A modest proposal for real participatory government

I propose that all Gov 2.0 people consider the following pilot program: Imagine an online community of all registered U.S. voters. The community would be distributed across county clerk offices. There are about 150 million registered voters, and about 3,100 U.S. counties. Such a national community can be easily piloted: Establish pilot communities in sixRead… Read more »

May 12, Berkeley/SOMA Workshop Law.gov Workshop

The Berkeley/SOMA Law.gov Workshop will be held 12 May 2010 at The Mitchell Kapor Foundation in San Francisco, California, USA. Click here for the conference program. The Twitter hashtag for the conference is #lawgov. Click here for information about the Law.gov legal open government data project.

Gridlock Drives Gridlock

It’s true that the D.C. area is home to one of the worst commutes in the nation. Think you can breeze through 66, 270, or the Beltway in rush hour? Good luck to you. They say it’s going to rain. Better luck next time. I’ll bet on something that has better odds, like the lottery.Read… Read more »

New Tool for Visualizing Congressional Bills: IBM Many Bills / DocBlocks

Yannick Assogba, Irene Ros, and Matt McKeon, all of the IBM Research Visual Communication Lab, presented DocBlocks: Communication-Minded Visualization of Topics in U.S. Congressional Bills, at CHI 2010: The 28th ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held 10-15 April 2010 in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Here is the abstract: US Federal legislation is aRead… Read more »

PODCAST: EEO/AA: What Employers Need to Know and Why – The Basics with Labor and Employment Law Expert Jonathan T. Hyman

Let’s face it, EEOC regulations (and there are plenty of them) are confusing. The Department of Labor and EEOC are slated to receive a record amount of funding in 2010 and this means more enforcement is imminent. Are you aware of your obligations in order to be an equal opportunity employer? How big of aRead… Read more »

Design For America– Have you entered?

I interviewed Sunlight Lab’s guru Clay Johnson on the Design For America competition (click here to watch interview). The winners will be announced at the Gov 2.0 Expo on May 25th. Make sure you get your entry in before the deadline. Click here for more details.

More on Social Media

I’ve been kinda slack in posting updates to my blog, but thought I’d share this news item from the Charlotte (NC) Observer. (This is not meant as a slight to my City of Charlotte counterparts.) http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/05/09/1424741/not-very-social-is-it.html My guess is City Council and County Commission members may now get engaged in a discussion on the differingRead… Read more »