Communications

What Happens When Leaders Ask ‘Why Do We Do This?’

Young children are legendary for asking Why? Why? Why? when seeking to learn. Adults, however, tend to simply do what’s been done before without asking – why do we do this? An experience to consider. When appointed as head of operations years ago, I suspended a dozen reports compiled by the accounting department without announcingRead… Read more »

An innovative fund for innovation; NASA’s opengov 2.0 plan; and the Sunshine Awards

An innovative fund for innovation; NASA’s opengov 2.0 plan; and the Sunshine Awards by GovLoop Insights On today’s program for Thursday April 12, 2012: The challenge is to be innovative. What about an innovation fund? They’re actually trying this out in Michigan. We’ll talk to the person behind it about how it works… their goals…Read… Read more »

Access Anywhere – IRS Goes Mobile with Help from GovDelivery

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) unveiled an updated version of their smartphone application, IRS2Go, in early February. The app was “designed to provide taxpayers easier access to practical tools and information,” and the update included an application programming interface (API) integration with GovDelivery Digital Communication Management (DCM), which allowed app users to sign up toRead… Read more »

GovBytes: Government takes on Pinterest

As Pinterest gains in popularity on the Internet, government is taking notice; Pinterest is already the 3rd most popular social networking website, behind only Facebook and Twitter. It specializes in allowing users to create their own pin boards and share photographs they find interesting with their followers. The Military has taken advantage of Pinterest, andRead… Read more »

Real-World Civic Innovation Through Online Gaming

Mark Drapeau (Washington, DC) — When you think of “games,” you might think of Gears of War for Xbox, or Angry Birds for iPhone, or perhaps Zynga games for Facebook. But increasingly, people working in the public and civic sectors see value in leveraging games and game mechanics to accomplish real-world change. In that vein,Read… Read more »

New Paradigms For Collaboration & Knowledge Sharing

I was recently asked to present at an Institute For Employment Studies event for corporate HR and Heads of Learning & Development. The slides I used are embedded at the end of this bog, and also available at Slideshare and Authorstream. The title of the event was “Getting maximum business value from your L&D activity”,Read… Read more »

GREAT WORK: 23 bright ways to use social media in the public sector

There was a brilliant update on Twitter the other day which hit the nail right on the head. “The best social media,” it read “doesn’t happen in an office.” That’s dead right. For a long while now I’ve been arguing that communications people should share the sweets, relax a little and learn to let go.Read… Read more »

Rural Governments and Social Media: The Moffat County, Colorado Experience

Rural local governments across the country have historically had something of a tougher time than their more populated counterparts when it comes to connecting with their citizens. Greater distances, lower incomes, slower Internet access and hesitancy about adaption of certain communications technologies have proven to be the main challenges. This phenomenon is especially prevalent inRead… Read more »

3 Free Ways to Hold a Virtual Mentor Session by Video Chat

Although open to all, this blog post is dedicated to participants in the GovLoop Mentors Program! More than 70% of the mentoring partnerships in the GovLoop Mentors Program do not work in the same city. Even those pairings that are co-located geographically are likely finding it tough to schedule a time to meet face-to-face, in-person.Read… Read more »

Daily Dose: Texts from Hillary photographer speaks up

With the creation of the ‘Texts from Hillary‘ photoblog on tumblr, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received a massive public relations boost this past week. The images show a hip Clinton texting celebrities and politicians, from Jay-Z and Mark Zuckerberg to Romney and Obama. However, the source of Clintons image, Diane Walker -working for TIMERead… Read more »