December 10, 2003

BY SANDRA GUY SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

As the Chicago Housing Authority moves residents from decrepit high-rises to mixed-income housing, it's considering using technology such as a smart-home system to prepare for the emotionally charged, sometimes wrenching changes the moves entail.

The new and sometimes controversial surveillance systems allow public housing managers to monitor residents' comings and goings and CHA property.

Only residents who belong there would be allowed access.

The system's intelligence also would enable the property manager to control and monitor the building's temperature, utilities and appliances from a "command center" elsewhere, and to receive an alarm if anything looks amiss.

The CHA has reviewed the smart-home system and wants to look at others.

Such projects are the bread-and-butter of the Bronner Group, a consulting firm in Chicago that helps government use technology to save money and improve people's skills.

The Bronner Group, which is consulting the CHA on surveillance systems, also develops and runs training programs for government workers, including teachers, emergency management workers and CTA employees. And it teaches technology skills and offers training to people who regularly interact with government agencies.

"Web technology has come so far. If you are Internet-literate, you can conduct the lion's share of government business remotely -- whether it's renewing a driver's license or looking up public records -- without having to give up work or spend the time to travel to a government building," said Gila J. Bronner, the company's politically savvy president, CEO and founder.

The 44-year-old Bronner speaks in a rapid cadence as she describes a variety of work her agency does.

In simple terms, the company takes a tough look at a government agency's way of doing business, figures out how technology can make things work better and cheaper, lays out a plan and helps employees change their paper shuffling to computer keyboarding and high-tech ways of thinking.

The work leads to terrific political connections and an inside view of local, state and federal infighting, and a bit of bureaucratic intrigue.

For example, few people know that the Chicago Public Library opted out of the Chicago Library System on July 1, leaving the city's university, school-district and private libraries such as Newberry Library as part of a reformulated Chicago Multitype Library System. The system is merging with the Suburban Library System. The Bronner Group is doing the strategic and operational consulting to facilitate the merger.

Another controversial project is a Bronner Group-designed database that is comprised of the kinds of chemicals and pollutants a local industry uses and spews. The database would allow people to search by address, company, ZIP code or other criteria to find out where hazardous chemicals are manufactured and stored. The companies that report this information, by law, used to fill out laborious, multipage forms. Bronner automated the process and developed a database so the companies could submit it via the Internet to the Illinois Emergency Management Agency, the Bronner Group's client for the project. Illinois, like many other states, is assessing the best time to make the data public. Bronner believes it will be public in the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2004.

The companies objected at first, saying terrorists would get hold of the information. Bronner argued that terrorists will figure out how to break into computer data anyway, and that a better way to fight terrorism is to arm citizens with essential preventive information.

Chicago public school teachers may or may not be pleased that Bronner's company set up a Web-enabled application that assesses the teachers' PC savvy and trains them to use technology in their curricula.

Bronner's no-nonsense attitudes haven't hurt the company. Bronner started the firm's current business model four years ago with one employee and $800,000 in revenue. She now has about 50 workers and expects to have $6 million to $7 million in revenues in 2003. Projected revenues for 2004 are $12 million.

It's no coincidence that Bronner's office overlooks City Hall and the James R. Thompson Center. Bronner's shelves are filled with photos of her with politicians and power brokers ranging from Bill Clinton and John McCain to Mayor Daley and Internet guru Andy Grove of Intel Corp.

It's to Bronner's credit that she took an unconventional route to the connected life, including her appointment this year to a second term on Daley's revised Council of Technology Advisors.

She attended college full-time for two years before she was offered a job too good to pass up -- as a national program director at the Government Finance Officers' Association in Chicago.

She completed college by taking night classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and then studied at night for her CPA certification.

She's still juggling. She credits her husband, David, a senior attorney at Jenner & Block, for his guidance and support while the couple raises their two children -- Ben, 15, and Samantha, 10.

"The beauty of technology is that when I'm on the road, [my children] can IM (instant message) Mom," she said.