What Happened?
Jersey City’s mayor and Department of Public Works installed GPS devices in city vehicles to keep track of employee use and fuel costs. The goal of the pilot program is to see if tracking the vehicles will reduce employee use of the vehicles for personal use and increase fuel costs through increased visibility and accountability.
The Goal
Over the course of a month, 20 Department of Public Works vehicles will house GPS devices and have all activity monitored and logged. After results have been gathered and analyzed, officials expect to install the GPS technology in 95 vehicles in the Department of Public Works and eventually expand the initiative to all city agencies.
Taking Notes
In launching the program, Jersey City officials are hoping to cut down on employee use of vehicles for public use, reduce overall fuel costs and increase government accountability to taxpayers. The Silent Passenger GPS Fleet Management System devices collects data from the vehicle at all times including time of movement, ignition and overall activity.
Microsoft Bing offers detailed maps with up-to-date info on traffic and directions to help drivers find the most efficient route through the community, which saves time, money and fuel. Drive time, stop time, routes taken and minutes idling are all logged through the system to be analyzed by managers to pinpoint instances of waste or abuse.
There are certain boundaries that employees must stay within while operating a city vehicle, which can be viewed from the GPS map system. Email and text alerts can be sent to the vehicle as well so field officers and personnel can stay connected with efficient communication. So far, the department has noted a reduction in fuel consumption, and elimination of unauthorized stops and after-hour usage by employees.
Tracking Waste
Just as Jersey City is reducing wasteful fuel consumption and vehicle abuse, officials in Wuhan, China, are attaching GPS devices to waste collection trucks and trash cans to gauge food waste throughout the city. The digital weighing technology equipped with tracking functionality will monitor how much illegal cooking oil is disposed of throughout the city.
The GPS devices are part of a government initiative mandating kitchen waste be collected and processed through public agencies to ensure they are handled with properly to protect the environment. The system will track all waste including left over food, materials and edible oil waste from various food processing plants and large restaurants.
The government has installed GPS devices to record where instances of waste are found based on weight data from collection tucks, garbage cans and oil cans of oil-water separators. Weight of food waste will be monitored, and if a drastic decline occurs the government will investigate where the materials have gone or what has changed in the processes to ensure compliance is met. Fines will then be allocated to organizations in violation of the new regulation. The goal of the program is to have 60 percent of the city’s food waste to be handled and tracked with GPS technology by 2015.
Eyes Wide Open
Gov1 has reported on other uses of GPS technology by local governments to provide access to open data for the public as well as provide timely information for various public services.