Spending a week living on a $32.17 food budget. Shadowing a homeless shelter caseworker. Riding shotgun on a midnight police patrol. Hiking portions of a 110 mile canal trail. Spending time in jail (just visiting). Jogging through the city with the Mayor. What do all of these have in common? They are just a fewRead… Read more »
How does a hotel chain with over 3800 hotels in 74 countries provide unparalleled customer service? GovLoop and Oracle held an event, The Changing Face of Customer Service in Government, where attendees heard about how J.W. Marriott views customer service. It starts with a founding principle: If we take care of our associates (employees), theyRead… Read more »
The 2012 GSA sales statistics are not very surprising overall – a tight budget lead to a drop in GSA Sales, and the Demand Based Model cancelled many GSA Contracts. However, there are some interesting facts that surface when you look at them altogether. GSA Focus recently updated our GSA Schedules pages, which outline theRead… Read more »
View from M@dison Building rooftop overlooking Grand Circle Park, in Detroit, Michigan. Sometimes, when people hear “Code for America” they might assume that we fellows are all computer programmers, but quite a few of us have backgrounds in architecture, urban design, city planning, community organizing, transportation, and housing policy. And we are metaphorically tied toRead… Read more »
Changes Afoot Last year when we (Code for America) began officially supporting civic startups. We created a program to support companies that build tool that help government work more effectively and transparently. We call it the Code for America Accelerator. Ever since then our organization, and our officespace, has become a hotbed of entrepreneurial energyRead… Read more »
Since ELGL is not a big fan of icebreakers and since we would rather not know what animal you want to be, this blog feature will serve as a means of introducing new members. While you won’t learn about their favorite animal, you will learn about their ideal Sunday morning, which dead people would theyRead… Read more »
By Bob Gourley I’ve written before about how proud I am to be associated with Fixmo. As an advisor to them I’ve been excited to see first hand the hard work and focused engineering they are putting into solutions with an ability to scale to Internet size. To date, some of the most exciting newsRead… Read more »
By Scott Mattocks When I was in school, passing notes took some effort. First, you needed to find a piece of paper that was large enough for your message, but small enough that it could be folded into the requisite football shape. Next, you had to write something. Anything smaller than several sentences just wasn’tRead… Read more »
At a Chinese restaurant last weekend, my fortune cookie read: You are a deep thinker and a good problem solver. I was flattered by my cookie’s opinion, but the thought that sprang to mind was that the fortune was an excellent description of the Code for America board. Many non-profit boards serve primarily a governanceRead… Read more »
April is National Volunteer Month and right now it’s National Volunteer Week. The point of “National…Month/Week/Day” recognitions like this is, well, recognition. Volunteers give their time every day. It’s now time to say, Thank You. And, we best honor our volunteers when we can tell them, and everyone, “Here’s what your contributions did last yearRead… Read more »