The system will let citizens register cars, boats and other vehicles through the Web, and it will help Kentucky assess vehicle taxes, support insurance compliance, process apportioned registrations, manage inventory, maintain financial records, and process dealer and other licenses. The U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department recently honored Louisiana s Administration Division Offices with HUD s 1999 Best Practices award. HUD applauded the Community Development and Information Services offices for piloting a project to transmit Community Development Block Grant data from the Community Development Office database to HUD s Integrated Disbursement and Information System database using electronic data interchange. During snowstorms and other severe conditions, Portland bans street parking from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. so it can maintain the streets. The city s Public Works Department set up an e-mail and paging notification system to help get the word out.
Residents enter an e-mail address into a form in the department s Web site.
Public Works Novell GroupWise system then confirms the request and adds the address to the notification list. The department sends pager notification manually but plans to soon let the computer do the notifying with AlphaPage from InfoRad Inc. of Cleveland, communications coordinator Peter DeWitt said. Bowie High School is monitoring student computer use with Silent Watch from Adavi Inc. of Dunkirk. Silent Watch lets administrators monitor the contents of up to 49 users screens at any moment. Although Bowie High career and technology teacher Silvia Shaw sometimes uses the program to make sure students are working on appropriate tasks, her main objective is to assist students if they get stuck on assignments, she said.