This is an article from March last year (published while I was out of commission for a few months) but outlines an interesting precedent for governments internationally.

By Doug Beizer on FCW.com

Under the agreement, agencies can immediately begin using new-media tools that let people post, share, and comment on videos and photos on the Web. Individual agencies must decide which tools their employees may use and how they may use them.

GSA and a coalition of agencies have been working with the new-media providers for some time to develop terms of service for federal agencies. The new agreements resolve legal concerns associated with many standard terms and conditions that pose problems for agencies, such as liability limits, endorsements and freedom of information, GSA officials said.

“We need to get official information out to sites where people are already visiting and encourage them to interact with their government,” said GSA Acting Administrator Paul Prouty. “The new agreements make it easier for the government to provide official information to citizens via their method of choice.”

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Code for America is a new website aiming to help city governments become more transparent, connected and efficient by connecting the talents of cutting-edge web developers with people who deliver city services and want to embrace the transformative power of the web to achieve more impact with less money.   Inspired in part by Teach for America, CFA works with city officials and leading web development talent to identify and then develop web solutions that can then be shared and rolled out more broadly to cities across America.

Working with city managers, Code for America plans to help to identify projects that can benefit from web-based solutions.  Code for America recruits both the development teams and the participating cities through competitive application processes.  Once identified and funded, each city project is connected with a web development team that can further scope the project, develop an action plan, and deliver an appropriate solution over an 11-month development cycle.  Throughout the development cycle, CFA mentors, trains, and coordinates the teams and facilitates their relationships with their city management clients.

The applications that Code for America fellows build fit a certain model:  1) They are web applications – think Facebook, Yelp, Zillow, or Picnik; 2) They will enable cities to connect with their constituents in ways that reduce administrative costs and engage citizens more effectively; 3)  They support the move toward transparency and collaboration; 4) and finally, they are shareable – which means that an application built for one city can be used by any other city.

Fundamentally, it’s all about helping American cities use web technology to do a better job of providing services to citizens.

If any Irish technologists are interested in starting something similar over here please contact me.

By Matthew Weigelt on FCW.com

As the president of the United States last week addressed Congress about the state of the union, he’s going before the public Feb. 3 to answer their questions about the state of the country via YouTube.

President Barack Obama will use the Web to offer the public a direct and participatory way to communicate with him, the White House wrote Jan. 26 on its blog.

Norman Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and long-time political columnist, said Obama’s event is a carryover from his campaign where he pioneered the use of social media in politics. While a sitting president has never taken citizens’ questions via YouTube, it’s not new to Obama, he said.

“It’s an extension of My.BarackObama.com,” he said. And “it certainly validates social media.”

The online forum is another vehicle to reach out to the public and give them a voice directly to him, experts say.

Daniel Castro, senior analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, said more people are able to join in the political process with online forums such as Monday’s event.

While the event may be a validation, it may not advance social media initiatives too far, said Mark Drapeau, director of innovative social engagement for Microsoft’s U.S. Public Sector and FCW columnist. Many people have been experimenting with new forms of media for a while now.

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From OpenSource.com

What problems can we solve? How would it affect the way we learn? Work? Run our governments?

We want to shine a light on the places where the open source way is multiplying ideas and effort, even beyond technology. We believe that opensource.com will be a gathering place for many of the open source stories we’d like to share–through articles, audio, web presentations, video, or open discussion.

The term open source began as a way to describe software source code and the collaborative model for how it’s developed. Red Hat used this model for developing technology and built a business model around open source and its principles: Openness. Transparency. Collaboration. Diversity. Rapid prototyping.

The open source way is more than a development model; it defines the characteristics of a culture. Red Hat and other open source thought leaders want to show you where open source is headed next. Tell you how to get involved. Help you apply it to your life and the world around you.

The open source way is about possibility.

Open source presents a new way to solve old problems. To share ideas and effort.

The open source way opens doors.

Open source offers a new perspective. Open, not closed. Collaboration, not isolation.

The open source way multiplies.

Knowledge. Effort. Inspiration. Creativity. Innovation. The impact is exponential.

And it’s already happening:

CHANGING OUR SOCIETY…

The open source way thrives on broad collaboration and shared effort. Wikipedia is one of the world’s most extensive collections of information. Its rapid, exponential growth arose from a very different model and philosophy from the traditional encyclopedia. Anyone can contribute, and entries are subject to peer review.

CHANGING HOW WE WORK…

Two key characteristics of the open source way are transparency and accountability. With natural and organic foods market Whole Foods, they pass accountability to the employees that can most directly impact their individual areas throughout each store. Wages, staffing decisions, even choosing what items to stock–these activities are all done in the open.

CHANGING OUR GOVERNMENT…

US President Barack Obama came to office with the promise of change. His campaign encouraged participation, and his administration has pledged to create a new environment of openness and participation in government.

CHANGING HOW WE LEARN…

Education is all about an exchange of knowledge. MIT took the lead in sharing knowledge and chose to try and change the world in the process. They make the materials used in the teaching of almost all of its undergraduate and graduate subjects available on the web, free of charge, to any user in the world. With nearly 1,800 courses available, MIT OpenCourseWare is delivering on the promise of open sharing of knowledge.

visit site..

The Perfect Citizen

The role of the citizen in creating a new Ireland is an important one. What foundations, skills and moral attributes should the perfect citizen have?…

…Perhaps its time to look at what was once viewed as the old-fashioned notion of citizenship. What is the perfect citizen? What foundations, skills and moral attributes should they have to ensure that we create a more sustainable form of success. What should we do to create such citizens and what can we learn from others?

Commentators are all agreed on one thing – the overarching role of education. There is also a broad consensus on the idea that to build these solid foundations, we need to start as early as possible in the education system.

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http://www.malmo09.org/

The first popular European e-government conference takes place in Malmö, Sweden 19-20 November 2009. It coincides with the 5th official EU e-gov event in the same city. The popular Malmo09 event aims to offer a memorable creative statement of what Europeans really want from e-enabled government.

Anyone interested is welcome to apply to speak, participate contribute ideas or help in any other way. It is particularly aimed at European digital-rights organisations, consumer advocates, and those with a political, academic, artistic or design interest in e-government. No presentation will last longer than eight minutes. Music, pictures and video content is welcome. The event will close with awards for the “pertinent art” which best expresses popular feeling about e-government, and for the best independently coded or mashed-up projects based on public data or public services.

http://www.malmo09.org/

What else is happening in Malmo:

Ministerial Meeting 18 November

EU Ministers meet on the eve of the conference, 18 November 2009, to finalise a Ministerial Declaration on eGovernment to 2015. That will be presented jointly by the Swedish Presidency and the European Commission on the first day of the Conference.

Official Conference 19-20 November

The official by-invitation-only conference promises high-level speakers, 1000 delegates including officials, business and academia. The organisers of the Malmo09 event weren’t invited to and form no part of the official proceedings, but hope to offer a constructive and complementary set of insights and ideas in partnership with the official event.

The Official 5th Ministerial e-Government conference weblink is here: http://www.egov2009.se/

From e-Government to e-Governance – Using new technologies to strengthen relationships with citizens

Accenture, has just published a report, From e-Government to e-Governance, recommending ways in which Goverment might enahnce its services to the public.

A key recommendation in the report is for public sector organisations not to build everything from scratch themselves, but to capitalise on the popularity of outside websites, including ones set up for social networking and communities.

According to the report “These sites present public managers with a range of opportunities for soliciting real-time citizen feedback, engaging constituents and improving accessibility to government information,”

Using external websites is a cost effective and very quick way to interact with the public, however the report does concede that there are some signifigant risks,such as the danger that public sector organisations will not be able to control the content.

However it is a shame that public sector organisations are reluctant to see negative comments and content posted on websites; the report focuses on the need for public sector organisations to encourage opinions: “Front-office employees should value customer feedback and view it as an essential means of gaining insights that will help them improve the customer experience and overall service delivery.”

Download the report (2.5 mb .pdf)

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By Gady Epstein , Beijing Dispatch at Forbes.com

The 60th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China on Oct. 1 took on symbolic importance not only for the Communist Party, but also for connoisseurs of China’s Internet controls. The thinking by some was that with the last of a series of sensitive anniversaries this year now finally behind us, the guardians of China’s Great Firewall might again allow access to some blocked foreign sites, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Instead, there has been no indication that the censors will loosen up. Forbes asked well-known Beijing journalist and microblogger Zhao Jing, aka Michael Anti, about China’s tightening of Internet controls. Anti already has a personal acquaintance with online censorship: His blog was deleted at the end of 2005 by Microsoft, apparently at the behest of Chinese authorities…

Anti: Web 2.0 Web sites like Facebook and Twitter can offer the public firsthand information, even faster than a government news agency like Xinhua. In fact, the July 5 Urumqi riots news was spreading first on Twitter hours before the first Xinhua English news piece. The Chinese government believes that the situation in Urumqi and other cities would be out of control if they can’t control the information flow. That’s the basic logic behind their decision to block Twitter and other Web 2.0 Web sites.

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Gordon Brown (talking at TED)  on global society, and how technology enables a global community to fundamentally change the world..he discusses how in future foreign policy should not be dictated by political elites, but instead should be run through listening to the public opinions of people who are blogging and using other online technologies to communicate across the world..he discusses combining the power of a global ethic  with the power of our ability to communicate and organise globally, with the challenges we now face, most of which are global in their nature, Brown gives the example of  climate change which  can not be solved in one country, nor can the financial crisis or terrorism…

The great project of our generation according to Brown , is to build for the first time out of a global ethic and out of our global ability to communicate and organise together, a truly global society, built on that ethic, but with institutions which can serve that global society and thus  make for a different future.

Keynote speakers include Peter Kellner (YouGov); Adam Afriyie MP (Shadow Minister, Innovation); Iain Dale (Political Blogger and Broadcaster); Tom Watson MP (Former Cabinet Office Minister)…and many  others.

There are a limited number of speaker slots still available in sessions ranging from Government Service Centres to Digital Inclusion to Open Data and Mashups.

Anyone can watch the event – completely free.  Although pre-registration is required.

http://g2010.co.uk