A recent Buffalo News article highlighted the fact that no one has been checking employee suggestion boxes for the Town of Amherst, NY. As stated in the article: At a recent Amherst Town Board work session, Council Member Steven Sanders introduced a resolution clarifying that it’s the supervisor’s responsibility to periodically check the several woodenRead… Read more »
Federal Computer Week ran an interesting article recently on the many ideas and suggestions for improving the IT acquisition process. Their report was the result of the “Smarter Federal IT Initiatives: High Quality, Cost-Effective and On-Time” event sponsored by the Association of Management Consulting Firms in March. This event, featuring a panel of subject-matter experts,Read… Read more »
I read earlier today about Hilary Clinton’s former intern. Back in 2006 she (Ms. Sammie Spades) was a summer intern while attending community college. Plans were to become an attorney, and later go into public office. As it turns out, I guess you could say she did become a public servant, but of a muchRead… Read more »
One of the exciting things about being in the inaugural class of Code for America Fellows is watching the Code for America culture evolve: hawk screams and git commit messages reverberate through the office; visitors jump into cross-functional teams on Labs Fridays; everyone is eager to share their knowledge and skills. It’s the kind ofRead… Read more »
You’d think after all this time that this stuff would have gone away… I’ve worked in online comms and social media since before either of them had names. Articles like this bore me to tears; pundits who think their knowledge is the be all and end-all of marketing online as they spout about which “channel”Read… Read more »
Measuring the effectiveness of your social media effort: Or answering the really tough questions from people who are a little bit nervous about social media. At the recent LocalGovCamp, I was asked to present a session on performance management for social media. This is a little like performance managing telephone use. Yes, you can measureRead… Read more »
There have been a lot of things said about AlphaGov since its launch in April. For the most part, reaction to AlphaGov has been very positive. The accomplishments of the team have been highly impressive given the scale of the nut they are trying to crack so all the praise they’ve received is well deserved.Read… Read more »
The 80/20 rule by @willperrin The 80/20 rule is something I’ve written about elsewhere – and yet somehow, in trying to share learning with others, I’ve once again missed the point myself. 80% of everything I do should be task drive, objective focused, performance indicator measured and efficiency motivated. My problem thus far this yearRead… Read more »
A few weeks ago, we welcomed our summer interns to Code for America. During that time each of the Fellows was asked to name one fun thing about working at Code for America, so now we have a list “fun” things — however biased — about working for Code for America, which I thought we’dRead… Read more »
I was working with a business owner who wants to step back from his business. He has learned that means getting sales help, since in its absence, he has learned that sales is the most important thing he does. I showed him the Sales Model, and he understood it immediately. I spend over 80% ofRead… Read more »