Outgoing state Transportation Commissioner Philip Shucet introduced his legacy to the public at mid-year: a much-expanded Internet reporting system for the Virginia Department of Transportation’s work.
When VDOT put its first Dashboard version on the Internet two years ago, “It scared a whole lot of us, including me,” Shucet said. But VDOT gets almost $3 billion in taxpayer money a year and “that situation demands the highest level of accountability,” Shucet said at his last meeting with the department’s senior staff.
The opening page for Dashboard looks like, well, a car dashboard, with speedometer-like guages measuring the agency’s ratings for on-time, on-budget performance. Click on an individual guage for details.
When the construction gauge is clicked, for instance, projects are rated using red, yellow and green traffic lights. The lights are are also marked with an R, Y or G. Shucet is colorblind and he asked that the symbols be lettered for identification. Projects are sorted by localities, road systems and fiscal years.
Swept up from VDOT’s internal computer systems and unfiltered by humans, much of the baseline information is updated daily and audited to ensure its integrity.
Version 2.0 of the Dashboard provides people with direct e-mail links to top department officials, including the commissioner and the chief engin-eer. “Accountability starts right here,” he said, pointing out that his direct e-mail address is prominently displayed on the new Dashboard version. “If you’re a member of the media or the public at home on a Sunday morning, you don’t have to wait for VDOT to open up,” Shucet said. “You can grab yourself a cup of coffee and get to work.”
Before Gov. Mark Warner appointed Shucet to head VDOT, the department’s reputation was one of overspending and underachieving on highway work, while not being overly concerned with the public’s opinion of its efforts.
“There was a ulterior motive to opening up the books and making the agency as transparent as it is today,” said former secretary of transportation Whitt Clement. “Once you have shown the technology is there to do it, you can’t turn back the clock – no one can.”
. . . But the agency still has a way to go
VDOT’S dissemination of information still could use some work, insists Kerry Dougherty, a V irginian-Pilot columnist. “Is it asking too much that VDOT at least coordinate its dissemination of misinformation?,” she recently wrote. “For close to an hour I was trapped in a weird VDOT-induced twilight zone. Message boards warned of a 20- to 30-minute delay at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel, while the barely audible 610-AM traffic radio station insisted all was clear.”