Posts By John Bordeaux

A Response – Debating the Importance of Social Media in Civic Life

My friend and colleague Gadi Ben-Yahuda posted a bit of a challenge to me today, based on a conversation we had over email. Ever the social beasts, Gadi and I have corresponded over email, Google video chat, on GovLoop, on his most excellent blog over at the Center for the Business of Government, and onceRead… Read more »

These are not the requirements you are looking for…

How do you “engage stakeholders” and “gather requirements” in 2011? Outside the workplace, people and technology have co-evolved. We Facebook,” we text, we tweet, some of us “check in,” all while listening to music that is streaming to us on customized or micro-segmented “radio” channels. We connect with friends long moved away, we coordinate overRead… Read more »

Job-Killing Processes

I’ve been wrestling with a thought lately – if organizations are complex systems, and complex systems are continuously self-organizing, then why do we believe formal processes make these complex systems more efficient? Worse, when an organization is in need, why do we engage in process improvement – when what may be needed is process reductionRead… Read more »

In Defense of Data Centrism

In the never ending search to know “what works,” we have a few choices. We can look to theories, i.e., this ‘should’ work; or we can look to data. Often the latter choice is considered backward looking, or stripped of context. Data autopsies are conducted with the results analyzed and presented as a ‘case study.’Read… Read more »

Evolve, Dammit!

Facebook privacy challenges continue as applications you trusted expose data you thought was private. Facebook is alarmed and promises to fix this. Your new normal: stop playing Mafia Wars. The “evening news” is no longer the authoritative source for What To Know, as it was when I was a child (as nicely articulated by ClayRead… Read more »

Increasing “Jointness” and Reducing Duplication in DoD Intelligence

(The views on this blog do not reflect necessarily the views of any client or employer – Dr. Bordeaux is solely responsible for the material posted to this GovLoop blog. This blog should not be considered reflective of an official position on the part of anyone other than John Bordeaux.) When the Secretary of DefenseRead… Read more »

Raising the Dial Tone, Part 2.

(Part 1 is archived at http://jbordeaux.com/raising-the-dial-tone/) Recently, Dennis McDonald offered that transparency and collaboration should be considered as efficiency measures in the Secretary of Defense’s initiatives. A sharp comment to this post responded by detailing the dire state of the federal procurement system, offering that the system is “completely broken, not superficially but structurally andRead… Read more »

It’s Cloudy in L.A. (#g2s)

Tim O’Reilly brought two folks to the Gov 2.0 Summit stage this morning: Randi Levin, CTO for the city of Los Angeles, CA and Dave Girouard of Google. L.A. is halfway through a migration for their city-wide email system, moving from Novell Groupwise to Google Apps and Randi estimates an eventual savings of $5M overRead… Read more »