Bucks County Transition Report Progress Tracker

Immediately following their November 2019 election, Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie established a Transition Team made up of community volunteers and experts in their respective fields with an aim to review every facet of county government and report back with recommendations to the new administration. In June of 2020, Commissioners Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie, joined by Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo, voted to accept the Transition Report, which they released to the public. Since then, the Commissioners have used the report as a guide to help inform their administration’s agenda and priorities.

To mark the two-year anniversary of the public release, the Commissioners have put together a Transition Progress Report to keep track of what we’ve been able to accomplish as recommended by the Transition Team.

Here, we’ve broken that into to nine categories and documented the administrations’ success with photos, video, and audio. We will keep this page open to dynamically continue to track what we’ve been able to achieve based on these expert recommendations.

Accessibility, Transparency and Technology

The Transition team called for overhauling and updating the County’s severely outdated technological infrastructure. At the time, our website was 15 years old with no accessibility features, our public Commissioner meetings were not videotaped, let alone live-streamed, our social media platforms severely lacked in content, creativity and followers, and we had not adjusted to the realities of the modern workplace, even pre-pandemic, failing to allow for a flexible workforce experience.

Website Improvements

Since taking office, our administration is proud to have launched our long-overdue, brand-new website. Not only was it a complete tech overhaul, we gave the branding a facelift with new fonts, logos, and colors, even changing its name from buckscounty.org to buckscounty.gov, and finally introducing ACA accessibility features. And there’s more to come – in the near future, we’ll institute online payments, a mobile app, and a single sign on feature to tie it all together – for a seamless user experience.

Live-Streaming Commissioners' Meetings

One of our administration’s first orders of business was to join the 21st century and livestream our meetings. Launched in March 2020, today, we are proud to have state-of-the-art equipment and an A/V booth in our Commissioners’ Meeting Room where we bring the meeting live to you on Facebook using a five-camera set-up. We’re also proud to have included an ASL interpreter at every Commissioners’ meeting (also part of the livestream).

Work from Home

Even before the pandemic necessitated some form of it, our Transition Team had the foresight to call for some form of remote work because even events like inclement weather were costing the county nearly $200,000/day per closure. Now our workforce has completely transformed to a more balanced, flexible hybrid system, allowing employees in most departments to work from home up to three days per week, embracing a new standard like many companies and governments across the globe, while not having to sacrifice production.

Promoting Public Awareness

Additionally, the County’s newly-formed Communications Department dove head-first into the social media age, hiring a Social Media Specialist, and growing existing platforms including getting Facebook over 20,000 followers, and launching newer platforms like Instagram and TikTok. We have even launched an official behind-the-scenes County podcast – Bucks County Conversations – which has already produced eight episodes in its first season and has climbed up the national ranks of government-centered podcasts.