Open Government Links of the Week – June 24, 2011

This is a collection of links that I’ve come across recently related to technology, transparency, and government. Not all of them came out this past week, but they haven’t been included in former Friday posts like this. Know of any that should be included? Add them to the comments below!

“Illinois, New York City move forward on open data, apps”

“Social Media and Elections: Using New Media to Manage an Election & Communicate with Voters”

• How can election officials use social media? Why should they? The U.S. Election Assistance Commission held a roundtable discussion throughout the day on “Voting Goes Viral. Using New Media to Manage an Election and Communicate with Voters”. Here’s some takeaways…

“comScore Releases May 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings”

• “comScore, Inc. … released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 176 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in May for an average of 15.9 hours per viewer.” (emphasis added)
• “83.3 percent of the U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.”

“Report: Best Practices Guide for Local Governments”

• “Seismic shifts in the economy are forcing dramatic changes in the nation’s cities and counties. Many jurisdictions have made deep cuts across the board, eliminated entire functions, or both, while seeking new means of support and collaboration. This is a time when relevance and adaptability of government — and by extension, the public-sector information technology community — is being subjected to a very real-world test. What’s more, this test is being conducted in full public view, every day and with every encounter between citizens and their government.The urgent question is around how well, how nimble and how agile government is at adapting to the current environment while never losing sight of the future. This special report offers some answers in the form of best practices gleaned from our extensive local government surveys.”

“June 2011 Municipal Cost Index shows steady increase”

A similar version of this was originally posted at the IT company that I work for’s product blog (Disclosure: the product deals w/ transparency, gov’t, & technology and our company works with government in multiple ways to help them with gov 2.0 and related technologies)