Jersey City will now aggregate datapoints to garner efficiencies and thus radically cut back on duplicated synergies

Johnny wins corporate phrase BINGO!!!!!

Let's get to the point; Jersey City is going to make a giant database of who does what, what specialties they have, where the biggest and most costly problems keep coming up and where all the assets are. Many companies have been doing this for quite some time. Johnny (Hornblowing time -- stand back) was a team leader on just such an asset capture project for a big old company in the mid and late 90's that was named IndustryWeek's second best use of corporate IT in 1998. They are big endeavors. They take time. They take buy in. They take detail-oriented people who don't want a social life for about 18 months.

It is so well worth it. Sometimes good ideas take some up front capital for long term gain. Something a certain group of 'anti-tax at all costs' Americans seems to have forgotten. While the plan is still being put together (And they know who they can call if they get stuck) here is an 'quick and dirty' example of how this works:

As an example, Platt said that with the system, when the firefighters pulled up at a fire they would immediately be able to know if the structure was supposed to be vacant, if there were any health or building code violations, where the nearest fire hydrant was and was it working, etc.

And:

The chart he displayed showed there is a very large spike in complaints of garbage in streets and in lots every Friday and he said the majority of garbage pick-ups in the city is done on Thursdays and it is done “in a messy way.”

So hopefully the Dashboard project can hitting the ground running and we're excited that while we'll most likely never see this data work, it will be working behind the scenes to make the city better and more responsive. Well done Mr. Mayor.