Tag Archives: future

Emerging Technologies Go Local

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O’Reilly Radar has a great article on Government 2.0 in local government:

The primary benefits of Gov 2.0 that IT professionals cite include improved e-services to the public, resident participation in government, and collaboration between agencies. That snapshot of Gov 2.0 evolution offers ample perspective on the challenges for Gov 2.0 at the federal level.

Cities like New York, Boston, San Francisco, Portland, Ore. and the District of Columbia, have all been hailed in the media for innovative use of open data, new urban mechanics, adoption of Open311, and improved e-services. Promoting government transparency through technology is a leading topic of interest for local government officials, though implementation still lags that interest in many counties. Abroad, the growth of government 2.0 in Australia and development of open government in Britain are key case studies to watch, particularly data.gov.uk. Last weekend’s CityCamp in London drew hundreds of citizens, technologists and government workers together to talk about the next steps.

The article even connects government (and web) 2.0 to the foundations of democracy:

“The most powerful force in American democracy is the connection between and among citizens,” said David B. Smith, NCoC’s executive director in a prepared statement. Civic life in America now includes a digital component that allows people to share news and co-create in unprecedented ways. What citizens and local government do with that force is the next great question.

2010 Digital Counties Survey Award Winners Announced

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The Center for Digital Government has announced the 2010 award winners in their Digital Counties Survey.

Projects that were motivated to bring transparency got high marks from the judges, and one such project put Montgomery County in first place in the 500, 000 or more population category. The county measured its IT functionality against benchmarks and published the data on its portal, unlike some other applicants, said Sander.

Another area of particular interest among judges was deployment of technologies that reduced energy usage in concrete ways. Chesterfield County had such a project with its automation of park lights. The upgrade eliminated the need for a worker to drive to various parks in order to turn off lights, which eliminated the possibility they would be on unnecessarily and saved money, Sander observed.

2010 Digital Counties Survey Award Winners Announced.

Social Networks for Public Safety Alerts

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He says using social media to distribute crime and other such alerts will be the committee’s main goal. Once the alerts go live, residents will be able to sign up for, Twitter alerts, Facebook messaging or even text messaging and e-mail,” Burch said.

His group is getting input from officials at the sheriff’s office who said the committee will be groundbreaking in keeping residents alerted to crime.

“Especially if we have suspects, suspect vehicles, we can get that information out to the people, what to look for,” said Cabarrus County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Chief Paul Hunt.

But the social media alerts won’t just be useful for crime Hunt said. “In like a flooding situation, which we have had that out in that area,” he said.

via Town to use social media to communicate public safety alerts – News14.com.

Twitter Helping Respond to Gulf Oil Leak

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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.

Consequences of Restricting Employees Internet Usage

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Mashable has a post on restricting internet usage.  Their thoughts?

From the Great Firewall of China to the public schools of Britain, IT security experts are finding that restricting Internet access can have the unintended consequences of civic backlash, poor worker productivity, and students unprepared for cyber threats.

And on internet restrictions in the workplace:

Finally, unlike schools or governments, employees are free to leave any time. A recent survey found that 39% of 18-24 year-olds would consider quitting social media-restricted workplaces. While I have yet to see businesses tout their browsing policies at my University’s career fairs, I imagine that bragging about unrestricted Internet use would actually turn some well-educated heads.

There are a lot of issues with social media in a workplace, especially a government workplace.  Do you allow employees to access social media?

Government in the Cloud

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Governing has a great article about governments using the cloud and takes a good look at how Scott County, MN, utilizes the Amazon Elastic Computer Cloud.  The benefits?

And the fact that Amazon is such a trusted name helped too. When county officials and IT folks discussed the deal with a few Lawson reps, Ellsworth says the risk of using Amazon as a provider came up “and was dismissed very quickly, simply because of the name and that’s their business — and their business lives and dies by their own internal security.”

Should a disaster happen, the county would now recover its data and applications from the Amazon cloud. The cloud updates itself every hour, so minimal information should be lost if something unfortunate happens.

Is your organization utilizing the cloud in any way?

How Social Media Can Effect Govt Change

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Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist and an government 2.0 advocate who we’ve covered before, has another post on Mashable entitled, “How Social Media Can Effect Real Social and Governmental Change“.  He discusses accomplishing everyday tasks, improving government from the outside, and open data and government data.  A must read.

In-Depth Pew Study about Government Online

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The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project just released a study entitled “Government Online.”  It is a very detailed report on citizens’ usage of government websites and interaction with government on and off official websites.  For example:

These results should not imply that Americans are not involved in online discussions around government issues or policies—these conversations are simply taking place within the broader online environment rather than on “official” government blogs or fan pages. In the twelve months preceding this survey, one in ten internet users (11%) posted comments, queries or other information related to government poli- cies online, while 7% of internet users uploaded videos or photos online related to a government policy or issue. An additional 12% of internet users joined a group online that tries to influence government policies, and 3% participated in an online town hall meeting. Taking all of these activities together, nearly one quarter of internet users (23%) have posted comments or interacted with others online around government policies or public issues.

Another area I thought interesting was the discussion of minority usage of online government interactions:

The report also finds that 31% of online adults have used social tools such as blogs, social networking sites, and online video as well as email and text alerts to keep informed about government activities. Moreover, these new tools show particular appeal to groups that have historically lagged in their use of other online government offerings—in particular, minority Americans. Latinos and African Americans are just as likely as whites to use these tools to keep up with government, and are much more likely to agree that government outreach using these channels makes government more accessible and helps people be more informed about what government agencies are doing.

This is a rather long report, but I recommend you read it (here’s the pdf), but in case you don’t, I will likely post more information as I digest it all.  And, the O’Reilly Radar has a good overview also.

Interview on the Military’s Social Media Presence

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O’Reilly Radar has a great interview with Price Floyd, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs and the person in charge of the military’s social media presence:

At the Defense Department, what we have done is embraced social media, and the technology behind it, to engage with all our audiences. That’s everything from veteran’s groups to foreign publics to people who follow me on Twitter. And it’s a two-way engagement.

O’Reilly poses interesting and important questions, including whether social media means losing control of the message.

You should read this great interview of someone who deals every day with social media and its interactions with government.

And while you’re at it, make sure to check out the Department of Defense Social Media Hub.

Local News and Issue Reporting

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EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news aggregator (explanation), is expanding into the government 2.0 arena with the integration of SeeClickFix (Wikipedia).  SeeClickFix allows citizens to report issue (non-emergency issues) to local governments and community activists.  EveryBlock covers the new integration on their blog:

Our friends at SeeClickFix run a site where you can report non-emergency community issues, like potholes, graffiti or street light outages. They’ve shared their data with us so that EveryBlock users will get notified whenever an issue has been reported nearby.

See the great coverage in ReadWriteWeb:

Everyblock aggregates public records, blog posts and other content about very specific geographic locations, automatically. SeeClickFix acts on a similarly hyperlocal basis, giving its users the ability to report issues to their local government using their smartphone.

Budgeting for the Opening of Data

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Governing had an article recently about better aligning budget with IT innovations.  I thought one portion was especially insightful about the need for data initiatives:

Budget for cross-program initiatives, especially sharing data with communities of interest and the public. Standardized data can allow agencies and the public to report once for many purposes, rather than suffering under requirements for multiple and repeated “single purpose” reports. For example, corporate financial reporting in the Netherlands is now considerably more efficient and effective because firms make available real-time data feeds to replace a series of required reports. Closer to home, the D.C. data feeds and federal Data.gov initiatives are releasing government data to encourage transparency and feedback for better productivity and civic trust. To find these cross-boundary opportunities, the budget process must search for them.

Pawlenty Holds Facebook Town Hall

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This afternoon we have another link from OhMyGov!  Last week Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty held an online town hall meeting on Facebook.  And some stats:

Gov. Pawlenty saw his Facebook fan numbers surge to over 35,000 from around 31,000 in the days before the event, a campaign spokesman told OhMyGov.

During the 2 days last week when Pawlenty was promoting the town hall, he received 1,039 “likes” on posts related to the event and 527 comments, for a total of 1,566 citizen “touches.” Not all were unique, to be sure, but it’s a nice base of activity that, remember, gets broadcast to all of his fans’ friends too. The town hall had over 1,000 confirmed guests.

Over 1,000 confirmed guests is pretty incredible.  And what about the town hall itself?

The range of questions posted on his Facebook page ran the gamut from sensible to downright strange. One participant offered this suggestion and question on how to solve Minnesota’s budget problems: “Two large oil fields have been discovered in North Dakota and Montana – how can Minnesota profit from oil in North Dakota?” We assume that T-Paw, as he likes to be called, took a pass on that one.

Overall, the post-town hall meeting comments on the Governor’s Facebook page were overwhelmingly positive. From Roberta Folino: “very good town hall meeting and I actually had my question answered,” and from Patty Rosehill: “good beginning – looking forward to more of these town hall meetings.” Of course, keeping a positive spin on developments is made easier on Facebook since only “fans” can comment on your page.

What an accomplishment.  Governor Pawlenty said about his first online town hall, “I think we should (have) more Facebook town halls in the future. Thanks to all who participated and we’ll do the best we can to get more questions in during future events.”

Study on the Impact of Government 2.0

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SmartPlanet reports on a study by Grant Thornton and FreeBalance on the impact of government 2.0.  The conclusions?

Government 2.0 — enabled through social networking tools — provides benefits such as reduced cost of engagement through more productive tools and processes, simplified knowledge creation and retention though usable applications, easier knowledge sharing, and enhanced information discovery through transparency and data mashups. It all sounds like good mom-and-apple-pie stuff, but is it actually being put to use?

The Grant Thornton report says yes.

And on better using social media and government 2.0?

To help government better take advantage of social networking technologies, Grant Thornton suggests that government organizations better incorporate “design thinking” (Government 2.0 mindset) as a supplement to “management thinking” (Government 1.0 mindset).

“Design thinking” uses a collaborative and iterative style of working that builds up ideas – the best ideas surfacing from a pool of many.” The consultancy also recommends that government managers embrace “viral” change, versus the more static, top-down command-and-control decrees. “Change Management in the Web 2.0 era is more peer-to-peer, viral – change is pulled by participating constituents, employees, customers.”

These are conclusions that many of us have already realized, but I think the study is a good reassurance of where government 2.0 is going.