The GSA is currently planning forge.gov, which is widely assumed to be based on forge.mil, the much-discussed collaboration platform from the Defense Information Systems Agency, or DISA. forge.mil is a pretty incredible idea: a single destination for testing, certification, and software development in the Defense Department.

Gov 2.0 Radio talks with Matt Greeley of BrightIdea. BrightIdea has powered innovation campaigns for the government of Ireland, City of San Francisco and has a new contract with the U.S. State Department. It’s also the platform behind the $200 million GE Ecomagination Challenge. We talk with company co-founder Matt Greeley about challenges and best practices in ideation, innovation and crowdsourcing for government and enterprise.

I’m very excited about GovFresh’s first event next week, sf.govfresh, September 1, 2010, 6:00-9:00 p.m. Admission is free and will held in a beautiful space at Adobe‘s San Francisco offices (special thanks to Adobe for hosting and sponsoring this event).

The goal of sf.govfresh is to bring together public servants, citizens, civic developers and social entrepreneurs to network and learn more about San Francisco’s innovation, technology and open government initiatives. Together we can learn how government is changing the way it works and how we as citizens can change the way we work with government.

Gov 2.0 Radio talks with Hutch Carpenter of Spigit about engaging internal and external stakeholders in the ideation process using Web tools and game mechanics.

A while back I met with Granicus in their San Francisco offices and discussed the Granicus Open Platform, a cloud-based, software-as-a-service approach to delivering government content. Small towns, major cities, counties and a handful of state and federal agencies use the service (full list), which includes live stream public meetings, legislative management, training and citizen engagement and more.

When USA.gov launched a new look earlier this year, it released a mobile apps showcase to feature federal agency mobile applications to help citizens in their everyday lives. Here’s 15 you shouldn’t be on the move without.

I had a chance to talk with Matthew Burton, the former intelligence analyst turned open source cause celebre who just launched a tool that helps frame and understand arguments with imperfect evidence. It’s based on method called Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH), which has been around for quite some time. Matthew and his friend Josh Knowles, though, have a tool that allows the ACH method to be used by multiple participants simultaneously. It’s fascinating stuff, so I’m grateful that he took the time to talk with me.

I was really happy to have Patrick Lajeunesse present about Agriculture Canada’s experience using Drupal as a prototyping tool. As you can see from his presentation, with a small team of communications staff they were able to set up both a Drupal and WordPress prototype to explore their needed functionality. I wanted to focus a…

We talk with Jed Sundwall of Captura Group about Open San Diego; Go.USA.gov, the .gov URL shortener; engaging Hispanics online, including those who prefer Spanish and prefer English; and the USA.gov and GobiernoUSA.gov social media strategies, and why they’re remarkable.

This post is meant to summarize a recent and well-publicized study of ours for those in the Gov 2.0 community who are interested in the key results, but do not have the time to read the paper.

It has been well documented that Republicans have a greater affinity to Twitter; despite the leading Twitter user being President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Our study asks: are the reasons for using Twitter different across party lines?

The CityCamp World Tour kicks off in London at CityCampLDN, October 8-10. See the official site for complete details. You can also follow on Twitter at @CityCampLDN.

We’re honored to join forces with CityCamp to host and support its World Tour efforts and encourage open government enthusiasts everywhere to start a local camp where you live. We worked with CityCamp to design its new look. Check out the new CityCamp and learn how to start one in your area.

FedScoop recently wrapped up its Minds in the Cloud video series. MITC featured interviews with 23 government and industry leaders discussing the benefits, challenges and future of cloud computing. Here’s my seven favorite (#1 being US Navy SCSC CIO Susan Hess).

Empire Avenue – Crowdsourcing the Best Content: We interview Empire Avenue CEO Duleep Wijayawardhana about how individuals, governments and cause organizations can harness social media, virtual markets and game mechanics to engage their communities.

This is an awesome short film from StreetFilms.org that convincingly lays out the case for open transit data. Later this year, the State of Delaware will – for the first time ever – release all of its transit data in open formats. This is the result of a bill introduced this past legislative session by State Senator Bethany Hall-Long.

Richard White on Leveraging Your Community: San Francisco startup UserVoice allows governments, politicians, nonprofits and businesses small and large to harness the ideas and feedback of their employees, communities and citizens online. Gov 2.0 Radio host Adriel Hampton talks with CEO Richard White about best practices for local government use of this kind of feedback tool, and some of the best and worst examples of the platform in action.

Brian Purchia of Burson-Marsteller has a post over on GovFresh about the value of open source to unions. His argument pivots on cost-savings. I think you could make a more expansive argument that includes risk mitigation and innovation, but describing the advantage to unions is an interesting angle I hadn’t seen before.

Earlier this year, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ignited an open source movement in government when the city approved the nation’s first open source software policy. Now, another movement — labor may be getting behind this effort. I have been asked to speak with Local 21 of Professional & Technical Engineers (IFPTE/AFL-CIO) today about Gov 2.0 initiatives I helped lead for Newsom and why unions should embrace open source technology.

Colorado’s newly-appointed Chief Data Officer Micheline Casey shares on thoughts on her new job and all things open data with Government Technology‘s GTtv. (HT @adrielhampton)

British Columbia’s top climate protection official and Gov 2.0 Radio host Adriel Hampton discuss how hackers and open government data are helping Canada tackle global warming (British Columbia Climate Action Secretariat James Mack on “Apps for Climate Action).