Citizen Engagement

What Governments can Learn about Citizen Engagement from Air Canada

Yes. You read that title right. Yes, airlines are not known for their customer responsiveness. Ask anyone whose been trapped on a plane on the tarmac for 14 hours. You know when Congress has to pass a customer bill of rights for your industry you’ve really dropped the ball. Air Canada, however, increasingly seems toRead… Read more »

As We Do What’s Exciting, Let’s Not Forget What’s Important

Improving government’s customer service means constantly looking for new ways to do things, seizing new technologies, and experimenting. All good. But as we do what’s exciting and new, let’s not forget that we also need to do what’s important. Like implementing all the laws, regulations, and requirements already in place, for government websites. A littleRead… Read more »

Project of the Week: Austin’s Crowd-sourced City Budget

This past week, while I was in Texas, I learned that the City of Austin has launched an innovative online tool for the public to provide comment about their 2010-2011 Budget. Community members will be able to vote on priorities for unmet service demands and potential service reductions as the City works toward formulating itsRead… Read more »

Australia – Principles for citizen : public servant engagement

Hi Folks I’m guessing that many Govloop members are not aware of the AGIMO Blog recently set up in Australia. What struck me was the absence of something really simple to assist people who do not ordinarily blog to engage. With that thought in mind I whipped up something for AGIMO and they have postedRead… Read more »

Citizens ‘wish list’ and frustrations with local government websites (Part 2)

This user insight comes from the user research conducted for London Borough of Camden in the UK. You can visit the website redesign project development site here. Click here to go back to Part 1 View full post here. Wanted to order lid for bin online but there wasn’t any for lids – User’s binRead… Read more »

How can federal agencies use social media to increase civic participation?

Anna York and I have spent the last 6 months working on a report looking at how U.S. Federal Agencies can use social media to enhance civic participation. Our work focuses more on the civic participation side than the web 2.0 side, and we hope that this report will help agencies as they begin toRead… Read more »

Invite our customers in – at their convenience

Lunched with Mom and daughter today. We have Ladies Lunches, when all three generations of us females go out to lunch together and share sandwiches, cake and giggles. We met Mom at the mall and she looked rather harassed. She sighed, “I have this letter from the Council about my refuse collection and I don’tRead… Read more »

Think your customers/citizens are stupid? Guess who their leader is…

Providing great services and products is difficult for businesses, government agencies, everyone. It is easy to blame the customers, or the citizens, for not understanding the complexity of issues ranging from how to install your product to the need for building permits. While, to be honest, there a likely a couple of knowledge-challenged people amongRead… Read more »

Project of the Week: Opengov.gr and “The Citizen Initiator”

We in the States know how a new government with new ideas about transparency and new technology to implement them can make a difference in public perception. Other nations’ new governments are taking a lesson from our shores, and experiencing positive feedback as a result. But is this kind of foray into participatory democracy reallyRead… Read more »