Communications

Encryption of police radio

Deltek Analyst Luke Harris reports. Police departments are more and more looking into encrypting their radio communications now that cheaper and user-friendly scanner equipment is readily available. From the view of police departments, this move increases officer and public safety because it shields their communications from criminals. From the perspective of news media and governmentRead… Read more »

Data.gc.ca – Data Sets I found that are interesting, and some suggestions

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Canadian federal government’s open data portal. Over the past year government officials have been continuously adding to the portal, but as it isn’t particularly easy to browse data sets on the website, I’ve noticed a lot of people aren’t aware of what data is now available (selfRead… Read more »

The Fifth Gate in the Pipeline: Managing a Business

By the time, we’ve gotten to the Fifth Gate in the Leadership Pipeline, we should have spent some quality time mastering the previous four. This gate is punctuated by enormous complexity and significant (perhaps the most significant of all the gates) changes in thinking. The Business Manager needs to come to terms with being highlyRead… Read more »

Top 10 Benefits of GIS Technology

There is so much that you can do with a GIS technology, the most common example is making layers with data showing all sorts of different variables of a community to help inform decision makers and inform the public. For example, my hometown of Syracuse could really use (and publicize) housing information. A useful applicationRead… Read more »

Local Governments Need To Embrace The Passion Of Amateurs!

One of my favorite quotes is: “ Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead The first edition of Britannica Encyclopedias appeared in Scotland in 1768. In 11 years a group of Internet volunteers has ended the 244Read… Read more »

Civic institutes this summer (via Peter Levine’s blog)

Here’s a great little list straight from Peter Levine’s blog at http://peterlevine.ws/?p=8351… People interested in various aspects of civic education and civic renewal have a whole range of summer institutes to consider in 2012. At Tufts, we offer a Summer Institute of Civic Studies (a seminar with a strong focus on theory) followed by aRead… Read more »

Overcoming Obstacles to Social Media Use in Government

Participants in the Government Social Media Class offered by Digital Government University’s recently compiled a list of common arguments they’ve heard against the use of social media in government. How do you counter–firmly, but politely–these arguments? Are there any others that you encounter and have had to defend against? Please respond to these and addRead… Read more »

Fluency

I just participated in my first Hackathon – it focused on coding for Google Apps and we developed an automated meeting registration system. A hackathon is the gathering of a group of developers and their computers with a goal of creating something during the session. Jan Kleinert led the session and, as usual, the GoogleRead… Read more »