Communications

Local Government and Public Engagement: Best Practices and Measures of Success

Local government employees work closely with members of the public, providing essential services and making important policy decisions that affect their communities. Similar to both state and federal budgets, many local budgets are currently stretched pretty thin. Thus, local government is fertile ground for developing and testing public engagement strategies, to determine best practices andRead… Read more »

Beyond Cats & Kardashians – 13 Tips on Building Meaningful Online Engagement

Today, I gave a talk at Cornell Law & Internet conference on the topic “Beyond Cats & Kardashians – Building Meaningful Online Engagement” Here’s my 13 of my tips: -Find the engagement pain point -Focus on the underlying demand for the service -Find the existing audience you can leverage -Embed elsewhere -Leverage timely events -PromoteRead… Read more »

Collective Thinking About Public Affairs

In this essay I intentionally subsume the thinking processes of official decision-makers into the thinking processes of the citizenry as a whole. I realize that official decision-makers can and do make decisions independently of the will of the people, unless that public will is united and organized. But elite decisions made independently of the publicRead… Read more »

Sometimes it is about the technology

It’s not about the technology, its about the people. It’s a phrase I’ve uttered probably more than a thousand times in the last five years. It stems from the understanding that technologies will come and go (quickly, almost at a whim) but behaviours change slowly and as a result we should focus our attention onRead… Read more »

Customer Service In Focus: New York City

Post Highlights GovLoop is Celebrating National Customer Service Week: Follow Here Francisco Navarro, Customer Service Policy Advisor, New York City, discusses customer service initiatives in New York City Story is an excerpt from GovLoop’s research report: Re-Imagining Government Customer Service This week GovLoop has been celebrating National Customer Service week. The following is an excerptRead… Read more »

Project Communication Fail

A classic post for me is titled“Silence — One of the Two Great Wastes™”. The article cites a few sources that conclude: “…that project deterioration was a function of not listening and not speaking. We named those behaviors the Two Great Wastes.” I love the term quoted in the post, “organizational silence” to describe whenRead… Read more »

Your Presidential Debate Prep and the DorobekINSIDER 7 Stories

On GovLoop Insights’ DorobekINSIDER: What are the 4 biggest challenges facing the White House Innovation Fellow for RFP-EZ? Our expert panel weighs in. Click here for the full recap. With a national election looming on the horizon and terms like “fiscal cliff” and “sequestration” being thrown around by policymakers, pundits, and the media, it’s hardRead… Read more »