Posted by mlncn on March 12, 2009 at 3:25am
Yeah, use per-group taxonomy terms to keep a space for local.
43% (3 votes)
No, local government is unique and precious and national (maybe state?) governments should get their own group.
43% (3 votes)
Dismantle all governments.
14% (1 vote)
Total votes: 7
Comments
Why don't we stick with local..
It seems to me: that there is a much greater need at a local level; that we can have greater impact; that we can achieve it more quickly; and, that it will inform solutions at the county, state and federal level in any event rather than the other way around.
Taxonomy at the expense of folksonomy? (clarified)
Gordon
I tend to agree with Gordon
I'm excited to be having discussions specific to local government here.
I just re-read our group charter and mission statement (which I like) and see a lot in them that wouldn't really apply to state/Federal governments, in particular the way people can work to bring change to local governments which often have mostly volunteer staffs and no in-house expertise. Once you expand to include county, state and federal there are a whole different set of Enterprise-like difficulties, including IT departments with their own standards, etc.
A merger would require a re-working of the charter and I'm having difficulty picturing how you'd do that without watering it down significantly.
Did the request come from http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-state-and-federal-agencies-government ? I guess I'd prefer that we keep the groups separate and just cross-post any topics of mutual interest.
We stay local!
Looks like the creation of Drupal for state and federal agencies settles the question– we have two great groups with distinct, though sometimes complementary, missions. (In particular national and regional government adoption and support of open source free software will make it easier for local governments to go this route.)
The opinion of the MetroWest user group meeting where this idea first crystalized was also strongly in favor of separate groups.
benjamin, Agaric Design Collective
benjamin, agaric