“The First State” will become the twenty-fourth state website to be managed by e-government firm NIC Inc.
The U.S. Department of Transportation is officially nowhere to be found in social media circles, but DOT Secretary Ray LaHood is everywhere, including Facebook, Twitter and Flickr.
The Justice Department has produced 17 videos on everything you ever wanted to know about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Great FedTalks presentation from David Dejewski of the Department of Defense Business Transformation Agency where he discusses Web 2.0, MilSuite including MilBook, MilWiki, MilBlog and MilTube.
The General Services Administration has launched Challenge.gov as part of an effort to help “government and the public work together to find solutions.” Citizens can vote to support a challenge, contribute to a discussion board and federal agencies can post their own challenges to the site. According to the Challenge.gov Website, “this platform is the latest milestone in the Administration’s commitment to use prizes and challenges to promote innovation.”
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.
The Federal Register has launched a re-design of its Website, federalregister.gov. The new site is XML-based and was developed using open source code (now available on GitHub).
“The Daily Journal of the United States,” the FR is managed by the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and serves as “the legal newspaper of the U.S. government and contains rules, proposed rules, and public notices of federal agencies, as well Presidential documents.”
The General Services Administration has launched a re-design of USA.gov that includes easier access to mobile applications, government performance dashboards, citizen engagement contests and a simpler navigation structure. USA.gov is the U.S. government’s official information and services site. More on the new design from GSA.
The Department of Health & Human Services launched Healthcare.gov, an all-in-one healthcare information site related to the Affordable Care Act dedicated to helping citizens ‘take health care into your own hands.’
Features include Find Insurance Options, Get Prevention Tips, Compare Care Quality and Understand the Law.
The General Services Administration recently announced it will create FedSpace, a ‘new social intranet for federal employees and contractors.’ The project will be managed by the agency’s Office of Citizen Services and the initial version is expected to launch late summer.
I’m all for public-private collaboration.
GSA’s Office of Citizen Services is one of my favorite ideas for a government agency and inter-agency service. The work it does is fantastic, and its leadership is exceptional.
I’m also a big fan of GovLoop and have a great relationship with founder Steve Ressler. Steve has been gracious enough to feature me as a ‘GovLoop Member of the Week,’ and I regularly try to post updates on what’s happening over there.
Having said that, I’m wary of GSA’s implied endorsement of GovLoop, notably on it’s Resources page (Figure A) and in its recent ‘Government by Collaboration’ newsletter (Figure B) that includes an article by GovLoop with the headline ‘GovLoop’s “Extraordinary Collection of Talent.”‘
The Obama Administration’s Open Government Directive ordered Federal agencies to produce open government plans by April 7th, and while some advocates are disappointed, we have before us a bewildering number of initiatives to improve transparency, collaboration, and participation across the Government. It will not surprise you to learn that I spent some time looking for places where open source is being used in these plans.
Put down the best-seller and cancel the rest of Spring Break, the White House announced today federal agencies have released their open government plans. The plans are part of the Administration’s Open Government Initiative and should make for great beach reading.
PBS NewsHour features the White House New Media team in a segmented titled Wired White House Looks to Harness New Media.
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.
Regardless of nationality, people from all over the world are treated in American hospitals. You don’t have to be a U.S. citizen to purchase private health insurance in the U.S. nor do you have to be a citizen to pay to see a doctor. The U.S. has a private healthcare system that is open to everybody, who pays.
Voter ID and Civic Innovation
Since 2008, there has been a wave of voting law changes that impose barriers to the ballot box. Georgia Rep. John Lewis, a veteran of “Bloody Sunday,” called the new laws “the most concerted effort to restrict the right to vote since before the Voting Rights Act.” The right to vote is being chiseled away [...]