Weekly News on Research and Best Practices

Resources

1. Use Twitter in place of surveys and polls (05/26/2010) – Carnegie Mellon University finds text data generated from Twitter and other social networking sites can be used in place of formal surveys and polling to measure public opinion. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~nasmith/papers/oconnor+balasubramanyan+routledge+smith.icwsm10.pdf

2. Democracy Pays (05/26/2010) –UK study shows citizen participation in decision making can produce significant savings through better targeting of services, and stronger oversight of public expenditure. http://www.demsoc.org/static/Financial-Case-white-paper.pdf

3. Global Information Technology Report (03/2010) – The World Economic Forum assesses and ranks 133 economies and their readiness to take advantage of opportunities offered by Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The report also presents case studies highlighting best practices and policies in ICT (U.S. ranks fifth).
http://www.weforum.org/documents/GITR10/index.html

News

1. NOAA interactive map tracks Gulf oil spill (06/17/2010) – Track the BP oil spill recovery data online via a near-real-time interactive map.
http://gomex.erma.noaa.gov/erma.html#x=90.42000&y=28.03000&z=6&layers=3894+3898+3930+497

2. Australia to consolidate websites (06/2010) The Australian Government Information Management Office plans to combine websites from more than 100 to less than 10 by mid 2014. http://www.itnews.com.au/News/214532,feds-to-consolidate-internet-gateways.aspx

3. Build a Content Ladder (06/08/2010) – Five Steps to Create an Integrated Social Content Ladder that allows you to repurpose and cascade your best information. http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/205071

4. Public Service, Meet Customer Service (05/12/2010) – Craig Newmark offers his thoughts on better government through enlightened customer service. http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/craig-newmark-on-better-govern.html

5. Weigh-in Virtually on Our Budget, Our Economy (06/2010) – On June 26 AmericaSpeaks will be hosting a virtual National Town Meeting that will include thousands of people in different locations all across the country connected live via satellite video, webcast and interactive technologies. http://usabudgetdiscussion.org/

6. Knight Foundation winners announced (06/16/2010) – Twelve media innovation projects have been named the 2010 winners of the Knight News Challenge, a contest that funds ideas that use digital technology to inform specific geographic communities. http://www.newschallenge.org/