Communications

VA promotes social media use with new policy

BY BOB BREWIN 08/16/2011 The Veterans Affairs Department issued a social media policy Tuesday that “highly encouraged” the use of blogs, Facebook, Twitter and other Web-based media and urged VA employees to interact with the public online. VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said the new policy lays the groundwork for interaction with veterans through social media.Read… Read more »

Are You Volunteering to Honor September 11th?

This year, more than 1 million Americans are expected to serve in their communities in honor of 9/11. Service projects will range from food drives and home repairs to neighborhood cleanups and disaster preparation activities. In many areas, volunteers will honor veterans, soldiers, or first responders by collecting donations, assembling care packages, and writing thankRead… Read more »

Weekly Round-up – August 19, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda August is a long and ecclesiastical month. In its second full week, we find: A Time for Reflection. Three good articles about the state of Gov 2.0 across governments came out this week. Alex Howard writes for the Atlantic about social media use by US and other governments, and in O’Reilly Media aboutRead… Read more »

Open source develops the future of downtown Raleigh

Originally published on opensource.com. Can you revitalize a city and attract businesses using open source principles? David Diaz, president and CEO of the Downtown Raleigh Alliance thinks so. In fact, I got a chance to sit down with David to discuss how economic development organizations are interacting with their local and state government, citizens, businesses,Read… Read more »

A Dozen Golden Nuggets from the Blog Lab Event

The Web Manager’s Roundtable and Dick Davies put on a powerful practical workshop for active organizational bloggers – covering a broad range of attendee inspired topics, such as process – better/easier blogging; managing – avoiding blogger burnout or lighting the flame; volume – achieving greater distribution & getting more readers; comments – being a commentRead… Read more »

CrowdSourcing Call for Volunteers – Gov’s First Hybrid Event

The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), in partnership with the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), is spearheading the first federally developed hybrid event initiative, (part in-person and part virtual conference) – the Public Health Informatics 2011 Virtual Conference (PHIVC), (see our featured GovLoop article here). The PHIVC offers aRead… Read more »

Is Your Agency SMART?

We all know that government agencies are constantly under pressure to make their conversations with constituents measurable, and results-based to justify the investment. One stand-out action the city of New York is doing to keep this at the forefront of importance is driving an advisory board of SMART members (the Social Media Advisory and ResearchRead… Read more »

Change Management Communications Plan Tactics

As a follow-up to my previous blog where we chatted about the components of a Change Management (CM) Communications plan, this blog focuses on the specific tactics to utilize when implementing the plan. To get a better sense of how to create the plan, please quickly review my previous blog “Creating the Change Management CommunicationsRead… Read more »

NASA. IT. OpenGov. Remote Engagement. Interested?

Over the next couple of days, we at the Open Forum Foundation are running the remote engagement program for NASA’s IT Summit and you may be interested in participating. Notes: 1. We’ve assembled a complex group of technologies into a simplified user interface that integrates text, video, and phone into one website. The lessons weRead… Read more »