Dear Mr. Mowry, Chief Information Officer, Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

Welcome Home.

Without a doubt, you hold the most opportune and important office in the region, today, and I wish you great success.

As a citizen of the community, and Information Technologist, I strongly support the establishment of your position as the most important accomplishment of the county transformation process to date. Your visible accomplishments with government information technology evident on http://www.browardshines.com/Pages/Welcome.aspx suggest you are an excellent selection for this most important job. Successful, the benefits you shall bring to us, your residents, stand to be historic. I won't belabor you with my perspectives on why or how, but will appreciate the opportunity to meet some time, congratulate you in person, and share insight I may offer from the streets. I warn you in advance, I shall preach open source opportunities here, for government and citizens. And, I shall insist we improve our environmental monitoring, modeling and awareness through world-class information technology, and may suggest sources of Federal funding for that. Norm [at] realneo [dot] us.

I would like to strongly recommend that you contact Jon Cline, who is a world expert in open source GIS and has spent considerable time considering the GIS and other technology needs of the county, first hand - http://udallcenter.arizona.edu/lauralhlab/cline.html. His wife is the Grammy-awarded Cleveland Orchestra Violist Eliesha Nelson, recently featured in the Cleveland Plain Dealer - http://realneo.us/NEO-Knows-Clevelend-Orchestra-Violist-Eliesha-Nelson. Jon is out in Arizona saving the Western United States, Mexico and world with his unique talent, and needs to be pulled back here - at least for some of his time. "Jon Cline" <jon [dot] c [dot] cline [at] gmail [dot] com>

Your Broward website looks excellent and makes me confident we a have great, positive, transformational change agent on hand now in Cuyahoga County, to help lead us forward in the challenging times ahead. Such transformation is only possible through world-class information technology.

Best regards,

Norm Roulet
Chief Information Officer
Cincinnati Change
norm [at] realneo [dot] us

P.S. Never stop embracing that Broward County motto - Our Best. Nothing Less! Perhaps we may open source that to here?!