What do I think of the Canadian Senate?

Read Jennifer Ditchburn in the Globe and Mail – Senate stubborn on making information about chamber more accessible. It is laughable about how hard the Canadian Senate makes it to access information about it. The lower house – which has made good progress in the last few years on this front – shares tons ofRead… Read more »

The Military’s use of Social Media: Facebook Focus (Part 1 of 3)

Blog series originally posted at DK Web Consulting. The growth of social media is evident even amongst the ranks of government. The five branches of the US Military have been social media champions and there is much to learn from their efforts as we see in this report. This is the first installment of threeRead… Read more »

Why Federal contracting processes are slow

The entire Federal contracting process is largely premised on the idea that small businesses must receive preferential treatment. To achieve this, the Federal Government has created a tangled web of contracting processes that agencies must go through in order to purchase its goods and services. As all tangled webs are, these processes are very inefficientRead… Read more »

Guns & Gov: America’s Moral Decay

As the 2012 Olympics get underway, it’s likely that the week-old Colorado gun massacre will be overshadowed by media saturation coverage of Team USA and events in London. But let’s not forget about the disturbing and deadly event that took place in the town of Aurora, Colorado, last week — which reportedly left 12 innocentRead… Read more »

Davenport Institute’s 2012 grants for CA public engagement

Here are some details about the 2012 Public Engagement Grant Program run by the Davenport Institute for Public Engagement and Civic Leadership at Pepperdine University (formerly Common Sense California). The grant is open to municipalities and civic organizations in California. This year, the Davenport Institute will be awarding 2-4 grants, with a maximum individual grantRead… Read more »

TSP Talk – 07/28/12

Riding the trading channel Stocks rallied sharply late last week and turned what looked like was going to be a poor week, into a week of solid gains. The game in Europe continues as this week it was optimism over bailouts that sent the markets higher. We saw weak economic data with the 1.5% GDP,Read… Read more »

New Head of FBI Cyber Branch, Military Honors Database, and More

Here is today’s federal cybersecurity and information technology news: A hacking organization known for high profile attacks on government and government contracting targets including in the United States has been linked to the Chinese army. More here. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has named Richard McFeely, who previously served as special agent in charge ofRead… Read more »

Hard Data on the Status of Open311

With the recent announcement of 311 Labs and Code for America’s recent podcast featuring me talking about my perspective on Open311, this write-up about Open311Status is probably long overdue. Open311Status—still a work in progress–polls Open311 servers in 30 cities and aggregates configuration, performance and utilization statistics about those Open311 endpoints. I built Open311Status for twoRead… Read more »