Tech

Victorian government launches inquiry into the use of social media in the house to reflect on the office of Speaker, by parliamentarians and public

Reading the eGovernment Resource Centre’s newsletter this morning, the Victorian government has launched an inquiry into the use of social media to reflect on the office of the Speaker, looking at use while parliament is sitting by both parliamentarians and the public galleries. The Legislative Assembly Standing Orders Committee is considering: (1) Should any restrictions,Read… Read more »

GovBytes: Millions of tax-payer dollars saved by Oregon’s use of video-conferencing

As the number of agencies and businesses choosing to host video-conferences rather than in-person meetings grows, so do the savings, as well as the environmental benefits. Oregon has been boosting its video-conference efforts, and has a lot to boast about regarding the benefits of the conferences. In total, it’s estimated that Oregon has saved $2Read… Read more »

Social Media in Government Reading Discussion: Nicholas Christakis’ Connected

This week, we read selections from Connected, by Nicholas Christakis. Why I Assigned This Text This is the second of two texts that focus exclusively on how social media/social networks function and the relationship between people’s online social behavior and their offline activities. There are a few key concepts that this text brings into sharpRead… Read more »

U.S Government Agencies Switching Lanes from Blackberry to iPhones

Recently, there has been a shift in the traditional way government manages mobile devices. Many of today’s U.S. federal agencies are moving from RIM’s blackberry devices to Apple’s iPhone. One reason for this movement is that government employees are tired of being forced to use their out of date government issued Blackberry’s. They have beenRead… Read more »

Transparency isn’t a cost – its a cost saver (a note for Governments and Drummond)

Yesterday Don Drummond – a leading economist hired by the Ontario government to review how the province delivers services in the face of declining economic growth and rising deficits – published his report. There is much to commend, it lays out stark truths that frankly, many citizens already know, but that government was too afraidRead… Read more »

Hadoop and Business Intelligence

Like my colleague Alex Olesker, I too attended Cloudera Day 2012. While there were many panels of interest, perhaps one of the most important was Amr Awadallah‘s talk about big data applications to business intelligence. Many CTOVision readers with backgrounds in the intelligence community may think of corporate espionage when the phrase “business intelligence” isRead… Read more »

Many IT programs would be cut under FY13 budget request

The president’s fiscal 2013 budget request to Congress, released Feb. 13, sets aside $78.9 billion for information technology spending during the coming fiscal year. This amount does not account for the intelligence community, for IT embedded into weapons systems or satellites, or for IT spending that agencies don’t classify as IT for budget purposes. TheRead… Read more »

Guest post from Pia Waugh: Vivek Kundra and some lessons learnt about tech in gov

Today I am publishing a guest post from Pia Waugh, a well known open government and open source advocate who recently left Senator Lundy’s office as her IT Advisor to take on a mystery role in the APS. Pia attended the presentation and dinner with Vivek Kundra on Tuesday (which I also attended). Vivek isRead… Read more »