States

Video of New York State Senate Director of Technology Innovation Noel Hidaldo’s (@noneck) IgniteNYC presentation, ‘Government 2.0: An Empire State of Mind.’

The City of San Francisco has launched PolicySF, a Website to ‘help communities share good ideas with one another.’ The site provides ‘policy toolkits’ with FAQs, processes, sample policy documents and ordinances on SF-specific initiatives. Other governments can also share their ideas.

Here’s video from yesterday’s Open311 press conference in San Francisco, including Vivek Kundra, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, SF CIO Chris Vein and O’Reilly Media’s Tim O’Reilly.

While there’s a push for citizen ideas using collaboration tools, the trend towards open analytics should be just as important, because it exposes what information real users want and where the agency should focus more of its attention. This should be standard practice for all Web/IT departments, so making this information public is as simple as posting it to the agency blog.

Mike Rupert, Communications Manager for the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs (DCRA) in Washington, DC. Mike also recently started localgovchat.com and Twitter chat #localgovchat to unite local government communications professionals to share ideas.

San Francisco has selected Brightidea to power its new idea platform aimed to foster ideas from the city’s 26,000 employees. The site is located at ImproveSF.org.

The top idea will be selected for implementation with 10 other high ranking ideas recognized in an event with Mayor Gavin Newsom and get featured on SFGov.org as well as the city’s Facebook page.

John Lisle, Public Information Officer for the District Department of Transportation (DDOT) in Washington, DC, shares his thoughts on leveraging social media and the value of using a little personality to connect with constituents.

A few months ago, I came up with a plan to understand our city operations and processes on a much more detailed level. After watching Undercover Boss last night on CBS, I thought I would share it with others, so that it might inspire you to do the same (no, I’m not going undercover).

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom addressed the city’s new open source evaluation policy and views on open source during his weekly YouTube address (forward to 10:12).

The City and County of San Francisco’s Committee on Information Technology released its new software evaluation policy. Here’s the full text or you can access at the COIT Website.

Gov 2.0 LA, an ‘un-conference’ on social media and government, will be held Feb. 5-7. Registration is free to all attendees.

Sponsors include Microsoft, You2Gov, Rock Creek Strategic Marketing, Internet E-Business, O’Reilly Media, SeeClickFix and BLANKSPACES.

Last year, San Francisco opened up its data stream to the general public, encouraging developers to integrate the data into applications, sites, and bits of information the public could use. Since then, there’s been more than a dozen applications to utilize the data and turn it in to apps that make residents’ lives easier in a number of ways ~ from finding the best public transit options, to figuring out how to dispose of that old camera. You’ll find all this info and much more within these apps.

The City of Manor’s open innovation portal, Manor Labs, has been live for a few months turning ideas into solutions. When talking with other cities, I find that the entire concept of open innovation is a bit misunderstood. It is very easy to put up a voting platform to rate ideas, but what happens afterwards? With Manor Labs, powered by the Spigit open innovation engine, the system is user-driven and self-sufficient. This allows our small agency the ability to process large quantities of ideas with limit staff involvement.

Here’s a breakdown of idea stages and functions.

The Salt Lake Valley Health Department produced a A Year in Gov 2.0: Our Social Media Quest video highlighting its social media and communications activity over 2009, including efforts around H1N1 public outreach.

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

San Francisco is one of a few major U.S. cities leading the way in the open government, Gov 2.0 movement. SF has opened up data, issued an agency-wide open government directive and continues to pursue innovative opportunities around this effort. (See all SF news at sf.govfresh.com)

Here’s an overview.

San Francisco residents can take full advantage of the city’s open data via Web and mobile applications featured at DataSF App Showcase. Apps offer crime updates, recycling locations, restaurant health inspection scores, BART/MUNI schedules and more. Developers can also submit apps for submission.

According to the site, DataSF App Showcase “celebrates the innovators and innovations who are championing the Mayor’s vision of a more collaborative and open government.”

It seems like today so many agencies are plagued by the expenses of online web development and associated hosting. Manor was no different. Smaller agencies pay thousands of dollars to private companies to developed attractive websites that can be done at a fraction of the cost.

After discussing my frustrations with Luke Fretwell, the founder of GovFresh, he had a solution that would not only work for Manor, but many other cities as well. His idea was to build the entire site on Wordpress, which is an open-source blog publishing application, with full-social media integration. I knew of Wordpress, and had even used it for my personal blog, but have never thought of using it for a government site outside of a traditional blog.

EcoFinder is a free iPhone app that helps San Francisco residents and businesses find recycle locations throughout the city, including electronics, appliance and matresses. Users can filter drop-off/pick-up options by free or pay services.

EcoFinder was created using open data from SF Environment as part of San Francisco’s open data initiative and developed by Haku Wale in partnership with SF Environment, Nextive and AdMob.

InformationWeek features San Francisco’s open data initiative and DataSF.org. Executive editor Fritz Nelson interviews SF mayor Gavin Newsom, SF CTO Blair Adams, SF Director of Innovation Jay Nath and developers building applications from this newly-open data.