Yearly Archives: 2014

911 Made Safer – Protecting EMTs!

We’ve all seen an ambulance racing down the street, sirens blaring, weaving in and out of traffic. But sometimes in the rush to get to the hospital in the fastest way possible another tragedy can strike. In 2010, a medic, patient and passenger all died when the ambulance driver lost control on an icy roadRead… Read more »

Lessons Learned to Create the Open GIS Platform

For government, it’s easier than ever before to publish authoritative data. Below, three open data experts share how. In our latest GovLoop guide, Open Data and GIS: Better Understanding Our World, we explore a crucial element of the open data movement: geographic information systems (GIS). Time and again, we have seen how GIS facilitates governmentRead… Read more »

Lessons From the Upside Down Fire

In the middle of cold winter days, what could be better than making a roaring fire? But you’ve probably been building an inefficient fire. It’s probably hard to start. You have to keep adding logs and moving them around to get good burn. The edges of the logs don’t burn. It takes a long timeRead… Read more »

Cucumber Legislation

We are approaching the traditional time of the silly season in UK news and politics, the quiet period when in the absence of real news, the frivolous and the dotty get more column inches than they otherwise would.1 In Poland and indeed much of the rest of Europe, that period is know as the cucumberRead… Read more »

Did Anyone See Your Organization’s Facebook Post?

Last week the Washington Post featured an article on the frustrations of digital communicators in the weather community with Facebook. The article, “How Facebook is falling short as a weather communication tool,” outlined three major problems weather communicators are having with the social networking tool: “1) Its updates only reach a small fraction of theRead… Read more »

Leveraging Cloud Adoption in Your Agency

GovLoop’s recent guide, How Cloud is Reinventing Government, explores the how cloud is helping agencies unlock innovation and improve service delivery. The report includes four government case studies, best practices and insights from industry leaders. Below is an excerpt from our guide. Read the full report here. This section was written by Mallory Thayer, GovLoopRead… Read more »

Unpicking the Barriers to Change – Changing Through Experience

Photo by Phillirose – Flickr https://flic.kr/p/nV5A1y I was in a conversation with Sara Cretney (Organisational Change Manager) and some senior colleagues recently about change and the question came up about barriers and what is stopping the people who are thinking differently from doing different? I’m not entirely sure there is a single answer to thisRead… Read more »

How to Do Authentic Frontline Social Media

With social media dedicated frontline people can brilliantly provide a human face to champion the work an organisation is doing. Morgan Bowers, Walsall Council’s senior countryside ranger, is a pioneer of this approach and has worked to innovate around how people outside the comms team in the public sector can do to really connect withRead… Read more »

Is It Worth The Risk?

Being a public servant comes with a lot of responsibility. And sometimes that responsibility can be overwhelming. Just think back to the recent government scandals, the GSA conference in Las Vegas or the $16 dollar muffin. Those errors in judgement seem obvious, but some of the government ethics rules are a little more difficult toRead… Read more »