The non-profit, non-partisan Americans Elect aims to flatten the US Presidential nominating process and the duopoly of the two party system. By leveraging cyberspace to ’open up’ the nominating process (traditionally controlled by political forces and parties), Americans Elect enables the voting public to directly nominate a candidate online, for the US Presidential ballot inRead… Read more »
In recent weeks, the main stream media has questioned whether the Obama administration’s Open Government initiative has lost its steam. But is it really dead? For example, Washington Post columnist Vivek Wadhwa’s article “The Death of Open Government” followed the resignation announcement of the federal government’s chief information officer – and Open Government champion —Read… Read more »
The average age of my agency’s employees is high. With retirements increasing, we will need to recruit and hire younger employees. What is the recruiting pitch that will appeal to younger employees? How do you entice them to join your agency? – Federal Manager (GS-15), Department of Veterans Affairs This is a great question. RecruitingRead… Read more »
During childhood, our parents instill in us the concept of minding our manners. In my house, this meant simple things like saying please and thank you, not interrupting when someone was speaking, and being generally respectful of others. It seemed like every time I left the house my mother would say “have fun and mindRead… Read more »
The video above gives a great overview of a DOE-sponsored University of Washington project being conducted in Puget Sound to study the viability of tidal power in the area and establish a baseline to evaluate environmental impacts of the turbines. For more information on the project, visit the UW site. Original post
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced $103 million in grants awarded to 16 states to expand rural broadband yesterday. The money will be shared across broadband authorities and private companies in the group of states. USDA said the awards were meant to close the digital divide between rural and urban areas. Arkansas, California, Illinois,Read… Read more »
After striking and picketing outside of several Verizon Wireless stores, Communications Workers of America (CWA), International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), and Verizon have reached a bargaining agreement. Union members will return to work on Tuesday, August 23. Both AFGE National Secretary-Treasurer J. David Cox and National Vice President/Women’s Fair Practices Director Augusta Thomas joinedRead… Read more »
According to research firm comScore Of special note A look at the top smartphone app categories revealed that Weather apps had the largest audience reaching 31 million smartphone owners, or 40.4% of the total U.S. smartphone audience. Social Networking apps closely followed with a smartphone audience of 29.4 million (38.2% reach). Read more at comScore.Read… Read more »
Having been playing with Google+ for a while, I’m starting to get to grips with things. I’m seeing it as a place to talk geeky stuff, where I won’t bore the large group of people I am friends with on Facebook who aren’t obsessed by the internet. Twitter remains my default place to share stuffRead… Read more »
With so much focus these days on optimizing Service Levels to match realistic budgets, here is a series of cautionary tales of regulation run amok. Let’s think about the consequences of over-regulation, not only on expenditures, but also on culture and community values. This excerpt from Mark Steyn’s book on bureaucracy is a “must read”Read… Read more »