Yearly Archives: 2009

Citizen 2.0 – how would a government department address this marketing nightmare?

Republished from eGov AU. Over the last week US media has been buzzing with the story of Canadian musician Dave Carroll, whose US$3,500 Taylor guitar was broken on a flight on United Airlines. Carroll reported that people on the plane had watched with horror as United baggage handlers had roughly handled and thrown his andRead… Read more »

The Anniversary Edition, Randomness, and the NCAA Division 1 Big East College Football Preview from the Hokie Guru, Govloop’s Bureaucrat on Sports

Good morning, Govloopers!!! It’s been a year since Govloop sent me this e-mail… he sent it on July 10, 2008: So here’s what I’m thinking with GovLoop. You (studboy) write a once a week short blog/column. Your topic of choice. It can be a combination of your crazy stories and the sports stud hokieguru. IRead… Read more »

25 most and least liked City Web Sites in no real order. Yet?

Most liked 1 New York City http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/?front_door=true 5 2 Philadelphia http://www.phila.gov/ 5 3 San Francisco http://www.sfgov.org/ 5 4 Austin http://www.austintexas.org/ 5 5 Nashville http://www.nashville.gov/ 5 6 Oklahoma City http://www.okc.gov/ 5 low 7 Fresno http://www.fresno.gov/default.htm 5 8 Long Beach http://www.longbeach.gov/default.asp 5 9 Cleveland http://www.city.cleveland.oh.us/CityofCleveland/Home 5 10 Virginia Beach http://www.vbgov.com/ 5 11 Miami http://www.ci.miami.fl.us/cms/ 5 12 ArlingtonRead… Read more »

Top 5 Leadership Characteristics for Process Improvement Success

Recently during a visit to the GSA conference held in San Antonio, I had the opportunity to speak with several people in the federal government about Lean Six Sigma. In most cases they shared with me that they had “tried” Lean Six Sigma and it did not work or “we did that and are nowRead… Read more »

Web Writing 1.0 = 2.0

Author’s note: I’m reproducing this blog from our internal City of Toronto staff webbook blog on web writing. With all the buzz around Web 2.0 technology, it’s easy to forget social media tools allow everyone to “write for the web”. It’s no longer a one way street. User comments are often more significant than theRead… Read more »

The agency and Facebook

There are around two dozen state Departments of Transportation on Facebook. Facebook’s newsfeed-style user homepage is apparently still somewhat contentious among the site’s users (I wasn’t around before the switch), but it’s the standard presentation template for most online communities, and it’s ideally suited to the kind of public outreach required of most DOTs. AnRead… Read more »

HOV 3

When I first started working some 32 years ago, I took the bus from my apartment on Beacon Hill south of Alexandria, VA to downtown DC. Sometime after the Blue Line on Metro opened up, I took Metro to my downtown DC job. And after my husband took a job where I work, we wouldRead… Read more »