The City of Washington DC has embraced social media tools such as blogs, twitter and facebook as a unique way to grade the performance of city departments on a monthly basis. In the first report card issued in June not one of the five initial agencies being graded scored higher than a C plus, basedRead… Read more »
Recently I wrote about the draft release of Post-Development Stormwater Runoff Performance Standards for Illinois. And in discussions with colleagues over the last few weeks, I have not heard any positive support from anyone who has a professional background in stormwater management or regulation. Instead the consensus among stormwater professionals regarding the draft is thatRead… Read more »
When disasters strike towns and cities, 911 centers quickly become inundated with calls beyond those that are truly life-threatening situations. The result is that emergency response is delayed which can sometimes lead to deadly consequences. A case in point is a story in the New York Post about how New York City’s 911 center wasRead… Read more »
Anybody living in Southern California for the last couple of years has heard of the City of Bell scandal and I suspect that the story is known outside of the state as well. The Los Angeles Times received a Pulitzer gold medal for public service, as a result of its coverage along with titillating storiesRead… Read more »
Control of the New York State Senate has been a bitter fight the past several years. With the number of Democratic and Republican seats being one close, control of the Senate has shifted by buying off individual legislators. After the 2010 elections in Oregon, the state legislature ended in a 30 to 30 tie betweenRead… Read more »
In 2006, the Buffalo Common Council unanimously approved an amendment to the City Charter which created a Procurement Policy Board. Byron Brown, in the early days of his first term as mayor, signed the local law to create the Procurement Policy Board. Brown touted how the board could streamline city purchasing and save the cityRead… Read more »
blightSTATUS is an online tool that aims to answer the question, “What’s going on with that abandoned house down the street?” Vacant and abandoned properties have become a huge problem for many cities. The story is clear: these properties drain city resources and cast a shadow over a neighborhood’s progress and quality of life. TheRead… Read more »
Following up on yesterday’s election, a member of our team asked me to write up some thoughts around the meaning of citizenship and democracy. We talk often not only how our work is about government and not politics and how we’re trying just as hard to reinvent citizenship as much as bureaucracy. But what doesRead… Read more »
Post Highlights GovLoop releases new report: Identifying the Promise of GIS for Government GIS offers benefits to those looking to improve social services, public health, and urban renewal GIS helps better understand a problem’s context, make better informed decisions, and to collaborate across agencies in implementing solutions The GovLoop report, Identifying the Promise of GISRead… Read more »
I thought the infographic below (and associated blog post) might be of interest to Govloop subscribers. We have created the infographic below for local government. Like many organisations across other industries, local governments have started to use social media cautiously in recent years. Too often, local governments only consider social media as an outbound communicationRead… Read more »