Having the private sector do something the way the public sector does provides only marginal savings without the use of technology. The whole predicate of our approach is through the use of technology. If building permits issuance is inefficient, the way to make them efficient is to digitize the map, database the information, consolidate the workers around electronic procedures and condense the amount of time so you can do parallel and simultaneous processing, rather than doing it sequentially. The way to fill potholes and fix curbs more constructively is to have every phone message be electronically logged at the time it's made, electronically transferred to the service workers, and sent out to the field, have the report filed back and tracked, without any pieces of paper. The process can be reduced from four months to four hours.
Every single area has an example like that.
The most interesting and exciting one is that information is considered by government as a means of producing another service like the example I just gave you. But really, information should be a product of government. We have this creative joint venture with Ameritech which I call Civic Link. We are trying to develop electronic access to all of our information. Instead of having to go to City Hall, everybody's home and business becomes their own little town hall, where they dial into real estate records, lawyers dial into court records, and people who want documents can do it from their home computer.