It is time again for another blog., At the risk of being a bit repetitious, I am a retired Senior Executive (GSA) and the author of a recently published book, Confessions of a Government Man: How to Succeed in Any Bureaucracy. It’s holiday time so this blog will be short. The anecdote was cut fromRead… Read more »
We have good news! EchoDitto is now a GSA-approved federal contractor in the United States. What does this mean? EchoDitto now flies black helicopters in Iraq? In layman’s, non-governmentalese, being on the GSA schedule means that we are now eligible to work with the federal government — agencies, departments, and all governmental entities. This isRead… Read more »
Note: “advance” as in the title of this blog post is Seth Godin’s preferential word for what we normally refer to as “retreat” or in-person gathering with a mission (he thinks retreat is too negative; I agree). Online Communities are strengthened by simultaneous offline community gatherings. But importantly, not all offline community gatherings, or “retreatsadvances”Read… Read more »
“Public sector entrepreneurship invites the opportunity to reexamine the role of government by introducing innovation and competitiveness to government, and other areas of the public sector. Public sector entrepreneurship can be viewed as tearing down old thoughts, processes, programs, or even organizations, in order to institute something more effective in its place. Public sector entrepreneursRead… Read more »
When people talk about government innovation the discussion tends to revolve around new projects, new buildings and new technologies that the public sector either should be creating or should be directly investing in. But one of the most potentially breakthrough innovations that our government could do to be a Gov 2.0 leader in arts andRead… Read more »
In light of this week being the one year anniversary of the Open Government Directive, I wanted to highlight one of my favorite uses of social media in government. I’ve touched on the White House’s open government efforts in a previous post of mine, but I wanted to give some praise to “First Question,” aRead… Read more »
Times have definitely changed in the life of a local government communications professional. Ten years ago, I held this position for a city of 70,000 residents and my options for reaching citizens were much more limited than for someone in a similar job today. Back then, I essentially had to rely on the bi-monthly cityRead… Read more »
We attended the National League of Cities conference last week and got a lot of questions about streaming council meetings online to increase transparency. There were some concerns raised about pricing and complexity, we wanted to address these in a blog post to give people some key things to consider when deciding what type ofRead… Read more »
When Bradley Tech, a troubled Milwaukee public high school, had to be locked down and receive massive police support to stop a fight involving gang members and kids from other schools, the most important issue is not about the school, the 18 arrests, the gangs, the fight, or the police response. It’s about having noRead… Read more »
Last week, I served on a panel at the National League of Cities Congress in Denver, Colorado. Fellow panelists included Harvard’s John O’Leary, The Performance Institute’s Alan Shark, Muni Gov 2.0 co-founder Pam Broviak and Social Media for Responders founder Mark Basnight. Each of us offered our insights about the state of social media inRead… Read more »