Reshaping public services online by getting the basics right

Frustration There is nothing more frustrating than being in government right now if you are looking for change or motivation in your work. With almost no funding available, fewer colleagues to carry the burden, feeling of loss and uncertainty, we are facing an all time low. Everyone knows that with fewer resources, it makes itRead… Read more »

Local Gov Website Redesign: Some questions for local gov webbers

Website Redesign Questionnaire Checklist Having been involved with Camden Council’s website redesign, I myself have had some lessons to be learnt like Kevin Brewer from Derby City Council. However, I’ve realized that after talking to several web development teams across local government here in the UK, we all operate or are structured very differently fromRead… Read more »

Putting German Municipalities on the Twitter Map

More and more German municipalities are using microblogging service Twitter.com – mainly as a complementary news outlet. A map provided by ifib (Institute for Information Management Bremen) displays more than 60 tweeting municipalities – Städte, Gemeinden & Kreise – in April 2011, highlighting total number of tweets and follower count. It looks like cities inRead… Read more »

World Creativity and Innovation Week April 15 – 21

Today starts 2011’s World Creativity and Innovation Week. The week always starts on Leonardo da Vinci’s birthday, which is April 15. From the WCIW website, “How it All Started” In May 2001 Canadian creativity specialist Marci Segal noticed a banner headline in one of Canada’s national newspapers, “Canada in Creativity Crisis” it read. “No itRead… Read more »

Call for Papers: SIRE 2011: SIGIR 2011 Information Retrieval for E-Discovery Workshop

A call for papers — with submission deadlines of 13 May 2011 for research papers and 3 June 2011 for position papers — has been posted for SIRE 2011: SIGIR 2011 Information Retrieval for E-Discovery Workshop, to be held 28 July 2011 in Beijing, China. The workshop will be collocated with SIGIR 2011: The 34thRead… Read more »

Authors digitally autographing e-books

According to the NY Times there is an App called “Autography” proposed for the iPad where a digital photo of the author with a fan is sent to an iPad, complete with message from the author written with an electronic stylus, (“Would You Sign My Kindle?” By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM, April 13, 2011).That all sounds aRead… Read more »

Open311, SeeClickFix, San Francisco and Estonia

The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office (where I work on civil law investigations and social media initiatives) this week launched a local campaign to tackle illegal dumping and graffiti, using SeeClickFix and a range of 311 services to encourage smartphone and Web reporting of neighborhood blight. The “Let’s Do It SF!” initiative also has aRead… Read more »