The City of Beaumont, California, found itself in a similar situation, and did something positive in response.  I especially like this quote, from the Public CEO story:

“I think it’s a good learning experience,” said City Manager Alan C. Kapanicas. “Either we’ve done something wrong and we’ve got to fix it or we’ve got to explain what we did right.”

And in response?

In response, the city posted its 1994 contract with Urban Logic Consultants. It was a move designed to increase transparency, as BCRG has advocated for years, said Bingham.

The city’s also has a page on its website for “Myths and Facts about Contract Employees,” refuting the serious allegations without citing the citizens group by name. See the webpage here.

What a way to handle criticism!  It all starts with a mindset similar to this city manager’s.

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.”

via Edmonton, Alberta, Replicating City in Second Life.

“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.

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.

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).

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.