The following cat videos were posted on the official Social Security Youtube page as well as placed Skip Ads on Youtube to encourage retiring online through our new website. The SSA website redesign is seen in the video as well. All cats and voice over talent were volunteer in an effort to save money. FromRead… Read more »
These days libraries aren’t just repositories for thousands of books, they have adapted with the times. “Local government was the sector hit hardest by the recession, because they depend heavily on property taxes. Librarians are adapting to what is a new fiscal reality. One of the areas that libraries have been very aggressive in, isRead… Read more »
At the risk of inspiring unresolvable semantic discussions, this post offers seven examples of digital terminology that should probably be replaced and/or removed from the lexicon and suggests both existing and new alternative terminology to use instead. It also includes some of the dialogue that followed its original publication on the former blog. What otherRead… Read more »
Ah…the department picnic. Fond memories of fried chicken, hard dry burgers, 15 varieties of potato salad, a dish with melted marshmallows on top, a mystery casserole, and some wrinkled burned hotdogs. And lots of employees with their families. Sometimes leaders are reluctant to attend this traditional summer event (also the holiday party close to theRead… Read more »
We are rapidly approaching the end of the fiscal year and that means one thing for employees: performance review time. Ugh, the dreaded performance review, they are the bane of existence for employees and managers alike. But there are ways to make performance reviews less painful for everyone involved. Tom Fox is the Vice PresidentRead… Read more »
As a federal communicator, are you able to share as much information and data with the public as needed, or is real transparency just the latest buzzword? Do you often run into antiquated bureaucratic stonewalls and other internal obstacles when trying to foster greater transparency and open government? If so, this is likely problematic notRead… Read more »
Crowdsourcing is one of those words that means different things to different people. For our purposes, Daren Brabham defines it as, “Crowdsourcing it an online distributed problem solving and production model that uses the power of online communities to meet organizational needs.” Brabham is an Assistant Professor at the Annenberg School of Communication and JournalismRead… Read more »
I’ve recently been talking to the group, ACT for Alexandria, based in Alexandria, Virginia about a project they’ve been working on called the Community Indicators Project. This concept is essentially the idea that community stakeholders should have a set of performance metrics, indicators, and dashboards that help the community have a conversation about itself. CoveringRead… Read more »
A few months back we talked to IBM’s Gadi Ben-Yehuda about the business case for Pinterest in government. We discovered Pinterest offered a new way for agencies to showcase their mission. Now GSA has approved terms of service for government to Instagram. So what’s the big deal? Ben-Yehuda is the innovation and social media directorRead… Read more »
How many times have we heard (or said), “If you think training is expensive, think of the cost of not training”? The channels to deliver information grow exponentially. The technology to use them changes rapidly. The public adoption of both happens faster than we could have ever imagined. How can a techie keep up? AboutRead… Read more »