Tech

New Media 101: The What Would Google Do Approach

As part of an effort to educate (and evangelize) my colleagues about new and social media, I am developing a list of resources entitled New Media 101. This list will not be tool focused as I believe firmly that new media is about relationships and the collaboration and engagement they empower. I want to haveRead… Read more »

Accessing and assessing

Spidering Tim Bonnemann‘s “zilino” project I came across something he had posted to Flickr: Group assessment module. That brought to mind a little sketch I made to concretize my thinking for “IssuePress”, so I uploaded this image to Flickr. see “Use of Faceted Classification“ I tag it “OLAP”. Most would find that bizarre; some, IRead… Read more »

Transparency Camp

Today in Washington at the George Washington University campus, people from across the spectrum are coming together to discuss transparency in government. I am not available to attend in person, but I’m following the discussions and observations on Twitter (#tcamp09). The website is available at http://www.transparencycamp.org/. The website states: This un-conference is about convening aRead… Read more »

Back Office

I’m based in an administrative support office for two bureaus of the State Department. I suspect that I could make good use of Web 2.0 functionality in providing guidance and information on administrative issues to my colleagues who do programs and policy, but the models I find are focused on serving external customers. So IRead… Read more »

Can Government Procurement Be Streamlined By Using Collaboration Technologies and Social Media?

By Dennis D. McDonald, Ph.D. Author’s note: this is a republication from the author’s web site located here. The report Six Practical Steps to Improve Contracting by Dr. Allan V. Burman, Adjunct Professor, George Mason University, is based on a series of discussions co-sponsored by The IBM Center for the Business of Government and GeorgeRead… Read more »

The world as it is…

…isn’t always as it seems. Especially with the explosion of tools and widgets that we have all come to know and love. We will always be people, but what will this new technology bring to us, or us to it? I remain humbled by the power of humans to begin again and again.

Web 2.0 in Gov’t: don’t ask/don’t tell?

Joking around with a client today, we acknowledged that in many ways, the approach to social media in government has been a “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy – launch something under the radar without official approvals or face obstacles and roadblocks that deter all but the most determined. We also acknowledged that things are starting toRead… Read more »

Role of Web 2.0 in Parks and Recreation.

OK, admit it. When you think of Parks and Recreation you don’t necessarily associate that with web 2.0 or Social media. Think though, for a minute, and you will see that there is a tremendous opportunity here for these tools to permeate through. For instance, if you have an online calendar of events, what ifRead… Read more »

Collecting the best case studies of Social Media in Government

I am working on collecting the best case studies of social media in government for a workshop series I am organizing with Potomac Forum. I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on topics, curriculum and speakers. We are planning to bring in some outside speakers on commercial lessons learned and how they could be applied toRead… Read more »