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ITD news delivered to your desktop beginning today

Idaho’s transportation news now is available at your desktop each weekday. A collection of news stories about ITD and transportation in Idaho is accessible through the Intranet portal page, under the ITD “News” button.

The online service marks a conversion from photocopied pages to electronic format and significantly expands access for ITD employees.

A leading advantage of posting news online is its timeliness – news items will be available each weekday. In the past, a collection of hundreds of news stories was delivered to ITD; those news clippings were assembled into an 8-inch by 14-inch packet and photocopied. Lag time between a story’s initial newspaper publication and delivery of the booklets took up to two weeks.

Another advantage of the new service is that access will be widespread. The news clippings, which often consisted of 80 pages or more, were distributed to a limited number of people. Now, anyone with access to the ITD Intranet will be able to see, and search for, department news coverage.

A searchable database allows retrieval of news items by district, publication source, dates, and more. The database streamlines the process of finding old news items. The previous, labor-intensive work involved hunting through file drawers. Archives date back to the late-February trial period and will be maintained indefinitely.

“It’s a much more timely way of keeping informed about ITD news,” says ITD Public Information Officer Jeff Stratten. “As a department, we’ll be more effective in monitoring transportation- and ITD-related stories in the news, and be better positioned to respond when necessary.”

The new process also is expected to yield cost savings for the department by eliminating clipping service fees and saving staff time that previously was devoted to assembly and distribution of the weekly packets.

Some overlap of distribution methods (paper copies and Intranet posting) is expected while newspaper clippings and real-time news coverage converge, and while the system is refined.

Comments about the new system and suggestions for improvement are welcome.