Seeing the Building Wave: Using Challenges to Spark Innovation in Government

By Joseph Semsar, Associate Consultant Last week, I had the pleasure of listening in on a joint conference call between the National Association of State Chief Administrators (NASCA) and the National Association of State Procurement Officials (NASPO). The call marked the first time these national organizations — which both work to make state governments moreRead… Read more »

Oklahoma’s First CIO Speaks to Procurement and its Effect on Innovation

With even greater attention focused on government expenditures, the need to acquire services for the lowest cost is increasingly in the spotlight. Innovation in information technology, however, may be suffering as a result of the procurement process. In this interview, Alex Pettit, the current Chief Information Officer for the state of Oklahoma, discusses with ChrisRead… Read more »

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding is a technique commonly utilized by software designers and programmers to amass enough financial support to create a new application or tool. However, in its most essential form, crowdfunding combines the spirit of collaborative innovation with the economic muscle to produce tangible results, and therefore can be applied to other industries and pursuits withRead… Read more »

Balancing Innovation and Cost-Cutting

Why are workers keen to cut costs? In an economy when many companies have abandoned hiring, those who still have jobs find themselves overworked, but keen to keep their paychecks. As a result, many companies have begun using innovation management software to pick the brains of their employees to come up with ways to shortenRead… Read more »

WIC Program Announces Key Opportunity for Software Enhancement Services

Greetings! The U.S. Department of Agriculture Women, Infants and Children (WIC) IT program will soon be releasing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to provide software enhancement services to the Successful Partners in Reaching Innovative Technology (SPIRIT) IT system, which administers benefits to nearly half a million WIC participants around the country. Additionally, an “Industry Day”Read… Read more »

States See New Model For Project Planning, Purchasing

How do you make sure that every project in your state or organization is working towards an overall mission in the most efficient and cost effective way? Alex Pettit, CIO of the State of Oklahoma, talks with Chris Dorobek of the DorobekINSIDER about the need for enterprise architecture when strategically planning the high level goalsRead… Read more »

New Delhi Traffic Police Benefit from Facebook Collaboration

Software that is accessible by a large number of people often produces unexpected benefits due to its inherently collaborative nature. In New Delhi, overburdened traffic police have gained an incredibly cost-effective method of catching traffic violators. Thanks to New Delhi drivers who snap pictures of offenders and post them to the traffic police’s official FacebookRead… Read more »

Gold Stars

I want to spend a little time gushing over Dr. Alicia Sanchez (@gamesczar) and Kris Rockwell (@krisrockwell). This experience we co-created in Sedona back in February, Up to All of Us, had an incubation at Parsons School of Design, organized by the wonderful Liz Burow (@burlix). One of the main takeaways from that incubator cameRead… Read more »

The opendata confessional for localgov

We don’t have a water cooler you can gather around at GDS (though we do have drinking water on tap) because you’d be massively in the way if you did but if we did this post would be tagged watercooler. I think best when I think aloud. I don’t have anyone to think aloud to,Read… Read more »

Intellectual Ergonomics: “Thought Breaks”

According to comedian John Cleese, the only way to be truly creative is to have “boundaries of space, and boundaries of time.” He argues that in a frenetic, multi-tasking world, innovation can only take place in an environment where the unconscious is allowed to explore thoughts without fear of interruptions. This downtime has helped himRead… Read more »