The Courage to Trust

Courage: the ability to do something that frightens one. Trust: firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, and strength of someone or something. One need only turn on the news for a few moments to be overwhelmed with the human drama playing out in the world right now. Revolutionary movements attempting to topple dictatorships, naturalRead… Read more »

How a Great Web Design Can Make People Love Your City

The basis for a majority of city websites is to disburse information to citizens in a timely matter. Though information distribution is the foundation behind implementing a city website, the design can in some cases, have as much impact as the information itself. In Robert Brunner’s book Do You Matter? How Great Design Will MakeRead… Read more »

Messages in a bottle?

How many of our messages are sent out in a bottle? We write our message stick it in a container and throw it out onto the sea of the internet. At some point the bottle knocks up against some foriegn shore, gets picked up and someone reads the message. What happens if it landed onRead… Read more »

The Government Man and the X-Rated Art

It is time for another blog from The Government Man, but first, a few announcements. I have been honored with an invite to present some wisdom and insights at the Federal Senior Management Conference in Cambridge, MD April 10-13th. I hope to see some of you there. Also, I have succumbed to technology and myRead… Read more »

@foreignoffice and #twitter

The Foreign Office tweets – in fact it tweets a lot. We have over 70 twitter channels and we tweet in more than 14 languages. We tweet from British embassies, high commissions and ambassadors across the globe, covering a whole range of foreign policy issues. We were one of the first adopters of twitter inRead… Read more »

Sunshine Week sheds light on value of software in improving records management

Early one morning, during my state tenure, I watched the departmental file and e-mail server disappear in the company of some state security officers. Its contents were at the center of an investigation into how and why a lucrative tax credit was passed in my state. This was a first for me. Previously, I hadRead… Read more »

Weekly Round-up March 18, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda Juice Your Blog! Federal Computer Week’s Michael Hardy details how to write a great government blog. He covers a lot of the points that I try to bring up! Coincidence? Is Bad Data Worse than No Data? Andrea Di Maio and the Center’s Dan Chenok argue open government may have unleashed streams ofRead… Read more »

Vino, FARA guru, big asks, anti-tea news, and other political law links for today

IN-KIND VINO VERITAS. Roll Call reports. “Since 2001, donors attending [Mike Thompson’s] parties and other contributors have given the California Democrat more than 800 gifts of wine worth about $340,000, according to a CQ MoneyLine study of campaign finance reports.” EARMARK REQUESTS. Mike Thompson is also noted in this story about earmark requests. LAWSUIT OVERRead… Read more »

Complications of Recipient Identifiers in Government Databases

In her recent testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Ellen Miller, executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, suggested that the U.S. government must establish system-wide identifiers in national database systems. Such identifiers would be “like checks in a checkbook…different databases tracking the same information will have the same data, like whenRead… Read more »