These days, it seems like people are obsessed with numbers. It’s often thought that numbers and statistics are the most powerful source of data. With hard numbers, you can create visuals and graphs to prove your point. No one can dispute your hard data claims. Right? However, there’s a strong argument for moving away fromRead… Read more »
It can be nice to have a boss that’s easily pleased. If we’re late; if we miss deadlines; if we don’t push ourselves to put forth our best work, we can still manage to get good ratings on our performance reviews. But in reality, this type of practice can be detrimental for efficiency and productivity,Read… Read more »
There’s a million witty words for bureaucratic language…. gobbledygook, gibberish, mumbo-jumbo, jargon, double-talk, bureaucratese, technobabble! There are probably so many words for it because it’s such a widespread, and exasperating, problem. Including in the government. It’s fun to use crazy words, but it’s certainly not a best practice in terms of government efficiency. Annetta Cheek,Read… Read more »
Reading wordy language is a real pain. As a graduate student of a social sciences discipline (I recently got a Masters’ in gender studies), I saw some of the most ridiculous examples of convoluted and elaborate language out there – social theory seems to spontaneously inspire this habit. It was annoying as a student, asRead… Read more »
2014 may very well go down as the year of open data. The federal government passed the Open Data Act back in May. Major cities like Los Angeles and Philadelphia hired Chief Data Officers. And many states like Maryland and New York followed suit. But the push for governments to open data sets does haveRead… Read more »
What’s an early clue that your IT project is in trouble? Perhaps when “a group of … employees took a 60-day ‘retreat’ for the express purpose of articulating the project’s requirements, and they returned empty-handed”?[1] Or when you learned that critical project-related decisions were “going to be made by a group of inexperienced people, whoRead… Read more »
All words ever spoken by human beings = 5 Exabytes of data. 1000 Exabytes = 1 Zetabyte. Current world data = 7.9 Zetabytes. Ponder that for a second. Data on such a vast scale is hard to fathom. Especially as it growing exponentially, estimated to reach a dumbfounding 40 Zetabytes by 2022. A much simplerRead… Read more »
One of my company’s core values is “Inner Voice”. We internalize and implement this value in many ways, but the gist is: ‘Say what you’re really thinking.’ We encourage every single one of our employees, no matter what their title or role is, to speak up and voice their opinions, concerns, questions, reflections, etc. By puttingRead… Read more »
How many hours per day to you spend dealing with paper? One hour? Two hours? For many in state and local government, it can actually be upwards of six hours a day! That’s too much time dedicated to printing, filing and searching for information when you could be doing more important, mission-critical tasks. Fortunately, emerging technologyRead… Read more »
It’s common knowledge that sometimes the sheer size of state and local government can make it hard to track how resources are being used. And it’s not surprising that taxpayers want to know exactly how their hard-earned money is being spent. A 2011 Gallup poll that found that American taxpayers believe that state governments waste 42Read… Read more »