-----Original Message-----
From: Carlyle, Rep. Reuven
Sent: Mon 4/13/2009 11:14 AM
To: DRESSEL, JOSH (DNR)
Cc: GEBHARDT, PAT (DNR); Packard, Heath (DNR); Toso, Aaron (DNR)
Subject: RE: government contracts
Thank you Josh. I ask all of you to appreciate that it is essential legislators learn directly from folks in the agencies about issues, ideas, thoughts and counsel about how to make gov't work better. I strongly encourage this type of direct outreach and personally don't consider it lobbying but rather education about agency issues....I feel it is more than appropriate, and I hope you won't give Josh or anyone a hard time. We have a citizen legislature...real people living real lives and when we lose touch we lose our ability to serve the public.
May I ask the status of the IT issues at DNR? Reuven.
From: DRESSEL, JOSH (DNR)
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 11:00 AM
To: Carlyle, Rep. Reuven
Cc: GEBHARDT, PAT (DNR); Packard, Heath (DNR); Toso, Aaron (DNR)
Subject: RE: government contracts
Thanks so much for getting back to me. I've had to move my effort to my home email because of some heat I got for contacting you through my work email. I've been journalizing my effort to reduce costs through a blog http://chrome-toaster.blogspot.com and it includes information about the problems I've encountered along the way.
I believe this agency has ignored and overlooked the savings moving to OpenOffice.org would have. I emailed our Department Manager, Lenny Young, on March 12th but never got any response from him. The only response to this idea has been warnings about lobbying elected officials.
I would be very happy to meet with you to go over the idea more thoroughly. If you're interested, please contact me at joshdressel@x.x.
Thanks again!!!
Sincerely,
Josh Dressel
IT Specialist
Department of Natural Resources
From: Carlyle, Rep. Reuven
Sent: Monday, April 13, 2009 10:49 AM
To: DRESSEL, JOSH (DNR)
Subject: RE: government contracts
Josh, your thoughts on the current budget from House and senate? I haven't looked at details in budget relative to your agency and IT..can you provide an update? Thanks. Reuven.
Instead of answering Representative Carlyle’s question about the status of IT issues at the DNR, Pat Gebhardt was heading away from his desk minutes after the email was received. By 4:30 this afternoon, no response had been sent –at least not one I was CC’d on.
In my opinion, only John Daane has put into action anything in IT to reduce cost. As far as the OpenOffice.org idea is concerned, it has been ignored by Pat all the way up to Lenny Young. Like the rest of the DNR, IT has budget constraints and instead of dealing with this challenge by modifying the way we do business, the plan is to cut people to meet these constraints.
We will not be able to achieve required expenditure reductions for GF-S and the admin fund split without additional layoffs. I expect that we will be able to identify almost all of the positions that must be eliminated to implement GF-S and admin fund split reductions by May 1. As we get closer to May 1, I will provide you with more information on impacts and timing. Human Resources Division also will be providing additional information.
–Lenny Young (link)
