Otsego County committee presses for clearer ClearGov entries, pauses contested "current service level" metric

Otsego County's Technology Strategic Planning Committee spent its June meeting focused on how the county's strategic goals and department activities are recorded in the ClearGov planning tool, debating whether entries should be framed as one-year tasks or a multi-year plan and whether a contested "current service level" metric should remain part of the process.

The committee front-loaded its review on three priority outcomes already in ClearGov: strengthening the Board of Representatives' capacity for proactive planning and policymaking; building management capabilities to meet emerging problems; and reducing administrative burdens on department heads. Members said the listed essential activities under each outcome are often too broad to be actionable and pressed for more specific, measurable steps that could be tracked in quarterly reviews.

"When you have an essential activity so vague like that, you can never achieve it," a committee member said, arguing entries should translate into concrete one-year tasks or phased multi-year steps such as implementing a new time-and-attendance system.

The meeting surfaced persistent confusion about document versions and dashboard behavior in ClearGov. Several members said departments had been working in different copies (for example, files labeled 2023'2026, 2025, and 2026), which led some offices to continue editing the older three-year draft instead of the current plan. That discrepancy prompted a practical recommendation: staff should circulate the committee's proposed edits and a clear explanation of which document is active so department heads can align their inputs.

A major point of contention was a proposed "current service level" field introduced into the process by a staff member named Steve. Committee members said the metric lacked a written definition and had provoked substantial pushback from department heads. "It's an absolute mess," one committee member said, describing the concept as verbally described but not documented. Members agreed not to resolve that policy at the meeting and instead to have staff return with clearer documentation and recommended next steps.

The mayor, who identified themself during the meeting, asked county IT staff whether ClearGov had been useful. An IT staff speaker said the system is functional for quarterly updates but characterized current use as "kind of like fire and forget," noting many users only revisit the plan each quarter to update progress.

IT staff also raised data-security concerns about using generative AI to process strategic-plan content, saying the county had "blocked it for essentially three months" while evaluating technical controls to prevent uncontrolled data exfiltration and that secure solutions would likely come with additional costs.

Members proposed practical steps: adopt a multi-year (three-year) framing in ClearGov to reduce repeated duplication when the plan is re-opened, convert broad essential activities into time-phased and measurable actions, revive quarterly reporting and oversight (a function some members said used to be handled by a staffer named Jacinda and has since lapsed), and pilot a small "train-the-trainer" rollout leveraging experienced users such as Tammy Reed. They also recommended limiting edit permissions for the board's section in ClearGov to a few authorized editors rather than granting full edit rights to all 14 board representatives, to reduce the risk of accidental or conflicting changes.

Next steps assigned at the meeting included staff (Day) circulating the committee's suggested edits and the current ClearGov entries for committee review, followed by a return to the committee at the next meeting with any recommended revisions for the full board to consider. A motion to close the meeting was made, seconded and approved by voice vote.

The committee did not take any formal votes on policy changes during this session; instead, members directed staff to produce clarified documentation and a proposed set of edits for the committee's next meeting.