Regulations.gov: Remaking Public Participation

This announcement from the rom the eRulemaking Program Management Office comes from NCDD sustaining member Alexander Moll, Communication Specialist at the Environmental Protection Agency – eRulemaking Branch… WASHINGTON – In recent months, the eRulemaking Program, a Fed-wide E-Gov and Open Gov initiative, which manages Regulations.gov has met with various groups and organizations to discuss waysRead… Read more »

Why Government Agencies Use Private Cell Phone Number Databases?

As a database administrator, I have been working on various non-profit and for-profit projects in the past couple years. Recently, I have been managing a database for a reverse phone lookup company that helps discover the identities behind certain hard-to-find phone numbers, including unpublished mobile numbers. What I have noticed is that there are manyRead… Read more »

States lurch toward health care reform

States are moving toward health care reform but not without significant challenges. Nearly every aspect of federal health care reform legislation has been politicized and yet federal deadlines loom large. Federal health care reform legislation created new and signficant requirements for states to comply with leading many states to launch court challenges claiming overreach andRead… Read more »

Back Away From the Pronouns!

While pronouns have their place in the work world, writers want to maintain precision with their e-mails and memos to avoid confusion. So while I will concur that using pronouns can avoid verboseness, here are two pronouns to use sparingly and the reasons why. 1. Be precise rather than use “it.” If your memo reads,Read… Read more »

Code Across America: A Week of Civic Innovation

From February 24 through March 4, hundreds of passionate citizens around the country will come together to “Code Across America” – to make their cities even better. In over a dozen cities, there will be hackathons to build civic apps, “brigades” to deploy existing ones, unconferences to plan for the year ahead, and meetups toRead… Read more »

GovBytes: Criminal Identification Improves in Western States

Several western states have come together to improve their integrated fingerprint databases for a better criminal identification system. The states which participate in the Western Identification Network (WIN), a nonprofit responsible for the program, include; Alaska, California, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. The improved system will provide high-definition palm and fingerprint matching.Read… Read more »

Award Shows = Joke

Federal workers get beat up a lot. They haven’t had raises to keep up with inflation in two years, likely won’t get them for at least one more years, and Congress continually bashes feds. (It’s not fun when your bosses constantly critique you). However, this isn’t an “oh it’s so tough” post. Others, like stateRead… Read more »

The Homework Quandry

Whether you teach elementary school or graduate school, the effectiveness and purpose of homework has long been debated. Should you ask, most people would probably tell you that homework is important and promotes learning and mastery of course material and in fact, research can be cited to support this intuitive assertion. For example, a studyRead… Read more »