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Flashback: Government Teaches About Fireworks Safety Online

• Speaking of practical ways that the government can provide useful information to citizens online… there are various government webpages that help citizens become informed on being safe around fireworks. Here’s a sampling of them…

Baltimore empowers citizens to act as sensors with new mobile apps, open 311

The White House and E-Petitions:

• With ‘We The People,’ White House Promises to Go E-to-the-People
• White House offers “We the People” online petitions at WhiteHouse.gov

Public Technology Institute (PTI) seeks citizen-engaged communities

Also, I had a guest post over on the American Society for Public Administration’s (ASPA) blog: “How Local Governments Benefit from Social Media“

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Open Gov Links of the Week

311, apps, citizen enagagement, citizen participation, collaboration, engagement, firework safety, gov 2.0, holidays, improving efficiency, local government, mobile, online petitions, open 311, social media

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“As Citizens Look for Hurricane Information Online, Governments Scramble to Deliver”

“3 Earthquake Takeaways for Government & Social Media”

• So what can government communications learn from the east-coast earthquake that happened on Tuesday?
• Here’s three things:
  • be where they are, be official, be fast.

“New reports on citizen participation and rulemaking offer open government guidance”

• “AmericaSpeaks released a new report, ‘Assessing Public Participation in an Open Government Era: A Review of Federal Agency Plans.’ This represents the most comprehensive review of the public participation aspects of the federal open government initiative to date.” (link in original)

“Court rules White House visitor logs subject to FOIA”

• A bunch of info in the story by The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

“comScore Releases July 2011 U.S. Online Video Rankings”

• “comScore released data from the comScore Video Metrix service showing that 180 million U.S. Internet users watched online video content in July for an average of 18.5 hours per viewer. The total U.S. Internet audience engaged in a record 6.9 billion viewing sessions.” (emphasis added)

Which way did the August 2011 Municipal Cost Index go? Find out here!

“Working Together Towards Transparency in Local Government”

• The author “shares with us his organization’s venture at creating metrics for government websites that officials and citizens can agree on.”

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Open Gov Links of the Week

accessibility, citizen participation, collaboration, communication, engagement, FOIA, gov 2.0, government transparency, local government, online video stats, open government, public comment, public information, social media, stats, transparency, video stats

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This afternoon there was a 5.8 magnitude earthquake that had it’s epicenter in VA.

We felt it here in the office and within moments of it happening, I checked Twitter. What did I find? Multiple people that I follow had already said they felt it in DC and elsewhere. This was before the mainstream news websites would have had any information on it – well before the newspaper for tomorrow has come out.

I also quickly checked the USGS’ website to see if they had any information on it and they sure did!

So what can governments learn from this? (I get some of this from Steve Ressler’s point in this post on GovLoop, “What Tools Government Needs in an Earthquake“)

Here’s some ideas:

Be where THEY are!

• You need to be in places that you will be heard quickly. These need to be outlets where your citizens are and regularly frequent for news and official (or unofficial information). If they don’t hear your message, the rest pointless. Whether that is Twitter, Facebook, through an email list, or someplace else where people go for breaking news.

Be Official!

• People are talking about it – whether you are or not. And they may have inaccurate information. You need to be out there with correct and trustworthy information.

Be Fast!

• Like I said, I found out info about the earthquake within moments of it happening – from sources who didn’t know what the earthquakes’ magnitude was, if there might be an aftershock, etc. You have to be quick to get information out there. The USGS was pretty fast. They had data about the earthquake available almost instantly on their website and they Tweeted about it on Twitter within minutes of it.

More Observations…

• Jeffry Levy (@levyj413 on Twitter) has an interesting observation about the USGS Tweets on Twitter.
• “USGS crowd sources earthquake reports“

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Gov't & Technology, News & Events

accessibility, broadcasting, communication, engagement, gov 2.0, government websites, local government, Open Data, open government, public comment, public information, public relations, social media

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• “Opening government, the Chicago way”

  • “Interviews with Chicago journalists and open government advocates, along with Tolva and Goldstein themselves, led me to a clear conclusion: there’s something new going on in the Windy City that’s worth sharing with the rest of the country and world.” (O’Reilly radar)
    

• “Department of Veterans Affairs releases progressive, structured social media policy”

(gov20.govfresh.com)

• “Chief Innovation Officer Bryan Sivak Tackles Maryland’s Status Quo”

  • “Former District of Columbia CTO Bryan Sivak is best known for implementing technology initiatives like the accountability portal TrackDC. But his new role as Maryland’s first chief innovation officer may be his most challenging yet.” (Government Technology)

• “Federal court enforces penalties for FOI response delays”

(The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press)

• On crowdsourcing locations of all defribrillators in Philadelphia…

(Technically Philly)

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Open Gov Links of the Week

collaboration, FOIA, gov 2.0, open government, social media

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White House Blog: “Open Government and the National Plan” (HT Federal News Radio, via)

• They talk about the “Open Government Partnership” (which is a commitment by multiple countries to be open and such).
• They also say that “we are asking for your thoughts on ideas related to two of the key challenges – improving public services and increasing public integrity”

“Grading Government on Innovation”

• “The report, ‘Snapshot: What Drives Innovation in the Federal Government,’ by the Partnership for Public Service and the Hay Group, found that…” (link in post)

“HHS publishes guidelines for agency podcasting”

• “Dozens of federal agencies are producing podcasts for public audiences — according to two online directories — and the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of New Media has released a new online guide on how to get the most of the technology.” (link in post)

“Nevada revises rules on camera access to courts”

*Updated 8/15…

Via Alex Howard (@digiphile on Twitter):

• “A More Social Open Government”

• Some new posts on http://gov20.govfresh.com/

Have any more links that we should add? Let us know in the comment section below!

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Open Gov Links of the Week

broadcasting, cameras in courts, gov 2.0, innovation, open government, transparency