---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 1997 08:51:49 -0500
From: Kelly Ford <[log in to unmask]>
Reply-To: [log in to unmask]
To: Multiple recipients of list <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Kiosks In The News
I wonder if they've even considered accessibility in these developments?
This article appeared in Today's New York Times. You can find it on their
site at http://www.nytimes.com. If these machines can't be used by people
that are blind or have other disabilities it might be nice to see their
use delayed until those issued ar resolved. We've certainly lost the
battle for the most part with banking ATMs.
September 9, 1997
Computer Kiosks Ease Dealing With Bureaucracy
By DAVID M. HALBFINGER
[INLINE]
Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times
Gregory Davidson uses an automated kiosk in mid-Manhattan to find out
whether his apartment building has any code violations.
_________________________________________________________________
N EW YORK -- A change in the way New Yorkers deal with their city's
notorious bureaucracy has been quietly spreading across the five
boroughs, in government buildings and libraries, grocery stores and
check-cashing outlets.
Thirty-seven ATM-like machines, installed last year under a city
experiment, allow New Yorkers to pay parking tickets and property
taxes with a credit card or bank card, check building-inspection
records, print application forms for permits, licenses and
civil-service jobs, and answer a host of questions necessary to
ease one's way through the system. All that with no lines and
little angst.
"It's like a New York City worker who works 24 hours a day, and
it's more friendly," said Gregory Davidson, 33, who was using one
of the kiosks at the Mid-Manhattan Library on Monday. "There's no
attitude."
Across the country, state and local governments are experimenting
with using interactive kiosks to streamline their bureaucracies. In
Texas and Pennsylvania, job seekers can find out about openings for
state workers. In Maryland, residents can renew their car
registrations. And in Arizona and Utah, people can walk into many
courthouses and use a kiosk to file for divorce.
Giuliani administration officials say their $2 million experiment
is part of a wider effort to make as many services as possible
available to computer users, including those for whom a kiosk in a
public place is their only chance to use one.
It is also an attempt to reduce the aggravation of doing business
with the city, where an entire industry of expediters has evolved
to help residents and contractors through the process of getting
permits and licenses.
"We're going for an electronic City Hall, where kiosks and the
Internet will work together to provide services to residents of New
York City," said Daniel Moy, an official of the Department of
Information Technology and Telecommunications who is overseeing the
project.
The department is evaluating the machines, he said, and by December
it expects to seek bids from vendors to expand the system to
hundreds of terminals in neighborhoods across the five boroughs of
the city.
With virtually no publicity, the 37 kiosks -- in such places as the
Staten Island Ferry Terminal, Bellevue Hospital Center, the borough
halls in Brooklyn and Queens, and 10 check-cashing outlets -- have
each drawn an average of 400 to 500 users a week, city records
show, although many are curious passers-by.
North Communications of Marina Del Rey, Calif., one of three
vendors working with the city, receives only about $1,200 a week in
parking-ticket payments at its 25 machines, said Adam Parker, the
company's general manager.
But Parker said use would increase as more people become aware of
the kiosks and as more services are added to their menus.
Another manufacturer, ObjectSoft Corp. of Hackensack, N.J., has
offered to install 1,000 to 2,000 of its kiosks at no cost to the
city, hoping that selling space to advertisers would make its
investment of $25 million to $40 million pay off in four years, the
company's chairman, David Sarna, said.
There still are some kinks to be worked out. A visitor to the
Staten Island Ferry terminal needed 15 attempts and the help of an
attendant who wiped the smudges from the uncooperative touch
screen, to find out the violations on his apartment building. At
another kiosk, a set of transit maps are difficult-to-read versions
of the much friendlier paper variety given away at subway token
booths.
And the convenience comes at a price. There is a $3.50 transaction
fee to pay a parking ticket or buy a civil-service examination
form.
Although city officials say they are merely trying to make
government more accessible, the vendors speak of "privatizing"
services and saving government money. And that could make city
union leaders nervous.
Stanley Hill, executive director of District Council 37, the
umbrella union for municipal workers, said he had heard nothing
about the kiosks from the city or the agencies involved but wanted
to know if the interactive machines could result in job
eliminations.
Officials said the costs of expanding the kiosks and adding links
to other agencies, even state and federal offices, can be more than
made up by revenue from advertisers.
Sarna of ObjectSoft said he had already been approached by
representatives of Walt Disney Co. about showing trailers from its
new films and offering information about show times and nearby
theaters on the kiosks. And executives of Golden Screens America of
New York City, another vendor, said billboard advertising agencies
have discovered the kiosks as a potential new medium.
So, apparently, has the mayor. The three vendors said they were
required to include a short video featuring Mayor Rudolph Giuliani
telling users about the city's experiment and a lengthy biography
that touts the mayor's first-term achievements -- messages that
mayoral aides defended Monday as perfectly appropriate.
Parker of North Communications said the biography ran 22 pages on
his kiosks.
"We suggested editing it down to a couple of pages," he said,
referring to conversations with mayoral aides. "But they wanted the
whole thing on there."
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