Tech

Airport body scanners: Real antiterrorism device or security theater?

The Electronic Privacy Information Center and a coalition of groups that include the American Civil Liberties Union are petitioning (.pdf) the Homeland Security Administration to suspend full body scans at airports. The petition goes into a number of points–the fact that the images can be stored, the fact that the images could be associated withRead… Read more »

Changing to Participatory engagement

I find this topic very interesting. I am thinking many of the Pew Internet study findings would mirror the Canadian experience. Would love to see a similar study on Canadian web users. https://www.govloop.com/profiles/blogs/pew-internet-government

Why Do You Serve? Video Edition

We told you earlier this week that the GovLoop team would be out Thursday on the National Mall to celebrate Public Service Recognition Week. While we were out and about mixing it up with some important (well they’re all important) public servants we decided to ask them why they chose public service and what wasRead… Read more »

Open Foreste Italiane is Gathering Momentum

Wow – there is a great new article on Ushahidi’s blog about an application I told you all about recently, which encourages crowdsourcing to stop Italian forest fires before they start. This has huge potential to increase community resilience and assist current firespotting efforts in a nonintrusive way. A lovely video by Elena Rapisardi, theRead… Read more »

Free “What is Gov 2.0?” webcast with Tim O’Reilly – May 11

What is the open government revolution and why should technologists care about it? Join Tim O’Reilly, O’Reilly Media founder and CEO, for a discussion about improving efficiency and transparency in government, citizen-government collaboration, and government as a platform. There will be an open question and answer session. For background reading, please see Tim’s “Government asRead… Read more »

Web 2.0 and IT

VERY INTERESTING COMMENTARY From the Gartner Blogs Legacy systems are not socially adaptiveMay 5th, 2010 · Author: Mark McDonald Business executives, technologists, academics and journalists marvel at the emerging power of social technologies aka Web 2.0. They see developments in social media as transformational, ushering in a new type of computing – social computing. TheRead… Read more »

Introducing ‘CityLife’: the mobile app for local government

This is a crosspost of http://dotgov.com In the past few months, the DotGov team has been working on developing a mobile application for local government organizations. Our participating cities and county have been providing us with great feedback and insights and we really appreciate their help on this aspect of the development phase. Our teamRead… Read more »

“Flash Mob” Insights on Open Government

This morning I attended a great session at the Open Government and Innovations Conference in Washington, DC, led my Amanda Eamich and Karen Malkin, both of the USDA. They broke out session participants into three groups based on the Open Gov pillars – collaboration, participation and transparency. As we split up, it felt a bitRead… Read more »