Eliminating Websites, Consolidating Others = Better Customer Service!

Last week, the White House announced a new initiative to get a handle on the rampant proliferation of government websites. They put a 90-day freeze on granting any new top level domains (e.g., www.hud.gov), and they are requiring all agencies to review their websites and determine those that can be abolished, consolidated, and/or improved. AgenciesRead… Read more »

New, Free Access to Indian Parliamentary Debates, on Indian Kanoon

Full text of debates of the Lok Sabha — the lower house of the Parliament of India — from 1998 to present, are now available free of charge on Indian Kanoon, Dr. Sushant Sinha‘s free access to law service for India. Lok Sabha debates on Indian Kanoon can be retrieved along with the texts ofRead… Read more »

Warning: Novel in Progress

With more than 40,000 words written, I think it’s safe to reveal that I’m working another another book. It’s not a mystery like my previous novel, Murder in Ocean Hall. Instead, it’s a satire called Don’t Mess Up My Block. My novel is a parody of self-help tomes like Who Moved My Cheese. The storyRead… Read more »

mySociety Publishes Evaluation Reports

A UK-based non-profit, mySociety released publicly last week evaluation reports for two of their major open government initiatives: TheyWorkForYou (report here) and WriteToThem (report here). TheyWorkForYou attempts to “make it easier to find out what your MP [Member of Parliament] has been doing in Parliament,” and WriteToThem tries to “make it easier to find outRead… Read more »

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

On Friday, 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“. The archived video of the webcast is available here. An Introduction Their premise going into the day? There are a multitude of social media sources forRead… Read more »

2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries Now Available

The 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries: e-Initiatives and e-Efforts: Expanding Our Horizons is is now available: 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries in PDF. Best Practices for Government Libraries for 2011 and prior years are all available from the right sidebar here on the Government Info Pro. Best Practices is a collaborative document thatRead… Read more »

Recruitment 411: A profile puzzle

It’s estimated 41.6 percent of the U.S. population has a Facebook account, and 13 percent of the population is part of the Twitterverse. Once you add in sites like GovLoop, LinkedIn, Second Life and YouTube, it’s not unusual for someone to have multiple social media profiles. Social media sites are now as much a partRead… Read more »

Daily Dose: Some Smell Hypocrisy In The FBI’s Upper Ranks

The decision by President Obama to request that FBI Director Robert Mueller be retained beyond the end of his 10-year term has stoked new complaints by some agents about a policy Mueller put in place shortly after 9/11. Jerry Markon of the Washington Post writes: The FBI’s policy, which is unusual among law enforcement agencies,Read… Read more »

Positive Benefits Of An Internal Meeting

There’s a bunch written about the waste of internal meetings. Sure they are often an absolute waste of time, but if the commentary is negative, we never improve. I am currently in an asynchronous organization. It would be a deal-breaker to all work together, as we all have widely dispersed customer obligations. We all produceRead… Read more »

2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries Now Available

The 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries: e-Initiatives and e-Efforts: Expanding Our Horizons is is now available: 2011 Best Practices for Government Libraries in PDF. Best Practices for Government Libraries for 2011 and prior years are all available from the right sidebar here on the Government Info Pro. Best Practices is a collaborative document thatRead… Read more »