I suspect that most people reading this will be familiar with the idea of crowd sourcing, that is drawing on the help of other willing souls to solve a problem. It occurred to me recently that I had a digital communications problem, well two, that the crowd might be able to help with. So whatRead… Read more »
I was struck this weekend by a beautiful metro car ad featuring the Partners in Preservation campaign to support 24 historical places in the DC metro area. My interest was naturally piqued by the combination of historic sites (I love history, worked for a museum) and social media engagement (I may or may not beRead… Read more »
Question I asked during a Q&A session at Transportation Camp East with H. Giovanni Carnaroli, Senior Accountable Official for Open Gov, USDOT, Peter Appel, Administrator of the Research and Innovative Technology Administration, USDOT, and Charles Monheim, Chief Operating Officer of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I have always questioned if technology and information gathered by theRead… Read more »
Government and the private sector had a famous competion to see who could map the human genome. Now we have social media helping both with runnaway oil in the Gulf area. People are providing observations and also solution ideas for the crisis. For example, Gulfcoastspill.com has been setup to help. The site was developed withRead… Read more »
What I find really annoying about wikis in the government is that people think we need more than one. Having one wiki for everything in the government is the best way to get value out of this technology. This principle is not unknown, yet time and time again people choose instead to create a wikiRead… Read more »
Republished from eGov AU. (I would appreciate if you could Vote for me in ‘The 10 who are changing the World of Internet and Politics’) I highlighted the online Netflix prize quite some time ago as an example of how an organisation could work with its community to drive innovation. Netflix has a longstanding prizeRead… Read more »
Republished from eGovAU. It is common practice for government Departments to go to consultants when they need specific skills or experience. The strategy is often to draw on this expertise to get started, transfer as much knowledge as possible to staff and move forward. However sometimes it can be more cost-effective to draw on theRead… Read more »
Republished from eGovAU. In 2007 a combined SMS and online electoral monitoring system went into action in Nigeria to report electoral fraud. Based on increasing mobile use (as fixed infrastructure is very limited in the country), mobile phones were able to provide voters with a voice when ballots were not conducted fairly. Similar systems areRead… Read more »
Peer to Patent / Community Review BACKGROUND: Software and algorithms used to be unpatentable. Recent court decisions and patent-office rule-making has made software the fastest growing patent category. In 1991 the patent office was cut off from general tax revenues and required to subsist entirely on fees for its operating budget. The political argument wasRead… Read more »