January 22: Law.gov Panel at Princeton’s Workshop: Open Government: Defining, Designing & Sustaining Transparency

A panel (scroll down) about the Law.gov legal open government data project, will be held 22 January 2010, at the workshop entitled Open Government: Defining, Designing, and Sustaining Transparency, at Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP), in Princeton, New Jersey, USA. Click here to submit questions for the panel discussion, via Google Moderator.Read… Read more »

Making Technology a Part of Your City’s Vision

by Sophicity Is technology a part of your city’s long term vision? If not, it should be. While most cities have long term plans for economic development or infrastructure improvement, the prevailing thinking is that IT planning only covers short-term immediate needs that don’t go beyond the next budget cycle. However, such planning is reactionaryRead… Read more »

To Serve the Dream of MLK

If I did my math right, Martin Luther King Jr. was 39 when he was killed – about the same age as me. In the roughly last decade of his life, he traveled a zilliion miles, presented his message of peaceful advocacy at over 2,500 speaking engagements, wrote 5 books and myraid articles, PLUS, heRead… Read more »

Law.gov: A Law-Related Open Government Data Project

[NOTE: Updated on 2 February 2010 to link to the Law.gov Project Google Group. Updated on 27 January 2010 to link to video and a summary of the Law.gov panel at the Princeton Open Government Workshop. Updated on 25 January 2010 to link to news about the National Inventory of Legal Materials. Updated on 23Read… Read more »

In Challenging Times, No More “Inner Child”: Boldly Bring Your Inner Chutzpah

Over lunch, my agent posed a provocative challenge: “Write an article on chutzpah.” He believes the timing is right. In this difficult economy and uncertain times it’s certainly tempting to withdraw into a shell. But a better strategy might be a contrary one, throwing off the shell and putting yourself out there. One “chutzpah” sourceRead… Read more »

Member of the Week: Mark Gorkin a.k.a.”The Stress Doc”

1. What personal life experiences inspired you to get a degree in clinical social work? First, my family was a living laboratory for a lot of complex emotional issues and conflicts, including depression, substance abuse, etc. So whether physician or clinician, first you must heal thyself. My MSW program provided an initial path for self-understanding.Read… Read more »

Pushing the Government Send Button – Risk in the face of social media

t has been fascinating to watch governments – particularly in Canada – grapple with the risk paradigm. The worry is all too real, unfortunately, that interacting and sharing of their expertise and experience could land a leader on the front fold of the newspaper or silently put a clerk or policy analyst into a box.Read… Read more »

How-To: Create Closed Caption Video…For Free

Here’s the run down of tools used: Zamzar – for converting videos to multiple formats Notepad – for writing and editing of the text only transcript MAGpie – for the creation of the timestamped XML closed-caption file JW FLV Player – for embedding of the final video The video was fast, but here’s how youRead… Read more »

New Update to the Open Government Plan Template Now Available

Thanks all for your feedback on the Open Government Plan Template. We have received a bunch of really good comments and kudos from the first release of the template. We have made some changes to incorporate feedback. Additionally, we have saved the Microsoft Project File as PDF and made that available, so there is noRead… Read more »

GSA Opens Nominations for their Prestigious IRMCO Award

GSA’s IRMCO Award nomination application has been posted with a submission deadline of February 23. Monetary prize of $5,000 for the team award and $2,000 for the individual award. Applaud agency change leadership by nominating government colleagues for this prestigious award. Winners will be celebrated at GSA’s IRMCO conference, April 11-14, at the Hyatt RegencyRead… Read more »

Project Management