Twitter Helping Respond to Gulf Oil Leak
RT @Twitter: Tweet with #BPspillmap to report an incident to the Louisiana Bucket Brigade or check out reports so far on this map: http://bit.ly/aeQb0Y
Twitter announced yesterday on it’s official Twitter account the integration of Twitter and the Louisiana Bucket Brigade. The Louisiana Bucket Brigade is a system created by students to allow everyday citizens to report oil in places they frequent, because of the Gulf Shore oil leak.
What is the Oil Spill Crisis Map?
This map visualizes reports of the effects of the BP oil spill submitted via text message, email, twitter and the web. Reports of oil sightings, affected animals, odors, health effects and human factor impacts made by the eyewitnesses and the media populate points on a this public, interactive, web based map. The information will be used to provide data about the impacts of the spill in real time as well as document the story of those that witness it.
Who made this?
The Oil Spill Crisis map is brought to you by the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and was developed in partnership with students of Professor Nathan Morrow of Tulane University. This technology, utilizes the Ushahidi (http://ushahidi.org) crisis mapping platform to map eyewitness accounts of the oil spill disaster. Ushahidi was first used and developed by Kenyan bloggers to display reports of post-election violence. Since then Ushahidi has been used in other emergencies like the Haiti Earthquake (http://haiti.ushahidi.com/) response, Washington DC’s winter blizzard (http://snowmageddoncleanup.com/) and in Atlanta (http://crime.mapatl.com/) to track crime. The Oil Spill Crisis map is first application of Ushahidi in a humanitarian response in the United States.
ICMA Local Govts Share Photos on Flickr
The International City/County Management Association (ICMA) has had a Flickr account (a photo sharing social network) since 2008. Today ICMA has announced that they are looking to share your photos of government in action:
In partnership with 3CMA, ICMA is seeking to capture the essence of local government through photos! Join 3CMA and ICMA on Flickr by submitting original photos of “local government action.” These photos will be used to enhance marketing materials for 3CMA, ICMA, and participating jurisdictions, as well as give the general public another way to see what’s going on in our local governments.
This is a pretty neat idea, to crowdsource (or city source, if you will) finding good photos for marking materials.
You can submit photos through their online form.
Open Source Innovation
Stephen Goldsmith, who we recently highlighted, discusses “open sourcing innovation.” He writes about increasing the number of governmental innovators, in a very interesting article.
Design for America Contest for Data Accessibility
Sunlight Labs is opening up a contest called Design for America that encourages the public to create data visualizations with open government data. See news of the contest at Wired and govfresh.
Twitter Case Study of USGS
Twitter recently posted a case study of the U.S. Geological Survey’s use of Twitter for earthquake detection (which we recently covered here). The brief description:
One of the U.S. Geological Survey’s unique responsibilities is the monitoring and reporting of earthquakes, which affect the daily lives of people around the world. By mining real-time tweets, the USGS expands its suite of seismically derived information and obtains first-hand accounts of shaking seconds after an earthquake occurs.
Smart Phones Helping Us Serve Citizens
Along the same lines as yesterday’s tweet from the Newark Mayor, today we have a great article in Governing from the former Mayor of Indianapolis. Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations in American Government Program at the Harvard Kennedy School, writes about how “smart phones are revolutionizing how governments serve its citizens — and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.” The article is titled, “Phone + GPS + Camera = Revolution“. This is a very good read.
PS- You can follow Stephen Goldsmith on Twitter, he’s @S_Goldsmith.
Code for America and Local Gov Web 2.0
A new group called Code for America (which is backed by Tim O’Reilly) is trying to help local governments “leverage the power of the web.” GovTech has a great article on this new group.
They are on Twitter at @codeforamerica.
Online Discussion with IdeaScale
Here’s a Federal Times article on federal agencies using the IdeaScale platform to do online discussion forums. IdeaScale’s demo can be seen here, along with their OpenGov forum (done in conjunction with the National Academy of Public Administration). And ReadWriteWeb has a good overview of IdeaScale.
Also, IdeaScale is @IdeaScale on Twitter.
Newmark Link about Gov 2.0
Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, links to a great CNN article about mobile apps and gov 2.0.
Saving Money with an Internal Blog
To follow up on yesterday’s post on using internal blogs, Government Technology talks about how Oakland County uses an internal blog to save money:
Phil Bertolini, CIO of Oakland County, Mich., established a Cost-Reduction/Investment blog in summer 2009 on which employees, regardless of rank, could propose cost-cutting ideas. Suggestions from the blog have slashed $600,000 from the county’s annual IT budget so far.
Detecting Earthquakes with Twitter?
Another of the Governing magazine articles on social media in government: Twitter and Earthquake Detection. This one is a short article about a U.S. Geological Survey system (the Twitter Earthquake Detector) that pulls tweets and other user-made updates (and photos) that specifically relate to earthquakes. The purpose of the project is to allow quicker detection and notification of earthquakes.
How Santa Clarita Uses Social Media
How the City of Santa Clarita Uses Social Media. And on the future of social media use in Santa Clarita:
In early 2010, the City will expand the business utility of social networking for our residents by adding a Twitter component to our CRM application, referred to in Santa Clarita as “eService.”
Gov 2.0 Predictions for Next 3 Years
Five predictions for government 2.0 in the next three years, including innovation coming from local governments, rise of Citizen 2.0, more video, and always on the record.