Millennials & Gov: Where’s the Love?

Uncle Sam continues to face a quandary over how to attract a new generation of young people to public service. One perplexing problem is how to rebuild plummeting trust in government among the all important millennial demographic, also known as Generation Y. This generation will ultimately comprise a majority of the U.S. labor force, yetRead… Read more »

NYU Launches Research Network on Opening Governance

In case you missed it, we wanted to share about an interesting new initiative on open government from NYU’s Governance Lab. The initiative will conduct research on governments that pursue innovative ways of doing their work and should be a project to keep an eye on for researchers or those interested in open governance. YouRead… Read more »

Zombies, OMB IT, and no more ideas! CBG Round-up, 05.16.2014

Gadi Ben-Yehuda Those Kids Today! A few things: First, Lindsay Pollack deconstructs some myths about Millenials, an important read for people trying to manage them. Also, the Washington Post has a chart showing which college majors students chose now, vs. 40 years ago. The prevalence of texting has yielded another positive result: people can nowRead… Read more »

Life Lessons Applicable to the Public Sector

Collectivism is a core concept in public service. In my last post, I introduced the concept of leading without a title (insert hyperlink to that blog post). So much of our personal development happens outside the office. Our life experiences, personal lives and hobbies paint a picture of our values, ethics and interests. Reflection isRead… Read more »

open311 Use Cases

Exciting new advancements are taking place in the world of open311, which is a data standard that various applications can be built on. A number of open311-compliant open source and commercial applications allow data to be easily shared and used by each other, such as CRMs, mobile reporting apps, and other web interfaces displaying reportRead… Read more »

Protecting Public Health with Smart Data

From clean water supplies to the polio vaccine, the most effective public health interventions are typically preventive interventions and policies that help stop a crisis before it starts. However, predicting the next public health crisis has historically been a challenge. Thanks to new technologies, we innovate age-old public health workflows and methods of analysis. WeRead… Read more »

Can You Retrofit Your Colleagues for Digital?

It is a fairly standard challenge to be asked to make an organisation ‘go digital’. Or more specifically make the people working there use digital tools and engagement techniques. At an interview one of the most common question is ‘can you give an example of how you got the press office/senior management/policy officials to goRead… Read more »

The latest video communicating social media policy to public servants – Social Media Man

The Queensland Government recently introduced a new approach to communicate departmental social media policy to staff, a light and humorous video featuring ‘Social Media Man’. It’s the latest in a line of video-based tools used to communicate social media policy to public servants in Australia, following some great work from Victoria. The first, in MarchRead… Read more »

Are Private Contractors the New Federal Workforce?

Last Sunday was graduation day at Duke. In our Master of Public Policy program, over half of the graduating students are employed, and over half of those employed are going to work for government consulting firms. Their salaries are about 20% higher than those who are working in government jobs, and they have been impressedRead… Read more »