Hacking for Good, One Community at a Time

On June 6, 2015 thousands of people from 106 communities took part in the National Day of Civic Hacking. Organized by Code for America, the annual event helps people come together and collaborate to make their communities stronger. The locally organized events welcome more than just those who crunch code. Around the country, organizers engaged people of all backgrounds, including tech experts, government employees, students, entrepreneurs,Read… Read more »

5 Cool Federal Dashboards (and 2 Awesome Agency Ones)

In December 2009, the Open Government Directive established deadlines for federal agencies to make quality information available to the public, all in the name of greater transparency. Recovery.gov was one of the leaders of this open government charge, and was actually established in February 2009, ahead of the directive. Today, there are a number ofRead… Read more »

Learning from the Best City 311 Systems

In 1996, the FCC, at the request of the White House, reserved 311 as a nationwide non-emergency number, and the federal government subsequently funded pilot programs to determine the feasibility of using this number to divert non-emergent calls away from 911. Baltimore was the first in the nation to establish a 311 system as partRead… Read more »

The Future of Libraries: DigitalNZ is Leading the Way

Change is scary When the internet started to hit critical mass in the late 1990s / early 2000s, there were dire stories about how libraries would go the way of dinosaurs, with the expectation that books would be deliberately destroyed like a Fahrenheit 451 dystopia or tossed in a landfill somewhere to moulder quietly. MoreRead… Read more »

How To Implement The Customer Experience Advice In The US Digital Services Playbook

A few weeks ago, I advised federal agencies to build better digital customer experiences. I enjoyed the wave of hate mail that post generated, so I’d like to return to the topic of digital customer experience (CX) again this week. Even the US Digital Service (USDS) thinks federal agencies need better digital CX. Last year,Read… Read more »

I’ve Joined the UK’s Knowledge Hub. Here’s Why

Imagine a virtual place where people who work in the wider public sector could find and network with each other, collaborate and publish, share anything, create and join expert groups. A place where a public servant or health worker or councillor or local government officer or charity worker or trustee could find and connect withRead… Read more »

Digital Engagement Series Part 4: Send Messages That Get Read

Originally posted on the GovDelivery blog. If you have been reading our blog lately, you have noticed our focus on public engagement through digital marketing. First, we covered how to set organizational goals, then establishing target audiences, and most recently branding. Now, we will unveil step four, sending messages that get read. The proliferation of smartphones,Read… Read more »

DorobekINSIDER: Why Government Fails – a List

Why do government systems fail? That is essentially the question raised by MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough following word that IRS data got hacked. MSNBC’s Morning Joe on government IT problems The short but exceedingly provocative discussion that followed spurred me to think: How would I answer that question? What are the big obstaclesRead… Read more »

Federal Agencies Must Treat Customer Experience As A Business Discipline

By now we all know that federal customer experience (CX) is disastrously weak, and that improving it will boost both agency operations and the health of the political system. We’ve also seen some pockets of hope popping up, as I predicted a few months ago. For instance: The Department of Education’s new portal is complete,Read… Read more »

Paper, Paper, Everywhere

Paper paper everywhere, but not a drop of efficiency to be seen. That could be the mantra of government workers everywhere, who, in order to perform their important duties for citizens, often have to shift through mound and mounds of internal and external paperwork to get anything done. From clerks who must deal with enormousRead… Read more »

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