Commitment to Communities is Commissioner Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti’s vision for how she wants the NJDOT to be regarded by all of the agency’s stakeholders, both internally and externally, and has articulated a plan to promote the great work that is performed at Department day in and day out. Transportation is the one service that almost every resident of the Garden State uses daily. As such, the NJDOT plays a significant role in preserving and improving the quality of life for everyone who lives in the state and uses the transportation network.

Commitment to Communities began as a narrower initiative in 2018 to assist local governments in spending the substantial additional dollars directed their way as a result of the reauthorization of the Transportation Trust Fund. However, it became clearer throughout the course of the year that NJDOT upholds commitments to many communities around the state through widely varied examples of work performed by staff. The commitment that the NJDOT makes is not just to its external stakeholders, but to its staff as well.

Embodied in this initiative are core values that define the NJDOT as an organization, and as an employer of an ethnically diverse and multi-skilled staff. These values serve as ideals for how to serve the users of New Jersey’s multi-modal transportation system, the general public, and act as an outline for how to work together to achieve success. They are:

    • Inform
    • Innovate
    • Collaborate
    • Empower
    • Evolve

The Commissioner wants the Department to be inclusive of all the communities it serves by fostering good relationships, listening and being responsive, making changes when warranted, and by embracing the concept that NJDOT is not just an agency that builds roads and bridges, but is truly a customer-service agency.

A key component of the Commitment to Communities vision is to promote the great work that the Department does daily. To achieve this, the Commissioner wants to take full advantage of social media platforms to tell the Department’s variety of stories. She has put together a Communications Committee comprised of representatives from the NJDOT’s four major organizational units who will work with the Office of Communications to identify interesting projects, programs and stories, and to strategize about the best way to make all of our stakeholders aware.