Ghost Whisperer, iRobot, and many crime shows depend on detective work based on access to other people’s memories.Young people need expertise that gets them out of their chairs and to step away from their computers. Administrative ghost whisperers, younger staff or not, should seek out older staff. That experience should not be disregarded as a… Read more »
It’s been a rough nine months for federal cybersecurity. The huge Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack is just the latest in a series of incidents that make people skeptical of Washington’s ability to protect their personal information. Since last fall, we’ve witnessed hacks of the: OPM. Last week’s cybersecurity failure at OPM wasn’t its firstRead… Read more »
Hackers, hackers everywhere. If you’ve been following the news recently, the “hacker” label probably doesn’t give you a warm-fuzzy sensation. But hackers aren’t always bad guys. To the software development community, hacking simply means taking a piece of code and altering it. It can be used for wrongdoing, but it can also be used toRead… Read more »
Originally posted on the GovDelivery blog. We recently published a thought leadership piece on how digital marketing leads to better public engagement. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will break down each step to put the plan to work. The following post explores “Step 5” of the series, the art of increasing channelsRead… Read more »
On June 6, 2015 thousands of people from 106 communities took part in the National Day of Civic Hacking. Organized by Code for America, the annual event helps people come together and collaborate to make their communities stronger. The locally organized events welcome more than just those who crunch code. Around the country, organizers engaged people of all backgrounds, including tech experts, government employees, students, entrepreneurs,Read… Read more »
In December 2009, the Open Government Directive established deadlines for federal agencies to make quality information available to the public, all in the name of greater transparency. Recovery.gov was one of the leaders of this open government charge, and was actually established in February 2009, ahead of the directive. Today, there are a number ofRead… Read more »
In 1996, the FCC, at the request of the White House, reserved 311 as a nationwide non-emergency number, and the federal government subsequently funded pilot programs to determine the feasibility of using this number to divert non-emergent calls away from 911. Baltimore was the first in the nation to establish a 311 system as partRead… Read more »
Change is scary When the internet started to hit critical mass in the late 1990s / early 2000s, there were dire stories about how libraries would go the way of dinosaurs, with the expectation that books would be deliberately destroyed like a Fahrenheit 451 dystopia or tossed in a landfill somewhere to moulder quietly. MoreRead… Read more »
A few weeks ago, I advised federal agencies to build better digital customer experiences. I enjoyed the wave of hate mail that post generated, so I’d like to return to the topic of digital customer experience (CX) again this week. Even the US Digital Service (USDS) thinks federal agencies need better digital CX. Last year,Read… Read more »
Imagine a virtual place where people who work in the wider public sector could find and network with each other, collaborate and publish, share anything, create and join expert groups. A place where a public servant or health worker or councillor or local government officer or charity worker or trustee could find and connect withRead… Read more »