Cities and States Not Prepared for Cyber Attacks, FBI Surveillance Backdoors, and More

Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: The State Department‘s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs plans to provide the Mexican Public Security Secretariat with the Mexico Technical Surveillance System to intercept and analyze communications. More here. In the National Preparedness Report released by the Federal Emergency Management Agency found thatRead… Read more »

My LRC Review of “When the Gods Changed” and other recommended weekend readings

This week, the Literary Review of Canada published my and Taylor Owen’s review of When the Gods Changed: The Death of Liberal Canada by Peter C. Newman. For non-Canadians Peter Newman is pretty much a legend when it comes to covering Canadian history and politics, he was editor of the country’s largest newspaper and mainRead… Read more »

Is Twitter killing the art of oration?

I love speeches. I love speech-writing, and I love trying to sway an audience. There may be many better orators around, but I’d say I’m above average. It’s an art in which you have tools, including: fallacies, buzzwords, calls to action, anecdotes, etc. But now there’s a new tool being used, not by people givingRead… Read more »

The Two Interlocking Cycles of Gov 2.0

This post is, in some ways, an extension of another from last week called “The Three Dimensions of Open Government“. “Open government” is a term that’s getting a reasonable amount of use these past few years. It’s overtaken an earlier term “Gov 2.0”. That doesn’t surprise me. “Gov 2.0” seems a little dated (as, inRead… Read more »

Why HR Matters and Your Weekend Reads

Welcome to GovLoop Insights Issue of the Week with Chris Dorobek… where each week, our goal is to find an issue — a person — an idea — then helped define the past 7-days… and we work to find an issue that will also will have an impact on the days, weeks and months ahead.Read… Read more »

Review – New City of Tampa Website

My hometown City of Tampa just re-launched their website today so thought I’d write a little review. Pros -Love the new big focus on search and key terms up top -Love how we’ve moved from just a series of links to highlighting the top key areas -Love the background image showing the beauty of tampaRead… Read more »

Frontiers of Democracy II set for July 19-21 at Tufts

Both in the U.S. and around the world we find ourselves in a dramatic period of civic awakening. We know this work and ideas under different names: public engagement, deliberative and participatory democracy, collaborative governance, educating for democracy and civic learning, public work, building social capital, and strengthening democracy. We promote it using diverse means;Read… Read more »

Weekly Round-up: May 04, 2012

Gadi Ben-Yehuda You Had Me at “Sociocultural.” Here’s a report showing how the DoD is using social media to engage with foreign populations. The title alone is worth reading: “Sociocultural Behavior Research and Engineering in the Department of Defense Context“ From Brasilia to LA. Two summations worth your time: of the Open Government Partnership inRead… Read more »

Is it theft if you personalise & retain an official social media account when you leave an organisation?

One of the legal and ethical dilemmas organisations are beginning to struggle with is the ownership of social media accounts. When a staff member creates and uses a social media account solely or mainly for official organisational purposes they can build a large following over months or years based entirely on their paid work activities.Read… Read more »

Canberra event: Public interest journalism and its digital future

Organised by the Public Interest Journalism Foundation, as part of the New News public events program, Public interest journalism and its digital future is a public event in Canberra on the evening of 29 May. I’m taking part in the discussion, alongside Mr Denmore and Professor Matthew Ricketson. It should be a very interesting evening!Read… Read more »

Communications