How Does Your Government Website Stack Up?

Last week, a county government communications director in Oregon asked me to help her put together a session for their annual state meeting. We agreed that a “show and tell” hour, where attendees volunteer to show their county’s website and let their colleagues tell them what they think, could work well. I offered to doRead… Read more »

Public Engagement is the Flagship

On April 7, 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency published the Open Government Plan, an Innovation Timeline, and started a Forum Blog for Public Discussion. In a flurry of activity, following months of preparation and planning, the EPA completed the latest milestone of the Open Government Directive, and then some. But this is not the endRead… Read more »

40th Anniversary of EPA’s Earth Day

As we rapidly approach the 40th anniversary of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Earth Day on April 22, I am excited and encouraged by the stellar progress the federal government has made in the area of energy efficiency. Recently, the federal government announced that it will take steps to cut its energy use and reduceRead… Read more »

Myth: “They Will Have No Choice – They Will Have to Use the System”

There tends to be an assumption amongst many IT and business leaders that if a system is core to their operations then people cannot perform their jobs without using it. This leads to the fallacy that employees will have no choice but to use the system and no further effort is required to drive andRead… Read more »

How do you engage thousands of homeland security stakeholders? Funny you should ask…

We at the National Academy of Public Administration today released our report on the National Dialogue on the Quadrennial Homeland Security Review. This was a project with the Department of Homeland Security to run a three-phase online public dialogue soliciting stakeholder ideas and feedback on DHS’s missions, goals, and priorities. While the ideas offered haveRead… Read more »

UNION CONDEMNS D.C. MAYOR’S PROPOSAL TO ELIMINATE LABOR RELATIONS AGENCIES

http://www.afge.com/Index.cfm?Page=PressReleases&PressReleaseID=1137 Proposal is a Clear Act of Retaliation Against Organized Labor, Union Says <(WASHINGTON) – The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), today, condemned a proposal by D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty that would essentially eliminate the city’s Office of Employee Appeals (OEA) and Public Employees Review Board, (PERB). PERB and OEA provide public employees ofRead… Read more »

Crowdsourcing at its Best

I just found an interesting comment on a blog at Information Week from Janelle: When the City of San Francisco, the City of Houston, and the Country of Ireland wanted to launch innovation portals to increase collaboration & gather ideas between employees and citizens, they turned to Brightidea. All three programs have unique themes withRead… Read more »