VETERANS AFFAIRS EMPLOYEE UNION TESTIFIES ON FLAWED WORK CREDIT SYSTEM

Current Performance Evaluation System Contributes to Benefit Delays, Union Says (WASHINGTON) – The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and its National Veterans Affairs Council (NVAC), which represent nearly 200,000 employees throughout the Department of Veterans Affairs, warned Congress that the current performance evaluation system used by the Veterans Benefits Administration, (VBA) is contributing toRead… Read more »

AMERICAN FEDERATION OF GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES STATEMENT ON FEDERAL HIRING REFORM

(WASHINGTON) – AFGE is pleased to see the Presidential memorandum on federal hiring reform. Efforts to engage operational managers more in the hiring process will undoubtedly lead to better and faster hiring decisions. In addition, it makes sense to eliminate mandatory KSAs for the initial application for a federal job. AFGE is reviewing the decisionRead… Read more »

Everything’s Amazing

After we break the momentum of the day-to-day, we have an opportunity to look at things with a new lens, to rethink, and to reimagine the possible. Three amazing videos to help us break the momentum of the day-to-day. To get us to look at things with a new perspective and appreciation, and to thinkRead… Read more »

Judgement Day. How does your government want to be evaluated for “Sunshine 2.0” or your support of democracy online?

The national League of Women Voters has commissioned me via E-Democracy.org to draft a guide titled “Sunshine 2.0.”In short, local Leagues will use this guide to evaluate their local government online efforts based on their support of democracy. Government themselves, academics, and the media may also use the guide to see how they compare withRead… Read more »

A modest proposal for real participatory government

I propose that all Gov 2.0 people consider the following pilot program: Imagine an online community of all registered U.S. voters. The community would be distributed across county clerk offices. There are about 150 million registered voters, and about 3,100 U.S. counties. Such a national community can be easily piloted: Establish pilot communities in sixRead… Read more »

May 12, Berkeley/SOMA Workshop Law.gov Workshop

The Berkeley/SOMA Law.gov Workshop will be held 12 May 2010 at The Mitchell Kapor Foundation in San Francisco, California, USA. Click here for the conference program. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #lawgov. Click here for information about the Law.gov legal open government data project.

Gridlock Drives Gridlock

It’s true that the D.C. area is home to one of the worst commutes in the nation. Think you can breeze through 66, 270, or the Beltway in rush hour? Good luck to you. They say it’s going to rain. Better luck next time. I’ll bet on something that has better odds, like the lottery.Read… Read more »

New Tool for Visualizing Congressional Bills: IBM Many Bills / DocBlocks

Yannick Assogba, Irene Ros, and Matt McKeon, all of the IBM Research Visual Communication Lab, presented DocBlocks: Communication-Minded Visualization of Topics in U.S. Congressional Bills, at CHI 2010: The 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held 10-15 April 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Here is the abstract: US Federal legislation is aRead… Read more »