Latest, greatest Gov 2.0 videos from around the Web.
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.
GovFreshTV talked with NASA Nebula CIO Chris C. Kemp about Nebula’s role in cloud computing.
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).
CrisisCamps are efforts by local communities to garner the collective skills of volunteers, particularly technology related, to support relief efforts during crises, such as natural disasters. Crisis Commons is the supporting organization whose mission is “empowering global citizens to save lives through technology.” Most recently, CrisisCamps have been active in supporting relief efforts following the earthquake in Haiti. Here’s an overview of CrisisCamp, CrisisCommons and how you can connect and get involved.
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.”
SeeClickFix lets citizens report public works issues such as potholes, graffiti, and wayward trash directly from their iPhones, the SeeClickFix Website or other sites using its embeddable widget. Citizens can create watch lists to follow what’s being reported in a particular area, comment and vote up or down other issue reports and get ‘Civic Points’ for their participation. Governments can use the service as a 311 work order management system and media outlets can integrate the reporting widget and map into their Websites for enhanced reader interaction.
Open Gov the Movie is a 14-minute compilation of interviews with prominent open gov advocates, including U.S. Deputy CTO Beth Noveck, Sunlight Foundation’s Jake Brewer, City of Manor’s Dustin Haisler, Tim O’Reilly, EPA’s Jeffrey Levy, Deloitte’s Steve Lunceford and National Academy of Public Administration’s Lena Trudeau. The film was created by Delib.
CitySourced is a free iPhone application that lets citizens immediately report civic woes directly to their local government. Users take a photo, select report type, add comments and send. The incident is then directed to the appropriate department. You can download CitySourced here.
Sunlight Foundation released a free Real Time Congress iPhone app now available at iTunes. Real Time Congress includes live floor updates, key document information, Whip notices and hearing schedules. More on the release here. See also Sunlight’s Android app, ‘Congress.’
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.
Spot.Us is a nonprofit effort from the Center for Media Change that supports community-funded investigative reporting. Citizens recommend and fund local news stories, which are then written by participating journalists and published on the site. Contributions are tax deductible and re-imbursed if a news organization buys exclusive rights to the content. The group currently operates ‘beats’ in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.
GovFreshTV sat down with founder David Cohn to discuss his vision:
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.
It Was A Very Good Year for Sunlight Foundation in 2009, and they kicked 2010 off with a drive to recruit transparency leaders at the local level. You can join here.
Watch Sunlight’s 2009 retrospective and goals for 2010 video and stay tuned for more.
Jen Pahlka on her new role as founder of Code for America, the new role developers play in democracy and the importance of their involvement.
Open Source for America launched a new video campaign to promote the benefits of government using open source technology. The video includes business leaders from Red Hat, Sun Microsystems and Google.
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.
San Francisco public officials, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, discuss the launch of launch of DataSF.org and the city’s open government initiative at a meeting with city department heads. Highlights include Newsom’s overview of why the effort is important and Tim O’Reilly’s talk on government as a platform.
Here’s video from the August 2009 news conference announcing the launch of DataSF.org, San Francisco’s open data site, which provides “structured, raw and machine-readable government data to the public in an easily downloadable format.”
The press conference is attended by SF officials and technology entrepreneurs, including SF Mayor Gavin Newsom, SF CIO Chris Vein, SF Dept of Public Works head Ed Riskin, SF Director of Innovation Jay Nath, Tim O’Reilly and WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg. There’s a general Q&A that includes examples of how citizens and entrepreneurs are leveraging the newly-opened data.
As I read Gov 2.0 retrospectives and predictions, I can’t help but think of iStrategyLabs CEO Peter Corbett’s ‘No One Cares About Your Crappy Web App’ Ignite talk from July, and what it means for 2010.
In 2010, the Gov 2.0 community needs to think harder about how this movement will bridge economic disparity. Open data, open source, social media, transparency and collaboration are great, but look around the room at the people it serves and ask yourself, ‘how is this bridging the digital divide?’
