Communications

Shouldn’t the BP oil spill be a crowdsourcing “Grand Challenge”?

Obviously everyone is familiar with the incredibly tragic damage that continues to take place while I write and you read this regarding the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. There will be plenty of time for everyone to weigh in on how this was allowed to happen and not able to be fixed when a solutionRead… Read more »

Looking for social media measurement tips

The government of Canada has recently put together a group to come up with techniques and best practices to measure social media in the public sector. We’d like to see what other governments are doing to measure their use of social media–whether it’s quantitative or qualitative and what kind of performance measurement frameworks are beingRead… Read more »

Visualizing Legislation: Software Tools

A number of software applications and platforms are now available for creating visualizations (i.e., graphical depictions) of legislation. Here are some of them: Compendium — an argument mapping application, distributed free-of-charge — has been applied to legislation (see pages 129-132) by participants in the EU’s LEX-IS Project. (See the description in Loukis et al., UsingRead… Read more »

5 Social media tips for city government

Congratulations! Your city has made the decision to engage in social media as another tool to connect with citizens. You set up your community on Facebook and Twitter, and now you’re wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into. I’ve learned a lot through the City of Reno’s adventure with social media, and I have some tipsRead… Read more »

Government Social Media: If You Don’t Want to Engage, Don’t Bother

There has been an unquestionable explosion of government social media use in the last year. Last week, GovTwit, the Twitter directory of government agencies and officials reported 44.9 million followers for the 3,000 IDs it tracks, after starting in 2009 with just a handful of accounts. Still, towns, agencies and leaders not using social mediaRead… Read more »

Mr. President: Tear Down Those Walls!

Whenever I get a chance for some free time on trips to Washington, DC, I walk or run along the National Mall. Our nation’s capitol is arguably one of the most beautiful cities in the world, especially in and around the monuments and memorials. But then I walk a block off the Mall and seeRead… Read more »