Strong Job Creation with Continuing High Unemployment

With this dynamic at work, we can expect state GDP rise without a substantial drop in unemployment. Newly created jobs will often go to out-of-staters who may or may not choose or even need to move in-state. We can create a hundred bio-med companies and still have unemployment over 10%.

There is an almost absurd amount of chicanery associated with unemployment statistics, but there's a general consensus that the goal is not zero unemployment but "full employment". Full employment means that pretty much anybody who wants a job can find a job, maybe not right away but before unemployment benefits run out.

Getting to full employment means creating substantial numbers of lower wage, lower skill jobs. And that is no small task. Perhaps the phrase 'substantial numbers' understates the case. Let's try staggeringly ginormous numbers.

By the Numbers

In round numbers, Rhode Island's current 'workforce' comprises about 520,000 workers, and about 66,400 of them are looking for a job. It is normal, even desirable, to have some level of churn or flow in the workforce*. Full employment is generally thought or as 4 - 5% unemployment. Let's go with 5% because it's simpler.

Thus a best case scenario would mean about 26,000 workers looking for a job, leaving a 'jobs deficit' of 40,400. Not a small number.

Consulting the Bureau of Labor Statistics list of the 30 occupations with the highest growth, 20 require less than an associates degree. Most of these jobs require only short or medium term on-the-job training. That's the good news.

The bad news is that the growth rate is nowhere near what we need. "Backing out" from these national projections to an RI projection, I come up with about 1,600 new jobs per year in these highest growth occupations. Even at five times the national rate, it would still take two years to bring unemployment under 10%.

The challenge is enormous: how can we drive "non-linear' growth in lower skill occupations?

There are some options, but no silver bullet.

The Options 

Option #1: Tourism - Most people think of the tourism and hospitality sector as a good driver for lower skills jobs growth, and not fer nothin. Rhode Island has used its urban, rural and ocean-front assets to build some small level of regional attractiveness, and we certainly could do more. However, we have to ask ourselves how much tourism we can support.

A hotel employs roughly one employee for every 3 rooms. Let's add a restaurant or other non-hotel employee worker for every 3 hotel employees, and we get 4 employees for every 10 hotel rooms. Thus we would need to add 10,000 hotel rooms to add 4,000 jobs.

Does Rhode Island need another 10,000 hotel rooms?

Option #2: Atlantic City, RI - Don't be shocked. This idea has been a serious part of the serious conversation for some time. Granted, it's a big leap, but it's not "out of scope". The thinking goes as follows:

1 - Providence is already a regional center where people come to "get paid and get laid". We are known for our, shall we say, open attitude about the bawdier aspects of life. Many in the city were disappointed that the City Council banned indoor prostitution.

2 - Southeast New England is a generally prudish area. From the Puritan beginnings to the still-in-effect Blue Laws, our region generally frowns on people having too good of a time. This, of course, creates a market need for a place that encourages people to do just this sort of thing. In short, the region NEEDS a place like this.

To support the extra-robust tourist trade that could employ Rhode Islanders at the scale required, the state needs to go beyond it's existing assets to attract visitors. Casinos, well-regulate sex trade and the 24-hour nightlife associated with them could be those assets.

Other Potential Factors

Agriculture - The number of working farms in Rhode Island is growing much faster than any other sector. If memory serves, the number has quadrupled in a decade. Farm Fresh RI has done a great job of connecting farmers with consumers, and we are becoming a model for vibrancy. Again, Rhode Island can support substantial growth, but the number of jobs will vary widely by season. To create year-round jobs, Rhode Island would need to the regional center for urban farming, particularly vertical farming. But that is a very new field, so we can't expect serious jobs creation in the near term.

Low-end Green Jobs - At least 25% of current 'green economy' work centers not on new technology or construction but on retrofitting existing buildings to use less energy. Many expect this weatherization work to become a substantial sector (cottage industry) in the next few years. CCRI and Apeiron Institute have partnered to create a 4 - month program to train workers. Potentially, this could be several thousand jobs in a few years.

What am I missing? Where have I badly miscalculated? What other options do we have?

Those aren't rhetorical questions. Please comment.

Again, there's much truth to Shane's approach, but not much meaning. Expecting freelancers to create jobs is like hoping outlaws will spontaneously start building jails. Ain't gonna happen. 

If it's not to create jobs, then what is the benefit of this sector? The answer is simple, if elusive for some. 

Freelancers Don't Need a Job

For every independent worker that can make ends meet, there's a "job" somewhere that doesn't need to be created. Freelancers and other independent workers are like the government's teenage kids - they can basically take care of themselves, freeing up the parents to deal with the ones that need more help and attention. 

While I have no data whatsoever, I get the feeling that communities with higher levels of self-employment suffer less during a downturn (like now) than those with lower levels of worker independence. Independent workers, my thinking goes, act as a kind of ballast, absorbing the impact through the network. As long as these workers can find work, unemployment is just another statistic.

And that, Mr. Shane, is what freelancers do. They create exactly 1 job: their own.

 

Green Economy Workshops at New Commons

Working with RIEDC, we helped shape both the participants and the process for creating the roadmap. RIEDC themselves had specified that the process continue to include as many participants as was practical.

Rather than hold another large, day-long event, they asked that we host a series of smaller, half-day workshops focusing on each acceleration initiative individually. Groups of roughly 15 stakeholders met, representing interests including private companies, government agencies, labor unions, academic and research institutions, non-profits and activists. Each acceleration initiative was lead by two "quarterbacks" who would also play an important role in the roadmap production.

Our protocol for the workshops began with a review of provisional goals as well as existing and emergent conditions based on briefs developed jointly by RIEDC and New Commons. (As part of the closure process, I will ask about posting the conditions briefs on this or another site. Big ups to the RIEDC research team. They rule!)

Next, participants worked in small groups to identify important metrics and 5-year targets toward the overall goals. Here, all the workshops but wind power began with the thought: metrics either don't exist or a are woefully inadequate.

In energy efficiency, for example, the group insisted that measuring "energy delivered" might actually be counterproductive. RI already has the lowest per capita usage - based on our shrinking industrial economy.  Thus the roadmap will start by measuring the amount of energy required to produce a dollar of GDP. The target is declining energy use with rising GDP.

Next, in the meat of the workshop, the small groups developed sets of projects around the various building blocks. In discussion and through a voting process, participants rated the projects on importance, producing a prioritized list of projects grouped by the time required to complete.

Finally, the groups discussed the issues of integration and implementation. Universally, the call to action was: now, now, now!

Creating the Roadmap v 1.0

Almost immediately after the workshops, we compiled the results into the first drafts of the roadmap. And, just as quickly, the advisory group realized that:

 

• The roadmap needed many expert editors - the quarterbacks
• The roadmap would need continuous revision to track rapid changes

Thus, the advisors decided that this would be "version 1.0" - a working draft. In addition, the event at which they intended to release the document would include a working session to further advance the roadmap.

The actual writing was a real challenge with various versions from various authors and editors flying around via email. My stack of hand-annotated print outs from other editors is about one coffee mug tall.

Finally, I tossed the "final" copy into the layout that was released. Oh, and thanks to our FSC-certified printing resource Printsource in East Prov for donating the printing on 100% recycled paper.

Next Installment - The February 9th Green Economy Forum

If you have a suggestion or submission, leave a comment that:

• Describes a change process or practice that moved people to embrace the next local or regional economy. What did you do to achieve the results?
• Describes a change process that didn’t work. What were the aims? What did you do? What do you think contributed to disappointing results?
• Describes a current issue, problem or situation that inhibits change toward embracing a local or regional economy. What are the dynamics driving the resistance?

To kick start the conversation, here is Leaver’s take on the next local and regional economy:

A synopsis of some of the ideas I put forward in P&B in 2009 

You can build from or challenge my local or regional vision or you can put forward your own. 

The economy will be integrated with these four historical economic characteristics blending and morphing in new ways:

• What things do we make?
• Where do we grow and distribute local food?
• How do we serve people?
• What experiences do we create for people?

Caveat: there is not now, nor will there ever be, a separate creative economy, knowledge economy or sustainable economy. The only economy there has ever been or ever will be has something to do with one or more of: making things, serving people, growing food, or creating experience. That said going forward these four economic building blocks need to be infused with a mix of creativity, knowledge and sustainability.

Further, the next economy will be…

• Less about jobs provided by a company and more about creating work and wealth via self employment and creative groupings of self employed people in temporary, project-based “companies”
• Driven by entrepreneurs working at various scales and in diverse disciplines
• Local and regional in nature with trading across municipal and state lines

 

Let's face the facts. That anybody in the 'big states' even has an opinion of RI is a step in the right direction. At least we have some kind of identity in the broader market. Maybe it's not the one we want. Maybe it's not even accurate. But it is what it is.

As they say: I don't care what you write about me in the paper. Just spell my name right.

These days, the top RI memes are:

• Almost Michigan in unemployment
• Unfriendly towards business
• Government corruption
• That wacky lady in Cranston in the bunny suit

The broader market for the most part does not know much about, oh, let's call it 'our' Rhode Island. Progressive, creative, dynamic, entrepreneurial. You know the drill. 

But 'the underground' knows that story, and knows it well. Do other cities have a homegrown recruiting campaign? I've even heard about a meet-up / support group for NYC transplants. (Take that, Declining Population Studies!)

The fact is that perception generally lags behind reality, and, when reality is focused in the underground, you've got a ways to go to change perception in the broader market.  

Rhody Smart: The Top 5

It's one thing to be an underground sensation known for hip, progressive, creative people doing hip, progressive, creative things (and we still have a ways to go there). It's something altogether different to be known far and wide as a place where smart people go to do smart things with other smart people. 

You've got to start somewhere, and it's not like we don't have plenty of smart things going on. So here's my Top 5 Inaugural Rhody Smart game-changers. 

#5 - The Supercluster

The Supercluster is Providence's unique conglomeration of creative, technical, entrepreneurial and social / sustainable workers. There's quite a heavy dose of self-employment in the Supercluster, so it might not move the needle on any existing government indicators. Still, this is the cultural core of the greater Providence region. Perhaps this should be #1, because this is what's resonating so strongly with like-minded people coast to coast.

#4 - RI.gov

RI.gov has impressed me in general and in particular. I feel the quality of this piece of infrastucture has gone largely unnoticed locally. High usability, enterprise scale websites deliver massive efficiency improvements, and this has important implications for both quality of life and economic development. 

#3 - GCPVD

Just like Providence has a homegrown recruiting program, it also has a homegrown, non-profit to advocate for world-class urban design standards. Greater City: Providence did not start because the founders had too much free time and disposable income. This is a working-man's new urbanism non-profit. Their exceptional work is having a positive impact on crucial projects like the new I-Way and the return of two-way traffic on Empire Street.

#2 - I-Way / Knowledge District

The original "no-brainer" - crumbling, foolishly-sited, ugly and dangerous highway replaced with modern, rational, fully engineered highway. BTW, downtown expands about 30%. And, BTW, you get almost 20 acres of prime urban land for fresh, modern, efficient, green buidlings. Hey, and let's put the wikkit smaat bio-science research kids down there. That'd be awesome. 

#1 - Betaspring

Two of the region's most effective, self-appointed recruiter-ambassadors start a company that makes companies. Governor's Workforce Board wisely sees the value in that. Even if this never produces that massive, breakthrough company, it will certainly produce more modest successes. That is exists and receives substantial public support is a super-awesome message to send to those like-minded people coast to coast. 

You know...the future.

 

About Somoco - Is it true that "you feed off the island and the island feeds off you"?

Integrated might be a better term, and we are about integration. Somoco is integrated design build. If we build it, then we designed it, and if we designed it, then we built it.

Integrating "the island" is a real challenge. MV has massive seasonal shift of a factor of 4 or 5. Diverse full time population: native Amer tribe, large black year round, past 20 years - Brazilians - who changed everything. Food, work ethic, nightlife, religion.

Somoco work is 1/3 affordable, 1/3 market and 1/3 in between/other. Now lots of energy work now, "deep energy retrofits".

We had to create non-profits to manage affordable housing and now energy, but Somoco has to keep a distance. Potential for / perception of conflict of interest limits how integrated a company can get with a community.

Simple question: What is your personal challenge?

For years, there was always too much work. Then economic collapse dried that all up. Suddenly, there were many new challenges we never had faced. One of them was the possibility of not having enough work for everybody. Were layoffs a possibility? Not really. Many, many other options before actually getting to a layoff. Bottom line - it's changed our thinking about what work we would accept.

In 2007, Woods Hole Research Center - a world class climate change think tank asked us deep energy retrofit. Our reply was, "thanks, but Somoco doesn't work off the island".  This year we got together to explore the possibilities, and now we're doing the job. People are on the ferry in the cold, dark early morning.

So now we've broken off this island. If we were a design firm, we could go a lot farther, but the build part limits that. We're not sure how we're moving forward.

Somoco is 'employee owned ' but it's not an ESOP. What's the difference between a worker coop vs. an ESOP?

Worker coop, each owner has one vote. An ESOP is broader than traditional ownership, but it doesn't bring any policy changes or democracy. Many ESOPs are less democratic than 'traditional' companies. Some are great. But in an ESOP, the structure does not confer power. In a worker coop, the structure confers power to the worker / owners.

Our model was the Mondragon Coops , a 50 year old coop of coops that's now a multinational corporation. Employee / owners have direct, voting input on policy.

One of their current projects involves a buying or starting US manufacturing companies to do 'good things' like make wind turbines. It's a partnership with the US steelworkers union. That in itself is an emerging trend, and very exciting. Unions and coops have stayed away from each other. Recently, steel workers "got trashed" by Wall St., and are forming worker coops based on work in Spain with Mondragon.

What are the downsides of this structure?

The only real drawback is that once you're successful and have a substantial block of cash equity, they tend to get conservative and risk-averse. Also, people don't leave, so we've had to actively develop a 'next generation' plan to find and develop the new backbone of the company.

What about being the founder and now really letting go?

Fortunately, I didn't know what I was doing. We started as close friends but it was a benevolent dictatorship. The shared ownership didn't replicate the past. The ownership made people much more involved. It took time for people to grow into the role. My fear was that those decisions make this thing I love into something I don't love anymore. And now that's a real possibility.

Another part of this is the generational transfer. Two 6-month sabbaticals I took served as a kind of test to see how people would act in my absence. 1st one was a disaster, but we learned and adjusted. The 2nd one was successful and that approach has 'stuck' with the company.

What's driving the renewed interest in coops?

Baby boomer own a few million small businesses, and over the next few decades, they'll all have to deal with succession. Some think about the legacy, and the options aren't great. Give it to kids who may not care? Shut it down? Sell it to whoever wants it? Not much of a legacy. Forming an employee coop gives them a good option.

How have you gotten into the energy business?

We always did energy work, but it only as part of our own design / build work. Now we do energy-only projects, and that part of the business is active.

You've hired Marc Rosenbaum full time. How is that?

A pain in the ass. (laughter) Marc and Energysmiths have been a consultant to almost every project we've done since almost the beginning. Interestingly, even though Marc's now one of the top salaries, the vestiture process at Somoco is very long on average - 5 years. Because he brings so much experience and has been our ally, the owners - in consensus - abbreviated it for him. To 4 years.

MV economy is 50% hospitality and retail. What effort are affecting the goal of diversification?

My aspirations for the 50 year plan were much higher than what's actually happened. But the Island Plan has created a real awareness about what the local economy is and how it works. So in the current downturn, there is a desire and awareness to make for ourselves. It's really food, craft and energy, and the energy part is crucial.

Our idea is Vineyard Power, and energy coop. Producer coops, consumer coops, and workers coops. VP is a combination of a producer coop and a consumer coop. Offshore wind is going to be a part of it. Cape Wind and its problems are mostly associated with the fact that they did not work in partnership with the Cape and Islands.

Our plan came right from the communities themselves. We fully expect these turbines to be sited and soon.

What emerging conditions do you see for the local economy?

The food part is very exciting, both agriculture and aquaculture. We now have a mobile poultry processing unit, and people have started raising poultry. I expect us to have a permanent poultry processing facility and maybe a fish processing facility.

Also, the island has a very strong land conservation program, and there's nothing to preclude some of this land being used for agriculture.

About the 50 Year Plan planning process, so much of the effort was NOT about the built environment. How did that integration play out in reality?

Much of my disappointment is about my own failing. The plan required us to work full time, and we couldn't. But this was a great effort in the network building, and it could play a guiding role in the future.

Audience Question: What is co-housing ?

It's a Danish housing model that houses about 30 people or so. Enough so there's some level of anonymity / independence, but not so many that you can't know everybody. Parking is on the periphery so it's a pedestrian environment, there are shared amenities, so individual houses are smaller. It's not a social structure or planned-community structure, but it has a lot of community-promoting features.

It's a growing trend in the US , and Somoco built one on Martha's Vineyard where I live now. It's great.

First, I didn't know exactly where to go. After a few false starts, I decided to go to the RI.gov homepage where I saw this:

Note the way they promote this common task with a direct link from the homepage. A+

Second, the application itself follows one of the most important usability recommendation for multi-step processes of any kind: chart the user's progress. This clearly shows that I am in the first of seven stages of the process. Because I can see how far I have to go, I am far less likely to give up half-way. If you think this is important for a government web application, imagine how importantit is for an e-commerce website.

Finally - and this is just a small thing, but it means a lot - notice how the "State" field _IS NOT A DROP DOWN MENU_. Drop down menus generally represent a pro-developer / anti-user perspective. Drop downs make things easier for developers and harder for users. The drop down menu for state abbreviations is perhaps the most egregious example. 

I'm going to take a flyer here and suggest that virtually 100% of people who would fill out this kind of form know their state abbreviations. I'm out on a limb here, I know. Jokes aside, usability studies show that people's addresses and other key information becomes 'hard wired' into their muscle memory the point that filling out these forms is virtually autonomic. It's just so much easier to tab / type than to move your hands from the keyboard to work the mouse.

(Note: not all OS / browser combinations support "tabbing into drop downs". Also, a relatively small percentage of users know about those more advanced capabilities - most see the drop down and reach for the mouse.)

There it is: three ways that RI.gov loves users. And they're three good ones. 

If you want to learn more about how non-web-developer executives can make better websites through better usabiity, I'll be conduting a HiPPO training later in February. We'll post date and time on our events calendar soon.

DH: There were a lot of streams, but I started to see myself as a 'community systems engineer'. Education and social services, but also economy and the environment. All of the organizations I've been part of are about helping community manage their resources more effectively. My education is a duel degree in business and political theory, polar opposites.

What is Social Enterprise?

We have the corporate responsibility issues on one side, and the economic factors on the other. On the business side, it was difficult to do the social change stuff under those corporate rules, it was for non-profits to do, not us.  So we started some non-profits, but now we're trying to develop structures that are revenue neutral (self-sufficient). There's a dynamic where social ventures can only survive with their 'startup capital' - which are really grants - and what happens in year 3 when they have to stand on their own.

How do you live that role?

1979 - I was just starting to work in the social services industry. You need 24/7 coverage for a lot of these social programs. How would those be staffed? We went to the Commonwealth with an idea for a non-profit to handle that issue, but they weren't interested. So we started a company to find and manage a pool of trained workers in an on-demand basis, much like a temp service. We were entrepreneur, but we were in the social services sector. 

What is Alive Communities?

In 2000, we created BALLE to respond to the corporate social responsibility world's shift away from supporting local economies and small / micro-business. The BSR found its natural role greening big corporations. But we still had these informal networks that we wanted to keep held together. In the evolution of BALLE, it held onto its prescriptive nature - that is, it had a clear definition about what it was and how you got from here to there. I could see as a founder that there was a lack of porosity. And it was very US-centric.

I wanted my next organization to be more international in focus. What has made communities thrive for centuries in all kinds of places? It doesn't always have to be new and hi-tech. So our first function is to find the best practices, then we want to integrate those practices and deliver them to communities in need? Also, how do we bring practices to communities without being "the new guys with the next great idea".

AUDIENCE QUESTION: Could you give an example?

In application, let's look at Fort Bragg in northern California . I only just met Fort Bragg, an isolated town of about 6,000. Everywhere I go, in every room, somebody has a relationship to Fort Bragg. There's something about this community that wants to function as a case-study or example of how things can work. FB is an old lumber town. The two mills got bought up, then shut down, leaving an environmental mess. The competing employer is growing marijuana. So that became the only source of income for the town. 

The town was negotiating with Georgia Pacific how to deal with the 450 acre brownfield that actually connects to Main Street. GP fought responsibility for years, but then they decided to create an exit strategy to deal with the site. Our role is to help manage those conversations, including a kind of economic anthropology to reconnect the guys at the bar with the land where they used to work. 

What's your toughest personal challenge? What makes it so?

For 30 years, I knew the context of every minute of every day. I knew what I was going to do. But now I'm "untethered" and there are a lot of choices. I literally need a "possibility manager" because I've been in the industry for so long, and so many other leaders are recently untethered. What has the biggest impact? My day is: Doug, how do we think about moving faith-based capital into the social enterprise space? Not a small question.

What is a "local, living economy"?

It's what we all know: it's how we experience a sense of place. It's an integrated set of practices that looks at economics, ecological, spiritual, political. All of those processes come together in a way that creates a positive for the community, in a way that adds value. Also, we see living economies as opposed to suicide economies. 

Local food plays a huge role in making this happen. Another key factor for a living economy is local ownership.

What is integrative economic design?

As we look at community systems evolution, we see hip, cool practices, and they can blind us a bit to the less sexy, more practical stuff. Integrative design starts the conversation between the cutting edge and the nuts-and-bolts? There's a growing awareness in the progressive capital space that they need to provide "slow money" with less immediate returns. It gives the companies a chance to accomplish their mission without pushing them too fast. About 3% is a 'sustainable return', which is a lot lower than most investment returns. 

What are Quality of Life indicators? Why don't we have them around here?

There's a unique window now in response to the current economic problems. A lot of the rememdies are about high-growth results. It's not a lot different from the Bush adminstration post-9/11. The QoL measures non-growth factors like the Gross National Happiness. We're looking at intangibles to see what, if any, financial benefit they create. Is there correlation? Is there causation? We're trying to move away from quantitative measures toward qualitative measures? There's no full-cost accounting - we can't negative impacts as positives in the GDP. 

RL: Movements take a long time, especially when they approach big issues. We're still living through the issues of creating true civil rights. That movement is not complete. At the start, BALLE was a bunch of hippies, now they all wear suits. NESEA was the same way. These issues are just gaining traction, so you have to look for the example site - Burlington, VT; Bellingham, WA, even Bristol, RI which is still a very local economy.

DH: You look for cracks. Look at what's happening with the national chamber of commerce. Nike and Apple have pushed back against the climate change agenda, and now the chamber 'blinked'. So something's happening. At the "Road to Copenhagen" conference, I had an epiphany - sitting there listening to what Chevron was doing with impact beyond what they had expected - "they" have become "us".

AUDIENCE CHALLENGE: I don't believe Chevron has any idealism.

DH: We tend to make different things into one thing. Chevron is not Monsanto. What is making some companies move more quickly into sustainability? We're not sure, but we want to have a conversation to see why and what. 

=== Break Time ===

Clearly, four of these sectors inter-relate organically. Design, culture, art and entertainment all share obvious similarities.

But technology and the green economy? How do these relate? 

First, bear in mind that this doesn't have to make sense. (Only fiction has to make sense.) Things are what things are. But there's are less obvious but crucial connections that link in these two crucial sectors. 

Entertainment and technology go together like the MP3 and the iPod. And you can ask any record company executive (if any still exist) about the profound affect that technology has had on that industry. (For me, it goes back to the mid-80s and the advent of affordable, high-quality multi-track recorders that worked with standard cassette tape. But that's another story for another time.) Also, geeks loooooove food, especially strange flavors from far away lands. In my mind, cuisine sits at the intersection of art and culture. It is a known fact that the quality of the cuisine is a key factor in attracting both creatives AND entrepreneurs. 

As for the green economy, everybody - or at least everybody I know - wants to do everything they can to move Rhode Island into a leadership position in sustainability. So artists create environmentally-theme works and designers make great-looking stuff for non-profits and entertainers perform at benefits, etc., etc.

When I look at this graphic, I see the future of our economy. Not the whole thing, but a measurable portion. If you believe in the mythos of the "cultural creative", then you must recognize the power of the Super-Cluster. 

What's so Special About Virginia?

New Commons and Left Brain recently bid (unsuccessfully) for the opportunity to assess the City of Providence website and recommend an alternative approach. As part of the RFP, the city pointed to the Center for Digital Government's rankings of municipal websites. They said they wanted to be "at least as good as the best". So I checked out the rankings.

Immediately, I was struck by the inordinately high number of best sites in the state of Virginia. Digging further into their rankings of state websites, Virginia ranks an impressive 3rd. There had to be a connection, so I dug yet further and found that VA.gov provided exactly the same kind of service that RI.gov offers. 

And it turns out that both states, in turn, are supported by the same company. Yes, company. 

NiC is a private company that acts as an outsource platform supporting a form of public/private work teams that develop and maintain the specific platforms that various state agencies and municipalities use. This latter group - the cities - might be the biggest beneficiaries of all. For example, Lynchburg, VA's website won the top spot for cities with populations between 30 -75k, and Lynchburg is a local partner with VA.gov.

It's clear that across the state of Virginia, including within municipalities, administrations have focused attention and resources on IT, particularly web development. So it should come as no surprise that both US Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra and US Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra were drawn from VA governor Tim Kaine's cabinet. (Hence the rapid proliferation of ubiquitous platform federal government websites.)

And This Means What for Rhode Island?

As I said above, this is huge. If we can continue along this trajectory, these investments in core IT capabilities should translate directly into economic benefits. Bear in mind that Virginia ranks #1 in 'business friendliness' according to Forbes. It's true that RI ranked dead last in that same survey, but RI.gov goes directly to reversing some of the problems associated with red tape. As RI.gov continues to roll out web-services versions of existing paper-based processes, businesses of all kinds will find it faster and easier to apply for and receive permits, or to research their compliance requirements for various kinds of regulations.

That we can be thinking about web-services versions of these processes means that RI's Department of IT (DoIT-RI) has accomplished the vast bulk of their initial task: normalize and modernize the mess that was our state's legacy IT environment.  RI CIO John Landers came from the retail IT sector, which is a lot about dedicated hardware/software (cash registers and inventory systems) which, of course, is a lot about legacy systems. In fact, Landers' bio calls out his excellence in upgrading legacy systems.

With data from various departments coming under better control, RI.gov can build web apps that let citizens and businesses interact with those departments without going to the physical location. Again, this improves both business climate and quality of life. 

Remember how VA.gov supports several municipalities like Lynchburg, which won top honors in the small city category? RI.gov has helped at least one RI city take a big step forward on the web.

It would be charitable of me to say the City of Pawtucket is Internet-challenged. There is, in fact, no actual 'communications' department or even an individual solely tasked with those responsibilities. As recently as 2008, the city's website ran on a 'frames' platform. FRAMES! (1996 called. They want their website back.)

Last year, the city shifted its content into the current incarnation, built on the RI.gov platform. What an improvement! Content is still minimal at best, so it won't win any awards. But it's a solid site that city workers can (and even do) update. I'm sure that many other municipalities could benefit from this approach.

We can only hope that as more and more state and municipal workers become familiar with the RI.gov CMS, their updates will become more frequent across the board. Ultimately, for RI's municipal and state IT infrastructure to be truly world-class, we'll need a user community that is as robust and ubiqitous as the RI.gov platform.