Posts Tagged: open gov

“People don’t want more information, they want the minimum information they need to understand a topic.”

(Matt Thompson quoted on Twitter) I Googled Matt and found this quote, “Time to stop breaking the news and start fixing it.” What I learned from his sites: Time is just one way to measure news, and newspapers lose to electronic media if timeliness is the standard. However, another perspective for news is context orRead… Read more »

Public servants: What are you broadcasting via social media?

It seems we’re regularly being served additional reminders about the way we sometimes use social messaging to our detriment, and with increasing frequency, how it is sometimes being used against us. Consider the Janine Krieber kerfuffle, where the wife of former Canadian Liberal Party leader Stephane Dion criticized the current state of the party inRead… Read more »

Project of the Week: Opengov.gr and “The Citizen Initiator”

We in the States know how a new government with new ideas about transparency and new technology to implement them can make a difference in public perception. Other nations’ new governments are taking a lesson from our shores, and experiencing positive feedback as a result. But is this kind of foray into participatory democracy reallyRead… Read more »

So what is this #localgovchat thingy anyway?

So what exactly is #localgovchat and what do we hope to accomplish? As you can see from our first post, we want to start what we hope to be an ongoing, open dialogue between local government communicators – public relations, community outreach, webmasters, graphic designers – in hopes of sharing ideas, our successes and ourRead… Read more »

Crowdsourcing: Win-Win or Lose-Lose

One of the more popular social activities between companies andconsumers is crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing is relatively straightforward:It’s the online distribution of certain tasks to crowds of experts andenthusiasts. Companies use this activity to connect their brands closer totheir consumers. Involving them to the point where they almost takeownership of the brand. For recruitment agendas it isRead… Read more »

OSD Joins the Navy/Sole-Source Fray!

In the days since my last post, William J. Lynne, Deputy Secretary of Defense, signed a policy memorandum covering the use of internet-based capabilities — including social media. Because of this memo, I listened to a blogtalkradio broadcast of an interview with Price Floyd, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs. During his interview, IRead… Read more »

Secure Use of Social Media, California Style

Lost in the shuffle last week when the DoD rolled out their social media policy was another similar rollout by the state of California (PDF here; LA Times Story here). “The more we increase the state’s online presence to enhance communication and transparency, the better we are able to serve Californians,” said Teri Takai, California’sRead… Read more »

How-To: Tips for Building a Collaborative Environment

After completing the February Open Government Directive Workshop, we realized that it’s much easier to think about collaboration and build collaborative practices into an agency’s open government plan it’s done in a collaborative environment. (Final results of the teams’ collaborations are posted at the top of the OpenGov Playbook and the teams offer great suggestionsRead… Read more »

How I define Transparency: A 2-Phase Process

In the development of a more open and transparent government, there are two phases of transparency that can be measured to get at the overall effectiveness of the open government directive. The first option is to look at I deem is the actual transparency. How this blog defines actual transparency is: the tangible data thatRead… Read more »