Here’s Your Opportunity to Give Your Opinion of How Effective the Obama Administration Has Been

Feds – Federal News Radio needs your help. Give us your opinion on how effectively the Obama administration has managed the government by taking their online survey. http://www.federalnewsradio.com/145/2953500/Survey-Obama-Administration—4-years-later It will be interesting to see the results of this survey, which looks back to the last 4 years to assess the progress the administration has makeRead… Read more »

Does Public Access to Government Prevent ‘Idiocracy’ or Limit Innovation?

By Sam Williford, Associate Consultant Recently, Governor Brown and the California legislature approved a bill that would allow local governments the option not to send out advance notice of public meetings, or provide minutes from closed sessions (known as the Brown Act, not related to the current governor), in an effort to stem the tideRead… Read more »

Living in the Future: My Car isn’t Flying, but it is Cheap and Gamified

I remember in the early 80’s when I was about 8 years old I walked up to my dad and said “you know the year 2000 really isn’t that far away, and unless something changes we aren’t going to get jetpacks and flying cars.” Even then I could see the innovation curve wasn’t going toRead… Read more »

Optimal performance, gamification and government

The point of this post:By incorporating some of the characteristics of successful games into our work, we can improve our performance. I’ve been reading a book called Flow: the psychology of optimal experience recently. Reading the book, I was reminded of “gamification”, a concept that you wouldn’t think would have much to do with theRead… Read more »

Vapor Trails

Ima go Star Trek nerd on you for a minute. My favorite Star Trek movie is “Wrath of Khan.” My *second favorite* is directed by the same guy, Nicholas Meyer: “The Undiscovered Country.” This is the movie with Kirk and McCoy framed and imprisoned for the murder of a Klingon Ambassador, meanwhile the real assassinRead… Read more »

EXCEL 2012 UPDATE: Keynote and Plenary Speakers on 7/31-8/1

*** EEOC EXCEL UPDATE *** CIVIL RIGHTS LEADER CARLOS MUÑOS and EEOC CHAIR JACQUELINE BERRIEN will speak at EXCEL 2012 on July 31. EEOC Commissioner Chai Feldblum will speak at Federal Sector Training Event on August 1. http://eeotraining.eeoc.gov/viewpage.aspx?ID=df38df67-1b6b-4297-bf43-7ad46a27b84d (REGISTER) Carlos Muños, Jr., a central figure in the struggles for civil and human rights and aRead… Read more »

Voting is a Sacred Trust, Coveted By Billions Who Cannot

Politics are terrible… Voting doesn’t matter… It’s only the primary… I’m too busy… These are commonly heard sentiments of people who don’t vote. Unfortunately, those who choose not to vote are putting their rights, business, property, community and even freedom at risk! Politics can be terrible. But to quote Winston Churchill, who led England toRead… Read more »

Book Club Week 7: Sustaining Public Engagement

For this week’s NCDD book club discussion on Democratizing Deliberation, Jan Inglis offers a summary of the chapter Sustaining Public Engagement: Embedded Deliberation in Local Communities by authors Elena Fagotto and Archon Fung. Jan has a background in applying research in adult development and complexity science to designing public deliberation and decision making processes inRead… Read more »

Meet the new Cyber Czar (a Putin pal who fights to limit US Cyber interests)

Friend and writer Noah Shachtman has produced a nice piece for Wired Magazine titled “Russia’s Top Cyber Sleuth Foils US Spies, Helps Kremlin Pals” Most all in the cyber security and national security communities have heard about Kaspersky and I imagine you have familiarity with his software and company and connections to Russian intelligence services.Read… Read more »

How to Sharpen Your Job Search

Been hunting for a new job for awhile? Or thinking of starting a job search? Summer is a great time to ‘sharpen your saw’to quote an old proverb. Too many people just update an old resume, tell all their friends that they need a new job, and look at ads online. Not the best methods!Read… Read more »