May 27th, 2010 |
Jaimey Walking Bear
Chris Kemp, NASA’s CTO of Information Technology, speaks with O’Reilly Media’s Alex Howard about Nebula, open standards, innovation and more at the Gov 2.0 Expo in Washington, D.C.
May 27th, 2010 |
Jaimey Walking Bear
Post via Alexander Howard | @digphile
Can state governments deliver more services with constrained budgets? How can social media and collaborative software be used to engage citizens and lead to better policy decisions or investments? Can open government lead to better e-government? In this interview, Alex Howard, Government 2.0 Washington Correspondent for O’Reilly Media, interview Carolyn Lawson about precisely these issues. Lawson is the Deputy Director, Technology Services Governance Division, Director of the eServices Office of the state of California.
You can read more about how California is delivering e-services over the Internet in a previous post on this blog.
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Jaimey Walking Bear is on the Marketing team for Gov 2.0 Expo. He can be reached @gov2events or @jaimeywb
May 26th, 2010 |
Jaimey Walking Bear
Welcome to Gov 2.0 Expo!
Although we like to assign geographic location to ideas and communities, technology and government are not exclusive to Silicon Valley, Tokyo, London, Hong Kong, or Washington, D.C. Hosting the inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo in the nation’s capitol will bring together citizens, technology companies and governments from around the United States and around the globe.
Visitors to the District of Columbia are often impressed and inspired by the monuments of history and government institutions that surrounding the National Mall. These monuments celebrate the people who not only founded America but also provided the constitutional framework that allowed public service, leadership and inspiration to flourish for generations to come. As the United States continues to grow as a nation, encourage innovation, and strive for a better government, we might do well to reflect upon the words forever emblazoned on the walls of the Jefferson Memorial by our third president.
“I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
The timelessness of Thomas Jefferson’s thinking lends weight to why the idea of “government 2.0” is so important now. These early days of 21st century are an optimal time to embrace and explore more than just technology. In 2010, collaborative techology can also enable the enrichment of people and improvement of processes inside of government to deliver more efficient services to all citizens. The Open Government Directive is leading the federal government to become more transparent, participatory and collaborative. As citizens rapidly adopt new technologies and ways of living, working, they are participating in civic life online in unprecedented numbers. “institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.” Although this conference focus on technology, the tools are only one of the essential elements in this discussion. If government is to offer a platform that’s allows citizens to build better services and policies though open data, it’s crucial to understand how people are changing and successfully applying technology to solving the grand challenges of our times.
Gov 2.0 Expo will provide a springboard for participating in this continual evolution by focusing on technologies that enrich and advance the mission of government at the federal, state and local level. We are here to celebrate the people and projects that sustain and improve the institutions here in Washington and in other seats of government around the world. What we build upon here will add to the continual advancement of a more participatory, transparent, and collaborative government on every street.
Thank you for being part of the Gov 2.0 Expo,
Laurel Ruma (@laurelatoreilly) and Mark Drapeau (@cheeky_geeky
Program Co-Chairs
Hubspot social scientist Dan Zarrella shares his insighst and research on the most effective use social software.
May 26th, 2010 |
Jaimey Walking Bear
How do you find pages that cite a permalink?. Microsoft evangelist Jon Udell describes a framework for sharing government meetings and records online.
May 25th, 2010 |
Jaimey Walking Bear
by Alexander Howard | @digiphile
“What we have to do is open up the conversation about what it means to be a public servant,” said Carolyn Lawson, Director of eServices for the Office of the CIO, State of California. In kicking off the Gov 2.0 Expo’s first session, “Navigating the Maze, Lawson offered guidance, perspective, case studies and, appropriate to the topic of social media in government, lively give and take between the audience and presenter. Lawson explored the many ways that the state of California has employed e-services and online engagement strategies, along with a simple driver: cost. “Our workforce is furloughed three times a month,” said Lawson. “It’s really painful. Our exploding population really needs services.”
The reality of California’s budget woes come at a time when the expectation for government to be responsive online has never been higher. “Immediate access to data has become a cultural expectation,” said Lawson.
“The expectation is there now that government will be open, honest and will communicate.” Lawson described how both the California Unemployment Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles have used social media and online platforms to deliver better services without additional cost. “You can tweet @CA_EDD and get answers like how long until you get a check, where to go on the website or job fairs,” said Lawson. “I don’t think the creators of Twitter thought it would be a helpdesk for EDD.” That social response is paired by e-government services that enable workers to file for unemployment online. Lawson said that online applications for unemployment went up by about 1.8 million from the previous year. “What would have happened if we’d blocked that?”
California is using other online platforms and technologies to deliver services that have been affected by budget woes. California couldn’t afford to offer driver training in schools, explained Lawson. “Something had to be cut. What the DMV did, since they already had YouTube videos, is to create an entire curriculum.” The California DMV YouTube channel provides the means for every high school to watch training videos like the one below without additional cost:
“We were thinking of this a culturally relevant tool, not as a forum for expression” said Lawson. “These videos have more than nine million views. If we weren’t government, they’d be calling that viral. It’s all about being where people are.” And, on that count, the @CA_DMV has developed an iPhone app, “DMV Now.”
Lawson strongly defended both the importance of the role that social media engagement plays for the California state government and its utility. “Technology is not driving Web 2.0, Twitter or Facebook.,” she said. “People are driving these services. And blocking Web 2.0 isn’t going to solve your problems.” She made the analogy to the conversations about the telephone in the workplace in the early 20th century, or email in the 1990s. “What we do as a government when we cut off the ability to communicate through the Web 2.0 world is to remove our ability to be culturally relevant,” she said. Adopting social software or connection technology usage that emphasize protocol over common sense can be problematic as well. “One of the things that kills government’s ability to use social media is speaking to employees in terms of thou shalt, thou shalt not,” said Lawson. She shared a public available wiki of government social media resource that offers some best practices and frameworks for discussion or practice.
Lawson observed that California itself is still evolving in how it uses social media. “We still have many departments blocking the governor’s Twitter,” she said, alluding to Governor @Schwarzenegger‘s massively popular account. The challenge, as Lawson posed it, is to show how government use of social media combines with open data initiatives. “What are we afraid of? The consequences of transparent. We were really afraid of crowdsourcing ideas to improve California IT with Ideasalce. We got beat up – but we also got ideas. We’re the government: we’re going to get beat up. You can’t take it personally.”
Lawson broadly described a cultural shift going towards open government brought about by the Obama admin, though she recognized that many efforts had gone on before. “This is being pushed through by Obama’s transparency initiatives,” she said. “It used to be revolutionary for public documents to be available in a municipal building to people walking in. No more.”
So how should an organization tackle objections that put social media age into a technology issue, rather than a management challenge? “That’s where I have my ‘activity or accomplish’ conversation,” said Lawson. “Is this that conversation about the telephone in 1920s? Or is it something that we need to do to protect our data and information? You have to get people engaged in the conversation. That took us more than a year. If you can relate behavior to behavior to technology, that’s where you have a win.”
The bottom line is that nobody has this all figured out yet, said Lawson. “You just have to work your way through it.”
Aside from a truly awesome program, the heart of Gov 2.0 Expo – and what sets us apart from any other tech show in the government IT space – is the variety of sponsors and exhibitors who will be showcasing their latest solutions and innovations in our Expo Hall. We’ve amassed over 50 exhibitors to date (and growing!) – who you can see, rub elbows with, and learn from with one of our Expo Hall passes – free with the code EXPOPASS.
Also featured inside our Expo Hall – our Innovators Pavilion. Be sure to check out these companies that are on the ground and leading the charge right now in the Gov 2.0 space.
Since 9/11, inter-agency and first-responder technology investment has sky-rocketed. During an emergency, Government agencies now have a ground-swell of actionable intelligence but no trusted channel for relaying contextual information to their constituency. CiviGuard is a location-aware, smartphone optimized and cloud-based emergency communications platform that addresses this divide. Near real-time civilian outreach is now a reality.
DotGov, Inc., is a Gov 2.0 start-up company based in Seattle, developing a mobile platform that will radically change how citizens interact with their local government. This app provides citizens with tools to directly interact with their city and benefit from all information and services local governments offer in an unprecedented way. More info: dotgov.com or @dotgovcom
IdeaScale allows you to create real-time feedback communities based on the concept of crowdsourcing. IdeaScale goes beyond just collecting ideas by providing a unique blend of software and services that turn the best concepts into reality. Create communities in minutes that harness effective technologies such as Facebook, Twitter, and iPhone integration — right out of the box. Precisely customize your community to match your organization’s style, security, and moderation preferences. IdeaScale is compliant with all government privacy, security, and accessibility standards. Let IdeaScale power your next government 2.0 solution.
Semantifi is an open & free semantic search platform to search structured data on the Web. Unlike Google or Bing, Semantifi can crawl, index and search structured data to show presentation-ready tables and charts in real-time even from very large databases. Semantifi is truly unique in allowing the community to configure datasets for search and publishing them as “Search Apps” i.e. focused search engines customized for specific data. Semantifi envisions that millions of such community built Search Apps will power search of structured data or “Deep Web” search and not by current general purpose keyword search engines.
GovLive is the most advanced aggregator of government news with over 5,000 agencies and growing. Users click-to-follow agencies that are important to them, then sit back and watch real-time news unfold before their eyes. Each piece of information is geotagged to emphasize relevant local content and can be easily shared over Facebook and Twitter.
Gov2.0 Expo attendees can see a demonstration of this new service and learn how to increase visibility of their press releases through GovLive.com at no cost. Also presented will be GovLive Vault, a service for saving social media for public records retention.
Connection Concepts has developed patented DataPortal technology, which transfers database data over the Web instantly, with push button ease, directly to a user’s database system of choice. It works across different database vendors and versions, without development effort, end user software installation, database preparation or firewall modification. As a simple example, the FDA publishes drug information in its Orange Book available as a zip file containing 3 flat, delimited, text files, which must be converted and imported into a database. With DataPortal, the Orange Book data can be delivered to the specified database in one step.
Simpler Systems is the developer of simpler/gov, a search platform that simplifies open data. Simpler/gov connects you and data, using only a web browser. Simpler/gov has been built on the principle of “link, don’t integrate”: no data warehouses, no report writers, no SQL queries. Just link and search.
You can post your raw data on www.simplergov.org, search it, and link it to other interesting open datasets, using data as the user interface. “Data as the UI” is a simple but profound paradigm shift that puts the data first, because, in the end, when it comes to data, Simpler is better.
Caspio, Inc. is the leading cloud computing platform for publishing data-driven applications without programming. Caspio’s interactive database technology has been deployed by federal, state and local government agencies to address a variety of eGovernment, Open Government and Gov 2.0 initiatives. A Platform-as-a-Service pioneer for 10 years, Caspio delivers a mature, secure and compliant cloud solution that is highly-affordable for all sizes of government, and currently powers over 300,000 applications for organizations such as the United States Postal Service, California Department of Health, Indiana.gov, Georgia.gov, and the City of Chicago. Learn more
Mashery’s API management and strategies help companies connect with customers in a changing digital world by expanding their presence across devices and the Web. Mashery leads the industry with a holistic approach for API initiatives-from setting business strategy to the managing of infrastructure to facilitating relationships with our 50,000-strong developer network. Our knowledge, experience and proven strategies enable companies to focus on their core business while building new revenue channels and realizing faster time-to-market for innovative applications. Mashery was founded in 2006 and has built an impressive list of clients that include Best Buy, Netflix, the New York Times, Whitepages.com, Hoover’s, Billboard magazine and more.
Forio builds custom simulations and sells simulation development software to businesses, government agencies and universities around the world. Forio provides development services (to build and launch a new simulation) and server software (to run simulations on desktop computers or over the web). Forio uses the system dynamics simulation methodology, developed at MIT, which works well for providing decision support over time. Forio Simulate makes it easy to create web simulations through your browser. You can use Simulate to develop your simulation, create an HTML or Flash interface, and run your simulation online.
IGLOO develops online community and social networking software for groups, teams and organizations of any size. Our solutions combine Web 2.0 technology with on-demand hosting, consulting, e-engagement and all of the support services necessary for a sustainable and successful deployment. Organizations use IGLOO communities internally to improve employee productivity (Workplace Communities) or externally to foster relationships with members, customers, partners and suppliers (Marketplace Communities). Fully integrated collaboration, content management and Web 2.0 social networking tools enable organizations to quickly and cost-effectively create online communities. IGLOO is funded by RBC Venture Partners. Jim Balsillie is Chair of the IGLOO board.
Limehouse Software, Inc. (an Objective Corporation company) is a specialist in providing Web-based collaborative content creation, document publishing and citizen engagement software solutions for local, state and federal government promoting transparency, participation and collaboration. Used by over 250 public sector organizations globally to publish thousands of strategic documents and engage with over 1 million citizens, our SaaS solutions (uCreate and uEngage) are transforming the way that governments develop complex environmental, transportation, land use and financial documents; and, engage with their citizens and stakeholders through real-time collaboration and consultation. Connected. Collaborative. Community.
Twilio provides cloud communications web services for making and receiving phone calls and sending and receiving text messages. With Twilio, organizations can leverage the skills of their software developers to add telecommunications functionality to their applications for a fraction of the cost previously required to build these kinds of tools. Twilio offers a simple, powerful API with a pay-as-you-go pricing model.
Governmental agencies are challenged more than ever before by electronic data laws. Government websites are public records and therefore must be archived to comply. PageFreezer.com offers a unique web based E-Discovery solution that archives websites and Social Media sites on a daily basis. PageFreezer.com allows you to browse through your website archives exactly as they appeared on a specific date. PageFreezer.com will be launched at Gov 2.0 Expo.
Ravenflow is launching a new web-based application, RAVEN Cloud, that automatically creates stunning, error-free process diagrams from plain English text. Designed for people who understand business processes but just can’t draw them very well, RAVEN’s natural language engine does the drawing for you. It’s so easy… simply enter a process narrative, or use one of our examples and like magic RAVEN creates your diagram in a flash. For business people who need to produce great looking process diagrams but don’t have time for the old “drag & drop” approach, now there’s a better way to get the job done.
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Jaimey Walking Bear is on the Marketing team for Gov 2.0 Expo. He can be reached @gov2events or @jaimeywb
Hot off the presses, we just published the program schedule grid for Gov 2.0 Expo, so you can start planning your Gov 2.0 Experience now.
The five topic tracks that we’ve divided the Gov 2.0 Expo program into are:
There’s still more to come and more program to added to the schedule. Keep checking back to www.gov2expo.com and to this blog for the latest updates!
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Jaimey Walking Bear is on the Marketing team for Gov 2.0 Expo. He can be reached @gov2events or @jaimeywb
Twitter @gov2events