Search Results for: silo

Why does the public service have such a massive aversion to measurement?

Web Analytics Rock Star Avinash Kaushik answers this question: There is no tradition of accountability in almost every country when it comes to public service (there are some exceptions like Singapore). No accountability = very little desire to measure. There has to be fundamental massive change to a bureaucratic, siloed, politicized institution populated by non-relevantRead… Read more »

Community Blog

Filed under: Tech

Why “Best Practices” Won’t Fix Federal IT

Federal Computer Week recently published my op-ed piece Why best practices won’t fix Federal IT. I’d be very interested in hearing from GovLoop members what they think of it. The idea came from the “25-Point Implementation Plan to Reform Federal Information Technology Management” released by Vivek Kundra on December 10 of last year. No. 10Read… Read more »

Intranet is a Misnomer

On paper, intranets make sense: a private computer network that uses Internet Protocol to securely share any part of an organization’s information or network operating system within that organization (from Wikipedia). However, despite using the same protocols and user interface (a web browser) they are incredibly different. Looking at the disparity between the Internet andRead… Read more »

Community Blog

Filed under: Tech

An Early Win for CfA’s DC Project: SF Addressing System Open-Sourced

We at Code for America are excited to celebrate an early win for open government and our DC project. A multimillion dollar IT project, developed for the the City and County of San Francisco, is now available at no cost to any government that needs it. It’s an important step towards a new model ofRead… Read more »

Five Big Questions About Government Social Media In 2011

Mark Drapeau (Washington, DC) – The Federal government has made a good deal of progress toward being more transparent, collaborative, and participatory during the two years since President Obama took office. However, despite great strides, government practitioners’ use of social media is not very sophisticated, does not take advantage of the latest tactics and tools,Read… Read more »

Quick thoughts

My worlds are colliding on social networks. On Flickr and on Twitter. In blogs I follow and on my RSS feeds. People I followed for their local government insight are becoming friends. People I care about and love talking to. People that are ‘offline’ friends are increasingly talking to and retweeting words from people IRead… Read more »

Community Blog

Filed under: Tech

I Have Met The Enemy And It Is Not PowerPoint

Mark Valentine (Chevy Chase, MD) — After a long period of popularity, there has been a recent backlash against the use of PowerPoint for communication within the government, particularly at the Pentagon and within the U.S. national security and intelligence community. However, focusing on the software as the cause of communications breakdown is merely aRead… Read more »

Mind the (data) gap!

In the beginning, there was just data. It sat there, on remote servers, locked away behind firewalls and closed doors. No one gave it much thought, really, everyone sitting in their little silos, reinventing the wheel every time they needed to write a query or build a visualisation. Then there was the word. And theRead… Read more »

Community Blog

Filed under: Tech

Doing away with social media officers

Andrea Di Maio reports on the US Defense department doing away with dedicated social media officers: No more specialized offices, no more social media silos, no more experts or consultants building new strategies. Social media is a tool, amongst many others, for public affairs professional to do their job more effectively and efficiently. The nextRead… Read more »

The “Traps” to Successful Implementation

A guide to avoiding these five traps, and successfully implementing public initiatives. by Russ Linden Implementation… is, ultimately, what government is all about,” wrote Gordon Chase, a civil servant, in How to Manage in the Public Sector. But implementing programs is filled with speed bumps and landmines. How does one negotiate them successfully? Authors BillRead… Read more »