Edmonton Replicating City in Second Life
The City of Edmonton, Alberta, is using the Second Life virtual world (explanation here) to extend the city and interact virtually with citizens.
Federal agencies such as NASA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have a presence in Second Life, but most cities haven’t gone there for various reasons.
Edmonton is not the first to get into Second Life, but it’s believed to be the first city to officially recreate itself (geography, terrain and major landmarks). Moore believes the interactive platform can encourage tourism and economic development. Virtual Edmonton is set to launch in August.
“I treat it as a platform from which we can understand and experiment,” Moore said. “Because it’s not behind our firewall, it lives in a place where we can easily interact with the community. Will it be the platform that we stay on forever? I don’t know. But it’s a really easy place to start.”
Making Staff Just a Click Away
The Alliance for Innovation writes about how the City of Surprise, Arizona, created a new page to make contact city staff and leaders easier:
“Surprise is city of connection and opportunity, and our new streamlined directory makes it easy for our residents to connect with the right person in city government,” says Interim City Manager Mark Coronado. “We continue to drive Mayor and Council’s goal of constantly improving our open and transparent relationship with residents.”
The new City Directory, which includes staff contact information and numbers to local utilities, is among many new improvements to the web site, all designed to improve connections to government information. Other recent additions include a Google site search and the “It’s Your Money” city finance site. The city’s commitment to openness was recently recognized by Sunshine Review with a perfect score for the openness and transparency of surprise.gov.
Check out their Connect/Contact page here.
Mobile Websites in Government? and a Poll
Mashable posted last week about a new study on the prevalence of the mobile web and its future:
Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that, based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015.
So my thoughts to all of the public administrators out there: have you ever viewed your government/agency/organizations website on your BlackBerry? iPhone? iPod Touch or iPad? Android phone?
Give us an answer below, and we would love to see some discussion in the comments below.
Drupal for Building Gov 2.0 Sites
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).
White House in the iPhone App Store
Last night the White House announced the availability of a new White House iPhone/iPod Touch app (see coverage on TechCrunch). The App is even going to stream live the President’s State of the Union Address. More on teh features:
The application comes packed with content, including the latest news items, videos, photos and blog posts from The White House. One feature that stands out is live video streaming, which enables iPhone and iPod Touch owners to watch the President’s public events at the White House as well as other events like key speeches and press briefings in real-time.
The White House also announced that they will soon have a mobile site available at http://mobile.whitehouse.gov.
Intranet Efficiency Initiative
Los Angeles County implements an intranet efficiency initiative, to include idea generation from employees, better communication, and cost savings tracking.
More Open Gov Sites with Drupal?
Dries Buytaert, project lead for the Drupal open source content management system, believes Drupal will be used for many open government websites created in response to the recent White House directive.
White House Website Expansion
In a follow up to the recent Drupal rollout at whitehouse.gov, the White House media team recently spoke with Drupal developers. Whitehouse.gov is working to roll out custom news feeds, user authentication, and more tagged, searchable raw data. They are also looking into releasing some of their custom code to the open source community.
Harvard Business Review on Twitter
The Harvard Business Review has two great articles on using Twitter in business (very relevant to government): on getting your CEO to use Twitter and using current technology instead of looking for new trends in social media (like your website, intranet, blogs, Facebook, and Twitter).
Ann Arbor’s Digital Improvements
Recently we posted the list of top digital cities of 2009. The Great Lakes IT Report has a good explanation of why the City of Ann Arbor moved up the list to #5, including programs like a citizen request system, new GIS resources, email notifications, and a new online permitting and development review and inspection website.
Feds Using Web 20 for Accountability
How the Federal Government is rolling out web 2.0 for stimulus funding accountability.
More on White House Switch to Drupal
More on the White House switch to the Drupal open source content management system.
Post Office Mobile Site
In one of the most convenient moves in postal history, the United States Postal Service recently debuted a mobile site. You can find a post office when you are out and about! This are the kinds of small advancements that benefits citizens and your everyday users. Plus, you get all kinds of attention. The mobile web is growing everyday, use it to your advantage.
Governments Using Open Source CMS
I have recently decided to move Governments Using Open Source CMSs from my personal site to FollowYourGov. Many open source content management systems include features that allow better communication with visitors, and I feel like it is better suited for FollowYourGov.