.
In the spirit of full disclosure, I live Howard County and I work for IBM. But I raise the thought and question because I've been involved with other entities who have successfully taken bold steps and applied innovative thinking to the same challenges the County is facing today with budget pressure.
The Youtube link features some IBM customers (i.e., State of Virginia) talking about how they're doing some new things for less money on the mainframe. The channel also contains similar references including Miami Dade County.
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