In a word…fear. That about sums up most local government leaders and their thoughts about the use of social media. As the government with the closest proximity to the public it serves, a lot of my peers worry about opening up another dialogue venue. Many aren’t familiar with social media sites and can’t envision whatRead… Read more »
I work on a data warehouse and my city’s main anti-poverty agency. The data warehouse has been around since 2000. We have roughly 150 users across the agency writing their own ad hoc queries each month, many of them using Oracle Discoverer. (We also have about 250 other users running canned reports each month, butRead… Read more »
Organizations of all types have struggled to come to grips with terms like Government 2.0, Social Business, Social Media, and a long list of others that are floating around book stores, universities, and blogs. I have spent a lot of time speaking with businesses and government agencies, exploring what is working, what is failing, andRead… Read more »
Although I don’t live in DC, I work there and drive in DC daily. If I were a DC resident I’d be beyond pleased to have such a service to use. FixMyCityDC is developed with open-source code and it allows users to submit municipality-related reports (downed trees, potholes, etc.), directly to the district’s system forRead… Read more »
A Shout-out to Heroes With all the talk of heroes on GovLoop, I thought it would be cool to highlight some of the real heroes in this oil spill: the National Guard and Coast Guard. Over 2,000 of these men and women have dropped everything to work around the clock protecting our coast and wildlifeRead… Read more »
In the true spirit of “wisdom of the crowds,” I’d like to ask GovLoop members one simple question: If you had to choose one reason why leadership must use, and embrace, social media, what would that one reason be? And why? (OK, two questions) I’m really curious about this. We [social media practitioners] often hearRead… Read more »
FreeLegalWeb — a new UK free access to law service — is now available in beta. FreeLegalWeb aims to offer free-of-charge online access to primary law of the UK, user-generated legal commentary, and relevant resources available on the free Web, all linked automatically by a content-analysis system. According to the service’s About page, the betaRead… Read more »
A call for papers — with submission deadline of 25 November 2010 — has been issued for ECEG 2011: The 11th European Conference on e-Government, to be held 16-17 June 2011 in Ljubljani, Slovenia. Here are the legal-informatics topics, from the topics about which papers are invited: Challenges to e-Government: Interoperability; Language issues; Identity ManagementRead… Read more »
From Apache to Health and Human Services: Apache co-founder Brian Behlendorf discusses the CONNECT health data project Brian Behlendorf, one of the founders of the Apache Web server project and the CollabNet cooperative software development company, is contracting now with the Department of Health and Human Services on a software project they opened up aRead… Read more »
Making Mountains out of Capitol Hill A first time visitor to Capitol Hill will probably be surprised to find the legislative branch of United States government essentially run by twenty-something-year-olds fresh out of school. “I’m 33 and I am past my time,” Eric Johnson, former Chief of Staff to Robert Wexler (D-FL), told a groupRead… Read more »