Yearly Archives: 2011

What is a Business Analyst?

Guest Post by Brad People often ask me, “Brad, What is a Business Analyst?” Although I can’t see your face as you’re reading this, I’m sure you will have the same disappointed look on your face most people have when I give you the answer: It depends. No I’m not trying to be difficult, butRead… Read more »

Why Complex Problems are Complex and Hard To Solve

From an early age, I have never liked the observation that something is complex. It usually meant that person is just resigning themselves to never understanding the problem. I couldn’t stand this defeatist attitude and have spent most of my life trying to devise ways to tackle complex problems including the aptly-named “wicked problems.” EvenRead… Read more »

Audit blasts MTA for mismanaging subway disruptions

A joint city-state audit says that the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NY) mismanages its weekend subway diversions, which are required to complete track work, and does a poor job of keeping riders informed. The report from the New York State and New York City comptrollers looked at 29 weekend subway service disruptions between January 2009 andRead… Read more »

New Fuel Economy Standards Unveiled

While we were all watching the debt ceiling headlines, the White House announced new fuel economy standards last week. The graphic above shows what to expect by 2025. Major auto makers have already signed on to the new standards. So it now looks like we’ll all have more efficient, and greener, cars by 2025. ImageRead… Read more »

The Emperor’s new clothes (and why it’s now OK to point)

Maybe Friday afternoons make people bolder. But I think there’s a longer-term shift happening. Last Friday, the ever-interesting insider @pubstrat published an interesting piece gently critiquing the new e-petitions service, arguing — rightly, I think — that requiring petitioners to specify the responsible central government Department for their issue is a step backwards: A solutionRead… Read more »

What is Facebook?

Here’s the latest of our mini-guides to social technology, where we have had a go at explaining what Facebook is all about. It’s embedded below, but if you can’t see it, you can visit the Kind of Digital site and download the PDF. What is Facebook? View more documents from Kind of Digital Possibly relatedRead… Read more »

Mash My Gov!

In yesterday’s post, @psychemedia described how combining data from different sources could create new insights for people (and indeed staff!) on their local services… Well, the University of Lincoln (@lisc_) have come up with a tool that does just that! MashMyGov is a way of enabling you to do just that. Getting provocative about dataRead… Read more »