President Obama created a new oversight board in June 2011 as part of his new Campaign to Cut Government Waste. He directed it to report to him in December on ways to improve accountability, based on lessons from the implementation of the Recovery Act. That report is now out. President Obama created the Government AccountabilityRead… Read more »
The White Horse Digital Futures Group’s exclusive report provides feedback for 30 citizen-focused government mobile applications, plus mobile development guidelines helpful for public or private organizations. “The number of smartphone users in the U.S. is approaching the 100 million user mark. Government bears a responsibility to ensure… (they) use available resources effectively and produce betterRead… Read more »
Raw data isn’t always the same as government transparency, said speakers and audience members during a May 25 session at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C. Said one audience member, “there are lies, damned lies, statistics and government data.” John Sheridan, head of e-Services and Strategy at the United Kingdom’s Office of Public SectorRead… Read more »
The dominant first year theme of the new Administration has been the importance of achieving “transparency” to build citizen trust. The transparency ideal—inarguable in principle—is difficult in execution. To this end, most of the available leadership bandwidth has been consumed by public promotion of a data centric portal strategy as a means to achieve transparency.Read… Read more »
Posted Originally to Bright Side of Government By Kristin Bockius, State & Local Government Social Media Marketing Manager Federal budget watchdogs and other observers know that agencies historically have reported the performance results for their spending and programs at the end of each fiscal year as required by the Government Performance and Results Act. InRead… Read more »
Information on recovery.gov recently reported that the Department of Agriculture was paying $1.2 million for 2 pounds of frozen ham. In fact the contract in question actually purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191 million for food banks and homeless shelters. In response to misstated information the board overseeing recovery.gov refused to correct the informationRead… Read more »
The Obama administration has set the goal of achieving and unprecedented level of openness, participation, transparency, and collaboration in government. This applies especially to the accessibility of government information and the tracking of stimulus expenditures. This presentation discusses ways that cloud computing, web 2.0, and web 3.0 semantic technologies can be used to deliver citizen-friendlyRead… Read more »
Whew… Just published my first idea on the nationaldialogue.gov. Here’s a teaser. Social Enablement consists of architecting, developing, and ultimately using a network of transparency services along with developing the social context within government to encourage its maximum utilization. Social Enablement as a strategic element assures that transparency gains sufficient reach and capacity to beRead… Read more »
I have received at least 10 emails suggesting participation in “the National Dialogue”, a companion to the recovery.gov Web site designed to “discover” technology solutions to achieve transparency. Tonight I finally was able to visit the site and contributed 3 “ideas”. How frustrating. Here is why. First, let me underscore that outreach is an admirableRead… Read more »
This ran yesterday in TechPresident. Since then I’ve gotten a number of favorable responses, including several that suggested the government should actually consider having Intuit design the site. As I thought more about it, it seems to me that this approach — of a process in which muncipalities and states wouldn’t have to make anyRead… Read more »