After footage of a tense city council meeting in West Branch, Iowa was posted on YouTube, City Administrator Matt Mucker suggested a rule that would have required the public to secure mayoral permission to record meetings. This measure would would have violated the state’s open meetings law. After this breach of the law was pointedRead… Read more »
We all know about term limits for politicians, but on Wednesday, I learned about new term limits for workers. If you have not heard, Revel, Atlantic City’s Newest Casino is setting term limits for their front-line staff. When their term runs out (4-6 years), they will be required to go through the hiring process again.Read… Read more »
With regard to contract duplication, last week’s post highlighted the Air Force’s recently issued RFP IDIQ for multiple award contracts for commercial office furniture. By its own terms, the Air Force’s acquisition strategy as articulated in its draft RFP duplicates current GSA schedule contracts for commercial office furniture. In fact, the RFP instructs offerors toRead… Read more »
I watched a young boy build a sand castle on the beach. His labor was intense. He scurried around it with the energy of an eight year old, scrutinized every angle with the precision of an engineer, and when he was done – jumped into a marketing campaign that would put the best firms toRead… Read more »
Last year I kicked myself after Govcamp because I tended to talk to the people I already knew. This year I decided that I would make the effort to be sociable and talk to ten new people – my ten new people challenge! Here is the list: 1) Phil McAllister from Ofqual communications team whoRead… Read more »
Clay Johnson, author of “Information Diet.” The U.S. started with a constituent to representative ratio of 60,000:1 and is now somewhere over 700,000:1. There will be a crisis if government can’t take the huge and growing amount of information from people and interpret it and use it in an effective way. With more and moreRead… Read more »
The work we are doing on the content strategy is very much about actually doing a bunch of work whilst I write the strategy down. One area where is has been the case is with the councils news and press stories – this week we launched a new News Centre (see below) which was builtRead… Read more »
By now, most government communicators have probably seen the Edelman Trust Barometer summaries that keep highlighting that trust in government fell once again. This sounds really terrible for those of us who communicate for the government, but looking deeper into the report shows that this is actually an opportunity for us rather than a problem.Read… Read more »
The first panel of the day was on how various organizations use social media and internet-enabled data to create real-time awareness. The panel was moderated by Dr. Linton Wells (National Defense University) and included panelists Robert Bectel (Department of Energy), Robert Kirkpatrick (UN Global Pulse), Ahmed Al Omran (NPR), and Clark Freifeld (HealthMap.org). Each discussedRead… Read more »
Today President Obama will be officially announcing the Veteran Job Corps, as discussed in the State of the Union in January. The corps will be allotted $1 billion to employ 20,000 veterans over the next 5 years to upkeep and restore public spaces, such as national parks. Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric K. Shinseki on ThursdayRead… Read more »