FollowYourGov » open government

How Social Media Can Effect Govt Change

Chris — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 16:37:10 +0000

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.

Bringing Attention to Open Government

Chris — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 11:01:10 +0000

govfresh has another good article, this time by Luke Fretwell. He lists 10 ways we can bring more attention to our open government and government 2.0 initiatives, including blogging, leveraging social video sites, guestposting on major news sites (like Mayor Newsom on TechCrunch), and simplifying our message.

A very good read.

Open Source Innovation

Chris — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:50:07 +0000

Stephen Goldsmith, who we recently highlighted, discusses “open sourcing innovation.” He writes about increasing the number of governmental innovators, in a very interesting article.

Open Government as a Social Movement

Chris — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 14:46:37 +0000

The OpenSF blog explains how open government is a social movement:

Open government is a social movement was repeated many times throughout the conference and I have to agree that open government isn’t a cookie-cutter policy in each city, department, or municipality, rather it is a manner of conducting government and public engagement that will take time and require trust and reliability to sustain.

Design for America Contest for Data Accessibility

Chris — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 21:28:12 +0000

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.

Access and Twitter in the White House

Chris — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:31:22 +0000

FoxNews’ White House Correspondents write a blog about covering the White House. They recently published a post titled, “Getting Closer: A New Era of Access.” The post discusses the amount of citizen access in the recent healthcare debate and specifically mentions the White House Press Secretary’s usage of Twitter.

Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary, is @PressSec on Twitter.

Why the Need for Open Records

Chris — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:39:00 +0000

As part of Sunshine Week, the nation’s new Freedom of Information Act ombudsman, Miriam Nisbet, took part in an exclusive interview with the Associated Press. This question-and-answer really struck me:

Q: Why is this important to the average citizen, someone who doesn’t work for a newspaper?

A: “If people are going to know how their government is operating, what they are doing that affects them, what they are doing on behalf of the people, they have to be able to see the records that reflect that. The documents that are being created, the data that are being produced. Particularly, you look at huge government programs and all the data that come out of that. Those data belong to the people, and they should have a right to see them and then do with them what they want.”

This stuck out to me because we as public administrators often think of only the media, local newspaper, or kooky citizen as requesters of open records. In reality, “Those data belong to the people.”

Drupal for Building Gov 2.0 Sites

Chris — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:38:03 +0000

GovFresh has a great article on the usefulness of the open source Drupal content management system in creating transparency and government 2.0 websites.

Don’t forget to look at our Goverments Using Open Source CMS for many examples of sites built with Drupal (and other open source solutions).

Public Data and Google’s Explorer

Chris — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:58:39 +0000

Governing has a short piece on using Google’s great new Public Data Explorer.

Open Source Critical to Open Government

Chris — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:05:35 +0000

The lead architect for Red Hat Government responds to criticism from folks who don’t believe open government and open source software are connected.

Technology Transforming Cities

Chris — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 17:43:33 +0000

How Technology Can Transform Cities from Newsweek.

Is There a Web 2.0 Open Records Problem?

Chris — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:02:31 +0000

Another of the Governing magazine articles on social media in government: The Web 2.0 Paper Trail Problem. At issue in this article is complying with open records requests in social network communications.

Many people use open records compliance issues as a reason not to utilize social networks and social media. If you make the Facebook page for your city and your Twitter account public, where is the issue? A citizen can see everything that has occurred. It is, by definition, open. I think this is a moot issue.

Social Media for Public Good

Chris — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 15:00:09 +0000

Another of the Governing magazine articles on social media in government: Tweeting for the Public Good, about the State of Utah’s authorization of employees’ use of social media. I enjoyed the entire article, but especially liked this point:

In too many instances, the first inclination of public-agency managers still is to restrict access to popular social-networking sites such as Facebook and YouTube for rank-and-file employees.

That is ironic when you consider some of the terrific uses that state and local governments have found for these tools.

The article mentions the Utah state web portal, which is here. They also have a list of state government Twitterers and blogs.

Promise of Open Government

Chris — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:53:43 +0000

The Promise of Open Government: How data can unlock government and open it up to citizens as never before, from Governing.

Challenges for Open Government

Chris — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 13:43:03 +0000

More on the challenges for open government, from InformationWeek.