Agencies

GSA announced it has officially opened up its URL shortener Go.USA.gov to anyone with a .mil, .gov, .fed.us or .si.edu email address. The site lets users create trustworthy short .gov URLs on Twitter and other online services with character restrictions and was developed by the team behind USA.gov along with members of the Drupal community.

Just noticed this contract solicitation submitted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a ‘professional media services company with experience and reliability in the deployment and delivery of professional broadcast transmission equipment and crews to various locations … used during pre- and post-declared federal disasters to support the OEA in its mission to prepare and disseminate information to the public.’

Having an outside contractor be heavily responsible for this role detaches the agency from its mission-critical work. I can understand services related to training and establishing processes that can then be left for agency employees to execute, but on-call assistance? Long-term or crisis-related social media and outreach should be the agency’s core focus.

What do you think?

GSA’s GovGab blog announced a contest to solicit citizens videos that answer the question ‘What has USA.gov done for you?’ The contest runs February 22-April 2 and the winner will receive $2,500. Rules at USA.gov/contest. More information at GovGab.

GovFreshTV talked with NASA Nebula CIO Chris C. Kemp about Nebula’s role in cloud computing.

President Obama’s Cabinet taped ‘Year One’ videos to highlight their respective department or agency’s 2009 accomplishments and or goals for the next year.

What do you think? Which are most informative? Authentic? Is this an effective way to familiarize citizens to public servants and put a face on government?

Here are 5 more sites crowdsourcing citizen ideas to improve the way government works. See also 6 government sites crowdsourcing citizen ideas.

Advertising Age video highlights CDC’s social media efforts with Twitter, e-Health cards and dealing with related culture and leadership issues.

Scott Cleland, Chair of NetCompetition.org, and Markham Erickson, Executive Director of the Open Internet Coalition, discuss the FCC’s Net Neutrality proposals on C-SPAN’s The Communicators.

OpenNASA, an employee-established public blog, is a “collaborative experiment in open, transparent and direct communication about your space program.” Team openNASA shares lessons learned, and what others can learn from them.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski discusses universal broadband, spectrum policy, net neutrality, indecency and media ownership rules on CSPAN’s ‘The Communicators.’

Quotable:

It’s such an important time with respect to communications. Our communications infrastructure is increasingly essential to the daily lives of every American. It’s how we communicate with each other. It’s how we work in our businesses. It’s how we participate in our government. It’s how we create jobs and contribute to economic growth. I see our communications infrastructure as our platform for innovation and opportunity for the 21st century, and that’s what really drives what we’re trying to accomplish at the FCC of course, because the FCC is the federal agency that has to deal with this landscape. At the highest level our goals are, one, to promote investment throughout the communications eco-system, two, to promote innovation and thereby promote global competitiveness of the United States, three, to promote competition because that’s how we’ll get the most innovation and investment, and four, to protect and empower consumers.

Emma Antunes, project leader for NASA’s internal social network, Spacebook, discusses innovation, collaboration, social media, user engagement, team work, knowledge management, and her expectations for Spacebook.

One of the aspects of Gov 2.0 that I think is making excellent progress is in the area of healthcare and social media. Not only are private healthcare organizations beginning to embrace this technology, but government agencies are also beginning to make use of these powerful tools.

Efforts to distribute accurate information about the dangers of swine flu and the importance of vaccination are hampered by the sheer complexity of the message. Social media tools are being utilized to assist in this effort. Using Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and blogs, the government is actively engaged in social media to harness the power of this platform to reach a new audience and provide real time information. Social media is a powerful new method of healthy communication.

“Using Gov 2.0 to Enable Better Engagement and Reduce Burden on Farmers” video interview with a U.S. Department of Agriculture representative from the Microsoft Public Sector CIO Summit 2009.

He discusses how the agency is trying to get a consensus on what Gov 2.0 is, citizen engagement, the importance of broadband in connecting with farmers, how they collaborate (teleconferences, face-to-face meetings, CoLab) and USDA’s approach to social media usage, from individual teams to the agency-level, especially Twitter and Facebook.

As Space Operations Outreach Program Manager for NASA Headquarters, Beth Beck has one of the best jobs in the universe. Beth shares her affinity for iPhones and chaos via social media.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

WIRED Magazine is my bell-weather for all things new. How does that apply to Gov 2.0? I find that we, the generic government, usually lag two years behind industry in our application of new products or processes. WIRED showcases all things trendy, giving me a jumpstart on ideas for cool new applications and products. I can try out new technology and software in prototype projects and once we’ve worked out the kinks in the system, others can follow.

Gov 2.0 Hero and Director of Web Communications Environmental Protection Agency Jeffrey Levy talks Gov 2.0.

What was your path to Gov 2.0?

I started doing Web 1.0 at EPA in 1994, and I’ve been working with great people ever since, both at EPA and not. As the new tools came along, it was a natural progression. Much of Web 2.0 meshes very well with our broad mission, after all. More specifically, I first did Web 2.0 when my team was tapped to help then-Deputy Administrator publish his blog a couple of years ago.