Want to get a behind-the-scenes look at county government operations?
Santa Clara County is accepting applications for the 2015 SCC Gov 101 Academy, a one-night-a-week, 10-week program that provides an overview of county government’s role and responsibilities, as well as programs and services offered by county government.
“County government is often the least understood level of government, in spite of the fact that the County has more than 16,000 employees, spends $4.5 billion annually and serves 1.8 million Santa Clara County residents. This is a great opportunity to ‘lift the hood’ and understand just what makes the County run,” said Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian in a press release.
Applications are due Feb. 5, and the first session starts Feb. 11, with most sessions taking place on Tuesday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m. A graduation ceremony will be held at the end of the program during a Board of Supervisors meeting. There is a $30 materials fee, which can be waived. For more information or to apply, email SCCPublicAffairs@ceo.sccgov.org or call 408-299-5151.
Here we are in the middle of the Silicon Valley, and the County Government shows absolutely no evidence of understanding how to use the technology that has been in large part invented here to provide access to County government in the most obvious way—the Internet.
Why in the world would the County not stream this class using so that as many people as are interest could attend without having to drive to San Jose to sit in a small classroom?
And why in the world can’t the County record these sessions, and putting the videos on Youtube, and the class reading/study materials on the County’s web-site.
This attempt at providing some transparency into County government is of course the right thing to do, but not putting the sessions on the Internet in various formats is definitely the wrong thing to do.
Here we are, some fifty-odd years after the development of data networking technology—and the County Administration/Supervisors still don’t seem to understand how to use this fantastic capability to disseminate information, and data, to as many people as possible at the lowest cost possible.