More Citizen Alert ideas ...

"Three state senators called on Gov. David A. Paterson to sign into law a bill that would create a statewide e-mail alert program notifying people when a convicted sex offender moves into a neighborhood.

But the executive director of Parents for Megan's Law - a Stony Brook-based nonprofit group that provides the same service and allows visitors to its Web site to map where offenders are located with thumbnail sketches complete with pictures - said such a program may be redundant."

Here we have yet the latest example of a worthwhile program running into an "implementation" problem.

Putting aside the issues that the alerts should be more than email (xml etc) and as we have previously stated, ideas of this sort should be "plug and play."

That is, there should be existing, dynamic and flexible open standards in place to immediately execute the ideas of our elected officials and our concerned citizens and organizations.

"One Long Island" contains suggestions for this type of open system.