Member of the Week: Sterling Whitehead Organization: Strategic Systems Programs, Department of the Navy Email: [email protected] (home) Supporting Links: http://youngacq.weebly.com; http://ssp.navy.mil 1. What was your path to public service/current job? My father served as a US Marine for 30 years, so I grew up with the public service attitude, the greater good, all that. IRead… Read more »
This week I felt powerless in affecting change in the organization. So, when I was invited on a field trip to the petting zoo yesterday to help with a video shoot for a cool project, I definitely said ‘yes’ to the mini escape. Petting cute baby goats with little kids around was tritely therapeutic. StandingRead… Read more »
Last week, a county government communications director in Oregon asked me to help her put together a session for their annual state meeting. We agreed that a “show and tell” hour, where attendees volunteer to show their county’s website and let their colleagues tell them what they think, could work well. I offered to doRead… Read more »
A codeathon to create applications in connection with Citability, a project to create a new standard for permanent URIs for government information resources, including legal resources, will be held 9-11 April 2010, at Microsoft Corporation, 5404 Wisconsin Ave, Suite 700, Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA. The Twitter hashtags for the event are #citability and #dccodeathon. ClickRead… Read more »
On April 7, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency published the Open Government Plan, an Innovation Timeline, and started a Forum Blog for Public Discussion. In a flurry of activity, following months of preparation and planning, the EPA completed the latest milestone of the Open Government Directive, and then some. But this is not the endRead… Read more »
“Today, I would like to discuss with our community the recent decline in both quality and civility in our front page news discussions/comments. While I remain proud of our community discussions on articles, and while I acknowledge that they are far superior to the status quo online, things have taken a turn for the worseRead… Read more »
As we rapidly approach the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Earth Day on April 22, I am excited and encouraged by the stellar progress the federal government has made in the area of energy efficiency. Recently, the federal government announced that it will take steps to cut its energy use and reduceRead… Read more »
There tends to be an assumption amongst many IT and business leaders that if a system is core to their operations then people cannot perform their jobs without using it. This leads to the fallacy that employees will have no choice but to use the system and no further effort is required to drive andRead… Read more »
We at the National Academy of Public Administration today released our report on the National Dialogue on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. This was a project with the Department of Homeland Security to run a three-phase online public dialogue soliciting stakeholder ideas and feedback on DHS’s missions, goals, and priorities. While the ideas offered haveRead… Read more »
In today’s column I tackle reader’s questions including how to jump from the private sector to public service. Q: Why does it feel like the federal government discourages private sector folks from applying to jobs in the public sector? I have 15 years of private sector experience that could come in handy, but I don’tRead… Read more »