Success In Government Requires Goals, Why Don’t We Have Any?

The City Council in Buffalo and the Erie County Legislature spend a great deal of time on constituent concerns and proclamations honoring various individuals and community groups. As such very little time if any is spent on setting goals and measuring the performance of government departments. In an effort to encourage big picture thinking, IRead… Read more »

The Most Important Skill: Writing?

From The Atlantic: New Dorp’s Writing Revolution, which placed an intense focus, across nearly every academic subject, on teaching the skills that underlie good analytical writing, was a dramatic departure from what most American students—especially low performers—are taught in high school. The program challenged long-held assumptions about the students and bitterly divided the staff. ItRead… Read more »

Webinar on “Shaping Our Future” Forums This Friday

We received the following announcement today from the National Issues Forums Institute‘s Patty Dineen for a fantastic webinar being held this Friday. Since this is a little last minute, I’m just going to share the whole announcement… SHAPING OUR FUTURE: WHAT IS HIGHER EDUCATION’S ROLE? Join Us For A Moderator Preparation Webinar on Friday, OctoberRead… Read more »

Captricity: Why We’re Coding for America

Captricity is one of the seven civic startups in the inaugural class of the CfA Accelerator. I was sure my little dream of starting a side-project, small business were going to die. Looking at a multicolor zoning map and trying to make sense of the regulatory leagalease, I was getting no where close to aRead… Read more »

Organisations need to learn how to party: why digital engagement needs to be more social

I work in digital communications. In the public sector. If there’s one obsession both disciplines share, it’s the quest for ‘engagement’. It’s often said about digital engagement that ‘we’ (organisations) need to go where people go. What that actually means to me isn’t ‘the people use Facebook so we’ll use Facebook and build a pageRead… Read more »

How should governments treat mobile apps in an age of open data?

EmergencyAUS app I had a very interesting conversation the other day regarding the challenge of government mobile apps in the age of open data. The example used was the EmergencyAUS app, which has been developed by Gridstone Pty Ltd. As an app created by a commercial entity, EmergencyAUS aggregates emergency information released by a varietyRead… Read more »

Army Doctrine via Collaborative Web Based Tools

The Army plans to have a new, easy-to-use method for Soldiers to access manuals and other military publications by 2015. The new 10-page Army Doctrine Publications will be available on videos. The more detailed Army Doctrine Reference Publications will be on interactive computer-based training. The Army Training Publications will be on a MilWiki site, aRead… Read more »

Save the Date to Nominate!

The 2012-13 Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Awards for Distinguished DC Government Employees Mark your calendar now to nominate an exemplary DC government employee for The 2012-13 Morris & Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation Awards! As you consider individuals who merit recognition, keep in mind the following criteria: Solving an extraordinary problem Bringing positive recognition to the cityRead… Read more »

The Power of We and Civic Engagement

Recently for Blog Action Day, the topic revolved around the Power of We and how the continued interaction and connectivity between hundreds and thousands of people can change the world. Not surprisingly, one re-occurring theme that kept surfacing was how Civic Engagement is needed in order to facilitate that change and bring together people toRead… Read more »