Back in 2011, before the former White House aid ever assumed public office in Chicago, Twitter user @MayorEmanuel accrued nearly 50,000 followers and published more than 1,500 aggressively funny tweets showcasing the prospective mayor. In 2012, Secretary of State Clinton was similarly satirized, this time on the Tumblr site Texts from Hillary. Nearly 45,000 TumblrRead… Read more »
Citizen engagement is as old as the idea of government itself. However, with the advent of real-time communication technology, citizen engagement has become so easy that it is now an expectation of the average citizen who assumes that their feedback will be not only heard, but responded to. This feedback is happening everywhere – onlineRead… Read more »
In our recent online training, Spreading the Word: Data-Driven Marketing for Government, we spoke with Sean Shoffstall, Vice President of Innovation and Strategy at Teradata Interactive, about the way government’s marketing strategies are changing. He admitted upfront that the topic itself is surprising for many public servants. Most agencies and many nonprofit organizations don’t haveRead… Read more »
This is an excerpt from our brand-new guide, Your Citizen Engagement Checklist: 18 Strategies for Success. Download the guide for free here, and in the comments, share with us: what your strategies for success in engaging your citizens? We let the GovLoop audience do the talking. Below, read six reasons our readers think citizen engagement,Read… Read more »
Pollution. Poverty. Health. Infrastructure. These are just a few of the extraordinary challenges government face today. With increased citizens demands, coupled with decreased public resources, government is often placed in a very difficult position to adequately meet the needs of its diverse array of citizens. Throw Congressional gridlock into the mix and you have aRead… Read more »
In response to recent tragedies, many commentators have suggested requiring every police officer to wear a video camera and microphone at all times. Some activists even suggest that these videos be publicly live-streamed for maximum accountability. That’s not necessarily a bad idea, despite some technical, budgetary, and legal hurdles. Other commentators have pointed out thatRead… Read more »
It’s no surprise that local governments are utilizing crowdsourcing to solve some of their biggest problems. Crowdsourcing, after all, uses some of the same basic tenets as democracy: where the decisions that serve a body are governed by the majority. Crowdsourcing is being used as a means to allocate budgets, cut waste, and solve longstandingRead… Read more »
As an engagement practitioner, I find that people are often confused about the distinction between research, communications and public engagement. Of course clearing up this confusion often begins with knowing whether each field is seen by the audience as being distinct and separate or just one big mess of government stuff. And whether there isRead… Read more »
We were intrigued by this commsgodigital piece on the ways that Pinterest can be used by local government officials for public engagement, and we wanted to share it with the NCDD community. The article was penned by Andrew Coulson, a local community engagement officer, and you can read it below or find the original commsgodigitalRead… Read more »
By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant What should go into your digital engagement strategy can be a complex and organizationally challenging question. The specifics of your own strategy are usually discovered with some internal “soul searching” and by nailing down exactly what public engagement is for you and your leadership. Yet, there are a few basicRead… Read more »