Citizen Engagement

Government Competitions Redux: TopCoder and the Power of Crowdsourcing – 1

Competitions are changing the way government iterates and innovates. NASA and OPM have both opted to use TopCoder to create new apps. TopCoder is member based group of more than 460,000 coders from around the world. TopCoder harnesses the power of crowd-sourcing to achieve goals. Mike Lydon is the Chief Technology Officer and Jim McKeownRead… Read more »

SOTU Recap: Rubio Beats Obama on Google, YouTube and SNL

It’s been nearly a week since President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address. Yet many folks are still mesmerized by Senator Marco Rubio’s impromptu and awkward water bottle moment during the official response. By now, many millions of people know about Rubio’s water bottle debacle. He’s received so much coverage from both traditional andRead… Read more »

How to Get Citizens to Dig Each Other Out After a Snow Storm

On December 26, 2010 a #snowpocalypse dumped a ton of snow in the NY, NJ, CY tri-state area. In Newark NJ, as a result of the storm, something very cool happened. Mayor Booker’s (@CoryBooker) constituents began tweeting request for shoveling at him AND he responded and began digging people out. Cooler than that others startedRead… Read more »

Improving EEO in the Federal Workplace; What’s Your Priority?

* UPDATE: Since the time of this original post one year ago, the EEOC has approved and issued the Federal Sector Complement Plan referred to below. Click here to read it. – DBG ____________________________________________________________ The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has announced it is seeking public input on federal sector priorities under the agency’sRead… Read more »

Global Communications: “Doomsday” Reactions from USA, China, Russia

“It’s the end of the world as we know it…and I feel fine.” – R.E.M. – Okay, so the world did not end last Friday afterall (take a deep breath and slowly exhale). Whew…what a relief. Now we can all take a “time out” to celebrate Christmas and ring in the New Year. That is,Read… Read more »

Improving Government – One Tablet at a Time

Over the weekend, I read a great NY Times article entitled “Making Us Safer, One iPad at a Time”. In this article, the author Steven Cohen describes the current case of judicial paperwork. Basically, when an officer arrests an individual, the officer writes info by hand into memo books, clerks decipher these memos and enterRead… Read more »