As my first 100 days come to an end, I'm sure some of you wondered if I would follow through with updating you. Some of you may have wondered if I would remember and some of you probably didn't care or have forgotten yourself. The truth is I am committed to communication (as I hope you learned through my campaign) and here are the updates regarding the areas I committed to working on in my first 100 days.
I will address my two commitments surrounding "accountability".
1) I proposed to council that we hang a dry erase board in the atrium for several reasons. One, it would allow the Central Phone Operators to know which council members were available should someone need their assistance. Two, it would serve as an indicator as to who from council is in the office for anyone visiting the Governance Center. Three, it would allow for council to not only inform the general public of their absence but give an explanation as to where they are. I will say that when council is out of the office, we are often times out on business and not just "taking time off". After my proposal, a majority of council decided to not only approve but add it to our Tribal Council Operating Procedures (TCOP). The Legal Department created the language and the amended TCOP will be presented to Legislative Action Committee (LAC) on Tuesday, December 22, 2009. Given that LAC approves it to move forward, it will then move to the Wednesday, December 30, 2009 Council Meeting where we will hopefully approve and adopt the resolution. My guess is that shortly after the first of the year, there will be a dry erase board hanging in the atrium at the Central Phone Operator's station. As a positive side note, since we are doing a resolution to amend and approve the TCOP, they will become public information and my hope is to post them on the website.
2) The second issue was doing a daily roll call. As much as I would like to take the credit for this, a roll call was already being done upon me being elected. There have been many discussions regarding this particular issue and we are looking into having these roll calls posted on the website daily.
I will now address my two commitments surrounding "communication".
1) Since my being elected, we have established a "Website Enhancement Group" to brainstorm and share ideas on how we can pump more information through the website. We have made a lot of progress as far as identifying how we can enhance the website for little-to-no cost. Please refer to blog post "Latest Revelations" which was posted on November 20, 20009 and will explain in detail the areas our group has given attention. Although my push was to publish the Tilixam Wawa every month, budget restraints have allowed only six issues per year. We will work with the Publications Department to assure that the most information possible will be published including articles authored by Tribal Council, the Executive Staff and it is our hope that the presentations given at the monthly General Council Meetings will be minimized and published as well. It is a work-in-progress but with some commitment, creativity and teamwork, I'm confident that we will open up our communication line between Tribal Council and their boss, the general membership.
2) My second area of commitment was developing a Tribal Council blog. After speaking to the Information Systems (IS)staff, this would be possible to do on our tribal website. There would be some cost associated with this and it would obviously need to be implemented with its own set of policies. The research is being done by the IS Team and we will be meeting shortly after the holiday season to discuss this further. On a positive side note, we are also hoping to incorporate not only a Tribal Council blog but departmental blogs as well. This way the membership gets information from all areas of our government.
Again, as much as I would like to take all of the credit for any achievements in these areas, I can not do that. I simply introduced some of these ideas, it was a majority of council that approved them.
Keep your fingers crossed and your hopes high.
Toby
No comments:
Post a Comment