NG9-1-1: What Comes First? Governance or Technology?

Technological convergence of legacy and real-time data communications are quickly shaping emergency call taking and the role of Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs) nation-wide. The result of current Emergency 9-1-1 (E9-1-1) trends, including technological progression, PSAP consolidation, and regional networks, is not only the evolution of the emergency response landscape, but the entire public safetyRead… Read more »

A Team of Leaders in Government

The spotlight is shining brightly of late on the hidden value of organizational health and how to capture it. Even all the way to Washington, D.C. Before delving into this very public discovery, let’s digest a commanding reference that uncovers a strong incentive for ailing entities to maintain sustained organizational health. According to a recentRead… Read more »

6 Tips for Encouraging Innovation in your Workplace

One of the most effective ways of getting your employees to think outside the box, innovate, improve processes and increase efficiencies is to start by asking questions, rather than providing answers. Your staff members have a wealth of ideas for how to do their jobs better, but many might feel hesitant to make suggestions. EvenRead… Read more »

Round up from GovHack 2014

GovHack is over for 2014, with teams finishing their hacks by 5:30pm on Sunday, 13 July. With over 1,200 participants organised into 178 teams, 204 projects were developed in under two days, with 146 projects (based on my count) eligible for the approximately $70,000 in national prizes. Note: GovHack has informed me they are stillRead… Read more »

Tiffani Bell: Why I Code for America

Give me your tired (of the status quo), your poor, your black, your brown, your multilingual, your hackers, your entrepreneurs — all yearning to improve government. If that wasn’t a remix of “The New Colossus,” it could have been the call to action I heard from Code for America once upon a time! Go backRead… Read more »

Making the Case for Public Health Informatics

Written with guest blogger Matt Roberts, Informatics Project Manager Inadequate information management leads to incomplete decision-making. Public health and healthcare decision-makers’ eyes routinely glaze over once information technology is mentioned. Return on investment is difficult to pinpoint, and millions of dollars appear to fall into IT black holes as the proposed product often arrives behindRead… Read more »

Getting the Most from Strategic Reviews

Sometimes looking to your past can improve your future. Napoleon marching on Moscow is an example of project management, which helped future generals avoid being blinded by their own hubris. Closed societies, like the Ming Dynasty in China, illustrate the dangers of getting closed off from potential growth and later helped other societies prosper fromRead… Read more »

Best Practices for Improving Your Federal Agency’s Stakeholder Engagement

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Interior (DOI) had to face an unsettling fact: when it came to generating stakeholder engagement, the old way of doing things just wasn’t going to cut it anymore. After conducting research, DOI realized that despite being a federal agency with a huge stakeholder base and a wealth of importantRead… Read more »

Distinguishing Collective Wisdom from “the Wisdom of Crowds”

This reflective piece comes from NCDD blogger Tom Atlee of the Co-Intelligence Project. Tom’s original post can be found at www.tomatleeblog.com/?p=175327099. The popular book “The Wisdom of Crowds” says a lot about the remarkable accuracy of thousands of people making guesses about something that has a real but unknown answer now or in the future.Read… Read more »

Microservices or Mammoth Services?

I suspect that I need to explain both these terms so here goes. Microservices The word Microservices has become popular recently as short hand for a particular approach to online services. The basic idea is simple. It is that when new services are created that they are sliced up into discrete parts that can operateRead… Read more »