The Hatch Act of 1939, officially An Act to Prevent Pernicious Political Activities, is the official guidance for civil servants of the executive branch on engaging in partisan political activity. More than seventy years after it was enacted, the blurred lines between professional and private lives, compounded by the development of social media, complicates theRead… Read more »
Dick Davies attended The Hamilton Project at Brookings conference about education and the Wikipedia came up as a ‘problem’. I have talked with many teachers and they tend to poo-poo Wikipedia as a serious reference source – in fact, they prohibit the students from using it when doing projects. I recall in school, before theRead… Read more »
Have a quality website, active social media presence, but still not reeling in the kind of customers or clients you want? The world of marketing and networking may have changed, but one thing is the same — it’s all about who you know. Reaching out to people still takes a little finesse even if itRead… Read more »
You might be in the business of providing classroom furniture to customers across the country, but that doesn’t mean customer service ends when the bell rings in the autumn. This is one industry that is a little bit slower than others to embrace the age of technology. When you’re the one providing much-needed products, howRead… Read more »
Ok, we are less than a month away from the Presidential election and no matter who wins there will be a major transition. So how do you deal? Tom Fox is the Vice President for Leadership and Innovation at the Partnership for Public Service. He told Chris Dorobek on the DorobekINSIDER program that most politicalRead… Read more »
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 »
In another lifetime, I trained people to speak and interact with their local media (newspaper, radio and/or television) on behalf of their organization. One of the questions I asked that used to really stymie people was, “How many of you are completely networked?” No hands would go up. I would then ask, “How many ofRead… Read more »
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 »
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 »
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 »