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As Danbury residents you may ask where your tax dollars to the city go. As residents of surrounding towns and municipalities you may want to learn how Danbury taxes are being spent and compare that with your own community.

At the DACS July 1st general meeting, Wade Anderson of the City of Danbury Data Processing Department will describe in detail how technology is used in the city, to maintain day-to-day government operations. Mr. Anderson will give DACS members the opportunity to ask questions, which could even influence future directions of the department.

Mr Anderson will describe how the city has grown over the last 5 years, including population and tax revenue growth. He will compare the data processing department five years ago, the platforms in use then,and the main applications used. He will elaborate on how the data processing operations have changed over time, and the migration from home built programs to packages, including hardware platforms and the transition from Unisys to AS400. Mr Anderson will continue on the Metropolitan Area Network, the development of fiber optic and wireless projects, and include diverse application software and the city’s commitment to HTE, JDE, Vision, and Cott.

More specifically, Wade Anderson will discuss the following challenges pertinent to the city of Danbury:

• Mobile Data Terminals and how laptops in police cars work.
• The Permit Center, for which one of the major initiatives is issuing building permits. Anderson points out that Danbury issues morebuilding permits than any other city in the state.
• Assessor’s office and revaluation. This affects everyone, and usually right in the pocketbook. Anderson will take a look at the Vision CAMA (Computer-Assisted Mass Appraisal) program
  Tax office and tax bills. The city sends out 90-100,000 tax bills each June. Some of the challenges in this type of mailing will be discussed
• Water Utilities, and what is new with meter reading equipment
• Town Clerk Land Record Management and why this is a topic close to Danbury residents’ wallet. Mr. Anderson says that keeping track of who owns what and how real estate property has become an involved process. Anderson will explain all about new software that will be installed in the Town Clerk office during July.
• GIS Mapping. The addition of a spatial front end on existing applications has the potential to make legacy programs much more useful; this process is ready to payoff.

Mr. Anderson will then continue on to the city of Danbury’s web site with the following being discussed:

• The City web page is managed with software that provides the capability to update content with something no more complicated than an email.
• Language Translation. How many languages do Danbury residents speak? 10, 20, 50? Learn how we try to serve citizens better with page translation.
• Content challenges. The hard part on any web site is keeping the information fresh. This in itself is A test for all web masters.
• Web-facing legacy applications and presenting them through a browser has become trendy in the AS400 area. The city of Danbury will be ready with their first application in July. Public Access to application databases will come on stream later this year. One of the first will be Sewer and Water Utility inquiries.

The presentation will be rich with content pertinent to Danbury residents and adjoining areas, and Wade Anderson will explore the future and the directions citizens will want their city to go.

The main presentation will start at 8:00pm on July 1st, 2003, preceded by a question and answer session and brief club announcements. Formally, the general meeting starts at 7:00pm. The general meetings are free to the public. The July, 2003 meeting will take place at Danbury Hospital Auditorium.

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