GovScan

As planners working in the public sector, we're constantly looking for opportunities to learn from experiences in other communities. In fact, I'm convinced that planners came up with the term "best practices" just to assuage our guilt about stealing good ideas from each other. Eric Ervin, part of the wonderful economic gardening team in Littleton, CO, is making our job a little easier. Eric recently launched a state and local government search engine, GovScan, which he built on Google's Custom Search Engine platform. It's a great resource, but I'm going to have to talk to him about CAPCOG's ranking when searching for GIS in Texas. Brian Kelsey