Tech

Moore on OpenGovernment.org: Researching U.S. State Legislation

David Moore of the Participatory Politics Foundation (PPF) — and a member of our community — has posted OpenGovernment.org: Researching U.S. State Legislation, on the VoxPopuLII blog, published by the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University Law School. In this post, Mr. Moore discusses OpenGovernment.org, a new, free, open, citizen engagement and transparency service forRead… Read more »

Research and Best Practices eNewsletter 01/02/2011

From Data to Decisions (11/30/2011) – The Partnership for Public Service and IBM’s Public Sector Business Analytics and Optimization Practice examined seven programs using analyticsin eight agencies including the Coast Guard, Navy, and Social Security. The report notes common practices of successful efforts, such as leadership commitment, staff having a clear line of sight, andRead… Read more »

GovBytes: Is Social Media a Valuable Law Enforcement Tool?

Last Friday, GovTech published a report outlining how law enforcement tools have evolved from wanted posters, to social media outreach. This form of “community policing” has helped officials with finding missing children, reporting suspicious activity, and informing the public about crimes committed in their neighborhood. “Social networking rapidly has become a valuable intelligence-gathering tool forRead… Read more »

GovLaunch: New Zealand’s “Social Media in Government: Hands-on Toolbox”

The New Zealand Government’s “Social Media in Government: Hands-on Toolbox” was written to assist practitioners with setting up social media accounts. The guide is written for public servants with limited exposure to social media tools and offers guidance on how to start using social media at their agency. Here is a quick excerpt from theRead… Read more »

New dashboard measures federal use of Twitter

A new dashboard ranks more than 100 federal agencies based on their use of Twitter. The Federal Social Media Index, created by nonprofit ExpertLabs, tracks how agencies are engaging their public based on several measures. For the week ending December 4, NASA came out on top, with 360 replies from 1,643,429 followers. (Most answered question:Read… Read more »

Daily Dose: USPS set to announce closures today

Today is the day the USPS is expected to announce cuts across its entire scope of operations, according to a story over at the Washington Post. Postal officials are slated to introduce formal plans that would shut down 250 of the Postal Service’s 460 mail processing facilities. In addition to closing the processing facilities, USPSRead… Read more »

Joining the #hchlitss Twitter Chat

Last Thursday evening I was honored to be a guest participant of the #hchlitss Twitter chat. The hashtag stands for Health Communications, Health Literacy and Social Sciences and was created by Kathleen Hoffman and RV Rikard (who both live here in North Carolina!). In being invited to the event, I thought about some relevant topicsRead… Read more »

Laffing Our Tax Off

Would you like to solve the current economic crisis? Cut taxes. Cure cancer? Cut taxes. Create an effective formula for cold fusion? Cut taxes. Eat cheeseburgers and lose weight simultaneously? Cut taxes. It seems that cutting taxes is the cure-all that humanity has been waiting for but obtusely overlooking for some time now; and itRead… Read more »

How Serious Games Help You Learn

Learning by doing is one of the oldest ways that businesses, agencies and organizations train new staff and those promoting into new areas of responsibility. The problem with this traditional type of training is that it takes a lot of time, costs a lot of money and there will always be real world errors andRead… Read more »