Gov 2.0 News

Ingres Vice President of Product Management Deb Woods discusses Open Source for America and government policy issues around open source. Ingres is an OSFA founding member and Woods serves on its Steering Committee. She also runs the open source blog and podcast Out of the Woods.

LocalGovChat (@localgovchat) is a weekly Twitter chat to help local government communicators connect and learn from one another. Chats are held Wednesdays from 9-10 p.m. EST.

As someone who’s been around the block more than once in the technology industry, I’ve had the opportunity to witness a plethora of developments, ideas and concepts, some good, some not so good. One particular debate, or perhaps, a point is confusion, is around the word ‘open’.

Facebook Public Policy Director Tim Sparapani discusses privacy and free speech issues affecting his company and opening a Washington DC public policy office on C-SPAN’s Communicators.

Edmonton’s Chief Information Officer Chris Moore discusses three ‘big things’ they’re addressing regarding open data, including collaboration, the role of government, non-profit organizations, universities and private sector.

A wrap-up of this week’s posts:

• Open government means open analytics
• Developers for Glory
• A different look at open government participation
• Gov 2.0 Hero: Mike Rupert
• Gov 2.0 Hero: John Lisle
• SF selects Brightidea to power employee ideas campaign
• Video: ‘New Media Risks and Rewards: People First, Mission Always’
• Kundra, SF officials promote Open311 API

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.

Deloitte has put out a video, New Media Risks and Rewards: People First, Mission Always, featuring Steve Lunceford Deloitte Senior Manager (also founder of GovTwit and co-host of Gov 2.0 Radio). Video highlights social media tips for agencies, including start small, have an executive champion, get key contacts collaborating early and focus on the mission first.

Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn’t be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem. Though they all offer cash prizes to the winners, they each took a slightly different approach, with different results.