May 2011 Blog Posts (700)

Happy Memorial Day! What does everyone have planned for this weekend? As I take this time off for Memorial Day, I’ll be thinking of the service men and women who gave their lives for our freedom and safety. But I’m also happy to work with a number of men and women at HP who have spent time in the military and have shared their experiences with me. One of those is Don Zimmerman, who spent years with the…

Before you clock out for a long Memorial Day weekend, be sure to check out the...

Friday Fab 5!

Yes, it's Friday yet again, and I'm sure everyone is itching to get away (if you haven't already). So before you break out the barbeque, it's time to take a look back at the week here on GovLoop and highlight some of its greatest moments.

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While serving as Communications Director at a city, I witnessed a city council meeting that lasted until 3:15 a.m. At around midnight, the mayor led the council in stretching and calisthenics.

Have you ever witnessed or participated in a marathon meeting (of an elected or appointed body)? Would love to hear your stories!

By Steve O'Keeffe: http://bit.ly/kyYT4B

Excavating Pompeii, archeologists found three types of correspondence - love letters, shopping lists, and IG reports on failing Fed IT projects. But seriously folks, how long have we been trying to nail this jell-o to the wall? PMA, Watch Lists, Dashboards, TechStats… Who hasn’t scoffed at Uncle Sam’s IT management mayhem? Well, here’s your chance to get off the pine and into the…

The Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (OH) has acquired a Segway to help its service quality supervisors monitor bus and trolley service. “Rather than having someone on foot patrolling 20 blocks, or in a car that would be stuck in traffic most of the time, the Segway is giving our staff more speed and mobility,” said CEO and general manager Joe Calabrese in a…

DOJ AND ENSIGN. The Hill. “The Justice Department will likely renew its investigation of former Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) in light of the more than 1,000 emails the Senate Ethics Committee received at the tail end of its investigation, according to Reuters.”  The Reuters story is…

INPUT Analyst Erin Brady reports.

The state of California released Governor Brown's revised FY 2011-12 budget in mid-May 2011. The revised budget addresses the solutions put forth in the Governor's Recommended Budget released in January 2011, along with additional solutions deemed necessary to reduce the state's budget deficit. Even with $13.4 billion in solutions proposed in the…

After losing up to $15 million a year from missing, stolen, and resold U-Passes, TransLink (BC) is threatening to cancel the student pass program. This year the agency provided about 80,000 U-Passes to students at six Vancouver-area colleges and universities at a discounted rate of $30 per month; the non-transferable passes are good for travel on buses, SkyTrain, and SeaBus.…

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• Good thing Corridor is up and running.  Due to budget cuts, Federal CIO Kundra…

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge wants more time to consider whether a lawsuit by Metrolink (CA) engineers should go to trial. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen object to video cameras placed in locomotives and cab cars, saying that the surveillance infringes on their due process rights and their privacy. Judge Luis Lavin expects to issue a final…

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When setting up OpenRFP.net as an prototype example of Open Government, I was keenly motivated by a number of ideas from other sources, in particular Cisco’s ‘Next Generation Cluster’.

First, other ideas that went in included one…

GovLoop is my favourite example of tailoring a social web community towards a particular audience. It’s absolutely the best medium for catalyzing new ideas and spreading best practices at the speed of thought.

I have set up a new group to cater for our forthcoming Open Government Canada webinar, you can virtually meet and greet with some of the attendees there.…

John Mayer of the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CALI) has posted The Free Law Reporter - Open Access to the Law and Beyond, on the VoxPopuLII Blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School.

In…

The first ever SharePoint Conference for State Department staff was held Monday, May 16, and featured SharePoint evangelist Dux Raymond Sy as keynote speaker. The Conference theme, "Share the Power," appropriately characterized all aspects of the event. The organizing tasks were shared by staff from the…

Last week I had the chance to attend my first RailsConf.  Dan, Erik and Scott from Code for America were also in attendance at the conference. The conference was filled with great tutorial sessions, tech sessions and some inspiring keynotes. Here are some quick snippets from the…

The question of whether or not a college education pays has been rumbling on the sidelines of reform discussions for some years.  It got a renewed kick in the rear this week when PayPal co-founder, Facebook investor and billionaire Peter Thiel offered 20 promising young people a $100,000 not to go to college and instead pursue their entrepreneurial talents.  The challenge, however, is not an issue of college vs. no-college, rather it is a question of how we are defining success and are we…