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 »
In government, we often talk about the importance of building public-private partnerships. In San Jose, they aren’t just talking about building partnerships – they’re actually doing it. The Silicon Valley Talent Partnership, a facilitator of public private partnerships, is working on ways to leverage Silicon Valley’s highly skilled constituents for volunteer efforts to address someRead… Read more »
By Brendan Johnson, Design Intern at GovDelivery As government communicators, often we have to work with design in all formats, especially digital design. But when you need to throw a picture up on your website, into an email, or send out in a social media post, is it a quick and easy process? Do youRead… Read more »
By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant at GovDelivery Surveys can be a great tool to gather public feedback, project impressions or even program success stories from your key audiences. However, the structure of the survey needs to be well planned in order to increase participation and get the insights you need. Organizations can get caught inRead… Read more »
Join us for our next NCDD Tech Tuesday, on August 26th from 1-2pm Eastern / 10-11am Pacific, with: Della Rucker, Managing Editor of EngagingCities (focusing on the intersection between internet technologies and community engagement), and Chief Instigator at Wise Economy Susan Stuart Clark, Director, Common Knowledge, NCDD board member and consultant to local governments AnRead… Read more »
The GovHack Red Carpet Awards was awesome (as you can see from the liveblog from Sunday). If you weren’t able to attend or watch the event’s livestream, the video of the awards is now live at the GovHack site, and I’ve embedded it below for your convenience. eGov AU Craig Thomler’s personal Gov 2.0 andRead… Read more »