Community service enters the digital age

 

Patch 

 The Queens Borough President's Office is now accepting applications to serve on one of the borough's 14 community boards, and, for the first time, the application process is completely digitized.

Queens Borough President Donovan Richards is looking for "qualified and civic-minded individuals" to represent the neighborhoods where they live or work as a member of their local community board, according to a news release.

Prospective members and current members whose term has expired have until Feb. 19 to apply.

This year's community board application marks the first time the application process is completely online. In the past, applications had to be signed and notarized, then submitted in-person at Queens Borough Hall.

 "Government is more effective and accountable not only when it works hand-in-hand with the communities it is sworn to serve, but when the full tapestry of each and every neighborhood is justly represented within that government," Richards said in a statement. "This common-sense overhaul of the outdated community board application process represents a significant step toward ensuring that our 14 Queens Community Boards truly look, sound and feel like the diverse neighborhoods of each district."

DOB to unveil new computer system

From Crains:

The city’s Department of Buildings is set to roll out a $29.6 million, state-of the-art computer system this summer that will eventually replace an outdated mainframe that relies primarily on paper to process all the construction permits, safety inspections and complaints for the city’s more than 1 million buildings.

“I think floppy disks are still accepted by one unit,” said Deputy Commissioner Archana Jayaram, who explained the new system, called DOB Now, to Crain's during a recent sit-down interview.

DOB Now was proposed in a 2015 policy brief called Building One City that promised to fundamentally reform the Buildings Department. City officials hope the system will help it shed its reputation of being antiquated, bureaucratic and inefficient, as well as make the construction process more transparent and allow the city to deploy its limited team of inspectors and auditors in a targeted way.

“This will address the ever-present myth that anything having to go through a regulatory process will be a nightmare,” said Department of Buildings Commissioner Rick Chandler.

The new system works by essentially streamlining and digitizing almost every filing—whether it has to do with safety, licensing, inspections or blueprints. Developers would also be able to book appointments with plan examiners online, and in some cases communicate via chat or video on the department’s website. Such feats would be unthinkable under the Buildings Department's current Building Information System, which has been in use since 1989. Prior to the late 1980s, the agency was using a 3-by-5-index-card catalog system to keep track of work.

Case of the missing computers

From Crains:

Thousands of Department of Education-purchased computers and tablets are either missing or sitting unused in the city's schools, according to an audit by City Comptroller Scott Stringer.

Mr. Stringer's office surveyed 10 public schools and found that more than 1,800 computers were unaccounted for or missing entirely, while nearly 400 laptops and tablets were found unpacked and unused. These findings raise the possibility that millions of dollars in computer equipment for city schools could be missing, the comptroller said.

"It is an insult to families who are desperate to access technology for their children to leave brand new computers and tablets unused in closets and storage facilities," Mr. Stringer said in a statement. "If auditors can’t locate an average of 180 computers per school, this may be just the tip of the iceberg."

Auditors examined how DOE maintained controls over computer hardware purchased through two separate contracts with Apple and Lenovo entered in September 2009 and July 2011, respectively. The contracts have been used to purchase more than 211,000 computers and tablets worth north of $197 million as of September 2014.

Most of the missing computers—1,090—were listed as "asset location unknown" from one school, P.S. 168 in the Bronx, by the DOE. The remaining 727 missing computers were physically missing from nine other schools.

Auditors also found large caches of computers sitting unused in school closets. At Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, 78 laptops and iPads, some purchased in 2011, were found unopened.

Central Library gets upgraded

From the Daily News:

When it opened more than 45 years ago, the Queens Central Library in Jamaica was touted as a state-of-the art facility, offering the latest in customer convenience and library research.

But the traditional stacks of books and rows of tables and chairs are now being replaced with plush seating and computers as the library embarks on its largest and most ambitious renovation to date.

“Libraries are no longer just places to sit and do research, they are places to go,” said Queens Library CEO Thomas Galante.

Galante and City Councilman Leroy Comrie celebrated the latest phase of the library’s transformation on Thursday when they officially opened its expanded and revamped Cyber Center.

The center has 72 computer workstations, printers and a scanner.

A long line of customers waiting to use the computers grew during the short ceremony - an example of the vital role they now serve in libraries.

Use of the computers is free for anyone with a Queens Library Card.

Apple Store may come to Forest Hills

From the Daily News:

Queens might be on the verge of getting a bite of the Apple.

A real estate developer is in preliminary talks with Apple about opening one of the brand’s iconic stores on bustling Austin St. in Forest Hills.

Heskel Group Chairman Yeheskel Elias said if a deal is reached, the sleek store could open in as little as a year.

It would be only the second Apple location in the city outside Manhattan. A Staten Island store opened in 2005.

Thefts up at JFK

From the NY Post:

It's been a great year so far for criminals at Kennedy Airport -- they're doing more business than ever and rarely getting caught, The Post has learned.

Larcenies are up nearly 30 percent from the first half of 2010 -- and the arrest rate is a pathetic 9 percent. The 299 complaints filed this year have led to only 28 arrests.

Included in the figures are thefts from baggage carousels, swiped property left unattended, and thefts by baggage handlers and TSA employees. Not included are picked pockets, thefts from cars in airport lots and shoplifting. The most frequently stolen items are laptops and iPads.

And the problem may be more serious than even the statistics show.

Port Authority Police bosses, a source said, pressure cops to downgrade the value of stolen property so thefts can be filed as petit rather than grand larcenies, one of seven crimes that get reported to the FBI.

Jamaica High School being neglected

From the Daily News:

Jamaica High School, the once-venerable neighborhood institution, has become a neglected stepchild in its own home, community leaders charged Tuesday.

Several specialized schools that were moved into the Gothic Drive building to eventually replace Jamaica High as the lone tenant are less crowded and better equipped, said state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside), who vowed to fight the city's proposal to phase out Jamaica after touring its building Saturday with local leaders.

They met with the principals of the four schools - including Jamaica High - that now occupy the building and compared class sizes and resources.

Classes at Jamaica have as many as 34 students, said teachers union rep James Eterno.

Meanwhile, at the High School for Community Leadership, classes top out at 24 kids and the largest class at the Hillside Arts and Letters Academy has 26 students, Avella said. The city created the two schools last fall to also occupy the Jamaica High School building.

Classes at Queens Collegiate: A College Board School, which also occupies the building, have as many as 32 students, Avella said. But every classroom is equipped with a smart board and each student has a computer.

But Jamaica High School, which has approximately 1,200 students, has only two functioning smart boards and roughly 120 computers - and many of the machines don't work, Eterno said. The cash-strapped school has also been forced to cut its music program and scale back its after-school and tutoring sessions.

Discrimination at the Apple store?

From the Daily News:

A Queens assemblywoman is demanding an explanation from Apple over allegations that employees at its SoHo store are discriminating against Chinese people.

Grace Meng (D-Flushing) fired off a letter to the tech giant after she was approached by a handful of disgruntled customers claiming Apple staffers denied them iPads, demanded to see their passports or asked inappropriate questions.

"One person was asked why they wanted one since their English was not so good," Meng said. "I want to get an explanation."

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

A 33-year-old Queens man told the Daily News a SoHo worker initially told him the store was out of iPads. The man, who asked to remain anonymous, said when he asked an Asian staffer, she found one for him. The man said a manager later asked him if he was planning to buy the iPad and resell it. "I'm just so upset," the man said. "This is racial profiling."

Meng said she suspects Apple is concerned about Chinese people selling the gadgets in their homeland.

Computer error cost us big time

From the NY Post:

Bureaucratic bungling of the Medicaid program at the state level has squandered more than $140 million in taxpayer dollars over the last decade by putting thousands of ineligible people on the public health-insurance rolls.

The reason, The Post has learned, is a simple computer hiccup -- and the problem isn't even completely fixed.

Albany computer geeks failed to update the database, so the system misread new codes in information provided by the federal government dating back to 1999, according to explosive documents included in litigation filed in 2001 against the state by New York City. The case has bounced around the court system and was recently ruled on by the state Court of Claims.

In his ruling released last month, Court of Claims Judge Thomas Scuccimarra said the state must repay the city for the erroneous billings, but reserved judgment on how much pending a hearing.

The city sued the state because it pays part of the freight for Medicaid. The Bloomberg administration is demanding repayment of $16.8 million the state billed it to cover 13,239 ineligible city residents put on the Medicaid rolls from 1999 to 2002.

And city welfare officials are so infuriated by Albany's expensive goofs that they've protested by withholding $8.4 million in other funds the city owes the state.

State officials estimated that the snafu cost New York taxpayers across the state a whopping $141 million from 1997 to 2002.

The blunders center on people who apply, receive or are denied supplemental security income. People eligible for SSI -- mostly the disabled or elderly -- automatically qualify for Medicaid.

But the state gave Medicaid benefits to applicants who were denied SSI; people already removed from the program; and people who applied and were awaiting a decision.

Elderly Brooklyn couple may finally get some peace

From the Daily News:

Embarrassed cops on Thursday cited a "computer glitch" as the reason police targeted the home of an elderly, law-abiding couple more than 50 times in futile hunts for bad guys.

Apparently, the address of Walter and Rose Martin's Brooklyn home was used to test a department-wide computer system in 2002.

What followed was years of cops appearing at the Martins' door looking for murderers, robbers and rapists - as often as three times a week.

After the Daily News exclusively reported on the couple's plague of police raids yesterday, apologetic detectives from the NYPD's Identity Theft Squad showed up at their home.

Rose Martin, 82, said they told her Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly ordered them to solve the puzzle - stat.

By the end of the day, NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said the snafu was traced to a 2002 computer test, though he couldn't explain why the couple's address was used as a test case in the first place.

He said that when the Martins complained to cops in 2007 about their scary series of official doorknocks, police tried to wipe their address from the system.

But the raids continued. The most recent, on Tuesday, left 83-year-old World War II vet Walter Martin woozy from soaring blood pressure.

Investigators found yesterday that not every computer file bearing the Martin's address was deleted.

Se previously.