This case study is excerpted from our latest free guide, The Future of Digital Public Services. For the full case study, and many more like it that explore how digital services can transform your agency, download the guide here. As with many public-sector agencies, the Agriculture Department’s National Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) is looking forRead… Read more »
According to the White House’s fiscal year 2015 budget document, the federal government’s IT spending will be cut by $2.4 billion. State and local level cuts reflect an even sharper decrease in IT and support service budgets. Contrast that to IT spending in the private sector, which is predicted to increase by nearly 4 percentRead… Read more »
By Lucas Pillman, Implementation Consultant For most public sector organizations, just having a website is not enough when it comes to engaging stakeholders and increasing stakeholder satisfaction. Government communicators need to be constantly driving traffic to that website through multiple channels so that their mission-driven content is consistently being engaged with and used by stakeholders.Read… Read more »
By John Simpson, Engagement Consultant What should go into your digital engagement strategy can be a complex and organizationally challenging question. The specifics of your own strategy are usually discovered with some internal “soul searching” and by nailing down exactly what public engagement is for you and your leadership. Yet, there are a few basicRead… Read more »
This week it was announced that the U.S. federal government is creating a U.S. Digital Service team led by Mikey Dickerson with a goal to “improve and simplify the digital experience that people and businesses have with their government.” Personally, it’s exciting to hear about the announcement of this division (with some decent staffing fromRead… Read more »
There’s an interesting post by Ben Balter on why government doesn’t use open source. It’s a good read, in which Balter presents all the reasons why government doesn’t use open-source software for its web sites, from the demand for enterprise solutions to a desire to avoid transparency (really). Why is government so bad at buildingRead… Read more »
The term digital transformation is being bandied about rather a lot at the moment. That’s fine – people often argue about words and phrases and what they mean and whether they are helpful. Usually they aren’t perfect but do a job as a sort of shorthand that everyone has a broad – if occasionally divergentRead… Read more »
Zietgiest is a great word which according to Wikipedia means spirit of the age or spirit of the time. I think the spirit of the current digital age could be apps. Apps is very much a blanket term that can cover all manner of software but in this context I am referring to the kindRead… Read more »
Back in 2009 I started telling communications professionals that they had ten years to understand digital channels and integrate them into their thinking, or there would no longer be jobs for them in the industry. I also blogged about this in February 2010. At the time this was highly confronting to a number of experiencedRead… Read more »
If you don’t know the story of the viral #WeStillComing, it’s ok; you can still have amazing digital communications thanks to these insights from the #nextgengov panelists who have been there and done it well. How do I get buy in for digital communications initiatives? Align communication plans and technologies with your agency or department’sRead… Read more »