Gadi Ben-Yehuda New for Govvies (especially Muni-Govvies): Krisy Fifelsky, the Web Services Manager for the City of Reno, Nevada, has overhauled her blog and added a video feature. GovGirl.com. Check it out! NASA and State Department in the Social Media Spotlight. Articles on Ragan and HuffPo hlighlight the work of these two federal agencies inRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda Saba alcher! صباح الخير! Good morning! The State Department is now tweeting in Arabic Land-based Broadband Is 2000-and-Late. President Obama wants 98 percent of the country to have wireless access to the internet by 2016. Trillion-with-a-T? Sounds Fishy to Me. This infographic claims that Americans receive 200 Trillion text messages a day. ToRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake created an open data initiative for Baltimore City: http://data.baltimorecity.gov/. Already, the most widely accessed feeds are Real Property Taxes, Parking Citations, and 311 Customer Service Requests – an interesting datum in itself. On a related note. . . Federal Computer Week cites “An Open Government Implementation Model: Moving to IncreasedRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda My colleague, John Bordeaux, has me thinking about the Internet of Things. Slate ran an article about ThingD, which is trying to add a social dimension to that other internet. (So far, though, I like Uncrate more–better curation. I’m saving up for a Seabreacher!) I foresee strong implications for government agencies. Slate’s MichaelRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda Last week I linked to an article arguing that crowdsourcing was broken. Here’s one showing how New York is trying to implement it through a program called “Give a Minute.” Twitter and blogging are helping children’s services in the UK. Examples like these should be making it easier to justify the time governmentRead… Read more »
Over at the IBM Center for the Business of Government Blog, Dan Chenok has posted an article about the privacy implications raised by a few recent reports and their implications for government managers. Dan looks closely at: “Preliminary Staff Report” from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) A “Green Paper” from the Department of Commerce entitledRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda The New York Times reports that our current privacy laws are being obsolesced by the web. Along those lines, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has launched a site that details administration’s plans for trusted online identities. Everyone loves talking about the weather. Now NOAA helps us visualize it. And ifRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda True to the spirit of Janus, from whom January gets its name, Alex Howard takes a look backward and forward in his GovFresh article, “Defining Gov 2.0 and Open Government.” For those resolving to become more active on social media in constructive ways (say, because you read Cognitive Surplus and want to engageRead… Read more »
Note: I am on vacation this week, so I have the time to write blog entires (like this one) that are not reflective of the opinions of my employer. These thoughts and their form are entirely my own. Last October, I wrote “if agencies’ social media sites were like phone numbers, Josh [Shpayher] looked aroundRead… Read more »
Gadi Ben-Yehuda It is tempting to talk about “the year winding down,” and perhaps it’s natural to look outside our windows at the frozen ground under a patina of snow (as it is here in DC) and think that the next couple of weeks will be quieter, less eventful, slower. But as recent years haveRead… Read more »