Cool technology, but where's ours?!

Nova Scotia Power's reporting system is so sophisticated that I can call a map of outages related to Hurricane Earl and see exactly how many people are without power, which streets are involved, and when it's scheduled to be restored on those streets.  I can immediately tell that Kathy should have power right now, although she is close to an outage area, and Dad should be in the clear.  Excerpt showing part of my home town of Sydney (population 24,000) and source link:

http://www.nspower.ca/en/home/residential/outageinformation/liveoutagemap.aspx

QUESTION:  Why the hell didn't we have this kind of efficient communication available to us during our arduous recovery from the third costliest storm in American history, Hurricane Ike?  Nova Scotia, cultural outpost with total population 940,000, has this capacity, but the fourth largest city in America in the Great State of Texas 20 million people strong cannot manage something like this??  What is UP with that?!?  Geez!!