How times have changed in the life of a local government communicator

Times have definitely changed in the life of a local government communications professional. Ten years ago, I held this position for a city of 70,000 residents and my options for reaching citizens were much more limited than for someone in a similar job today. Back then, I essentially had to rely on the bi-monthly cityRead… Read more »

The US Census and the Amazing Apportionment Machine

Watch video. Apportionment is the process of dividing the seats in the House of Representatives among the 50 states based on the population figures collected during the decennial census. But how does it actually work? Through animation, the US Census Bureau helps explain how the apportionment formula is used to ensure equal representation for all,Read… Read more »

White House/GSA “ExpertNet”

The United States General Services Administration (GSA) and the White House Open Government Initiative are soliciting your feedback on a concept for next generation citizen consultation, namely a government-wide software tool and process to elicit expert public participation (working title “ExpertNet”). ExpertNet could: Enable government officials to circulate notice of opportunities to participate in publicRead… Read more »

Acquisition Reforms Will Focus on Oversight

As the lame duck session of the 111th Congress comes to a close, some in the acquisition community are left to wonder what lays ahead for the acquisition reform initiatives of the Obama Administration. According to many experts, the shift in political power may not make much difference for the IT and procurement communities. IRead… Read more »

Is Your Job Market Competitive? 6 Ways to Find Out

In one of my recent posts, I came up with a silly scheme to determine how long someone’s job search would last. One of the factors in this four-factor formula relates to how competitive your job market is. This data would pretty useful to have before launching a career transition or new graduate study program,Read… Read more »

Social Scoring Is Here…Like It Or Not

There has been quite a bit of noise around services measuring a users influence and overall impact within the social media space. Services such as Klout and SocialSprout, both of which I use, keep track of a users reach & influence within a network. While these ranking are extremely interesting (and I promise, you WILLRead… Read more »

Better Meetings

I was volunteered to watch a client’s repeating meeting. Depressing. It was scheduled for an hour, people arrived late to protect themselves or avoid discomfort, went for over 90 minutes. What I learned: Opinions don’t count. As satisfactory as airing an opinion is to the opinionator, it didn’t add value to the conversation. Higher statusRead… Read more »

Happy Birthday, Open Government Directive

To mark the one-year anniversary of the Open Government Directive (OGD), Patrice McDermott, Director of OpenTheGovernment.org, and Carolyn Lukensmeyer, Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, penned a piece cross-posted on Government Executive (http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=46682) and NextGov (http://www.nextgov.com/nextgov/ng_20101208_2722.php) highlighting the successes of the OGD to date and recommending “next steps” for the Administration to take to make governmentRead… Read more »

Australia is the second largest government user of Yammer – over 110 active networks

There’s recently been some controversy in Australian government over the use of Yammer, a private and secure enterprise social network, which I discussed in my post, The ongoing struggles to balance IT security and staff empowerment. I asked Simon Spencer, Yammer’s newly appointed Asia-Pacific General Manager, how many government agencies in Australia were using Yammer.Read… Read more »