Earlier this week, President Obama took questions from YouTube via CitizenTube. The event was part of an effort to crowdsource citizen questions to the president after his State of the Union speech. According to YouTube, 772,350 votes were cast on 14,456 questions from 64,969 people.
By now, most people in the Gov 2.0 community have heard of Drupal, the popular open source social publishing system powering close to 500,000 websites ranging from big government to Britney Spears. Drupal has seen steady growth from its inception as a Belgian grad student’s experiment in 2001 to one of the most heavily used open source content management systems in the world, downloaded by a quarter million people per month. A growing trend the Drupal community is following closely this year is government interest in the platform to further open government initiatives and broaden adoption across government.
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?
Everyday Banter created a parody video of the new White House iPhone app. (HT OhMyGov!)
Best line: “Haven’t heard from Obama in the last six minutes and need to make sure he’s still in charge? There’s an app for that.”
The White House launched a free White House App for the iPhone. The app delivers livestream video from speeches and press briefings, blog updates and latest official White House photos. Citizens will be able to watch the upcoming State of the Union speech directly from their iPhones.
You can download the White House app at iTunes. Details at the White House Blog.
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.
John Stewart’s Daily Show coverage of the White House Open Government Directive hones in on what everyone’s asking:
‘What was so funny?’
Quotable:
Huge event yesterday. ‘Open for Questions,’ a new experiment in open government debuted on the whitehouse.gov Website, hosted by Kevin Smith, Mike D, and Indian George Clooney. It was, as you can imagine, HIGH-larious.
In the spirit of open government, we’d like an official response from the White House.
Guesses on Gigglegate?
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.
You can now follow the latest news related to the White House Open Government Initiate (OGI) on GovFresh at whitehouse.govfresh.com.
The new site includes:
On January 21, 2009, President Barack Obama signed a ‘Transparency and Open Government’ executive order. Here is video of the signing and full text of the memorandum.
The White House today announced its Open Government Directive, instructing agencies to open their operations to the public and providing a framework for doing so. The directive was accompanied by a Open Government Progress Report to the American People.
From the White House:
The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration are at the heart of this directive. Transparency promotes accountability. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise to government initiatives. Collaboration improves the effectiveness of government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the federal government, across levels of government, and between the government and private institutions.
From the White House’s new ‘Open Government Progress Report to the American People:’
For too long, the American people have experienced a culture of secrecy in Washington, where information is locked up, taxpayer dollars disappear without a trace, and lobbyists wield undue influence For Americans, business as usual in Washington has reinforced the belief that government benefits the special interests and the well connected at the expense of the American people.
This progress report offers the American people a snapshot of the progress to date, highlights of the Administration’s new open government policy framework—the Open Government Directive —together with a road map for what’s to come.
Full text of the White House’s ‘Open Government Directive’ sent to the head of every federal department and agency, instructing agencies “to take specific actions to open their operations to the public.”
Just found this White House Blog post (Your Government: Open for Business in New Ways and New Places) and video from Bev Godwin (@BevUSA), White House New Media Director of Online Resources & Interagency Development.
The video, featuring Macon Phillips, White House New Media Director, highlights how government is using new media as a resource for citizens.
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.
