Archive for February, 2009

Micah Sifry at TechPresident passes on a report from Clint Hendler of CJR.org. He quotes the President marking a major departure from the policies of the former administration, and a big move ahead for accountability and transparency: “We’re actually going to set up something called Recovery.gov—this is going to be Read More…

A neighbor of mine, Sunil Paul, pointed out something I didn't quite get before. Political staffers, like people who work for Senators and Representatives, make a lot of Congressional operations really work, and are charged with listening to their constituents, and doing something about it. I hear that staffers are Read More…

Hey, Tom Watson at TechPresident.com draws our attention to really good work happening in the UK. This really is a big deal. Folks there have done a very impressive piece of work, the Power of Information Taskforce Report, which offers a lot of real suggestions about opening up the UK Read More…

UPDATE to update: interview can be found on Heather's personal blog. Hey, Heather Krasna does a great job engaging me in conversation at GovLoop.com. That's a grassroots government tech site, where people are working together to figure out how to do increasingly better jobs. It's a conversation-style interview, and maybe Read More…

Hey, this is a really good article, and I can attest to the topness of many of these folks personally: Ellen Miller directs Sunlight Foundation, which is a really big deal. Sunlight leads the effort toward transparency in government, funding a network of sites which bring government info into the Read More…

UPDATE: Vivek's named by Ars Technica as one of their tech policy "People to Watch" 2009 Hey, this would be really good news, he's been doing amazing work for the city of Washington. His stuff uses Net tech for local customer service, and we need that everywhere. (I've seen it Read More…

(at least they *** say *** they're monkeys in the monkey tree)

Just received a new set of glittens, very high tech. Note that these not only have hats for fingers, but hats for thumbs. If there were glittens for my tucas … (Note that Elvis is still in the building.) Thanks to Andrew R and Micah S, and to the mysterious Read More…

These guys have been working on networked campaigns and governance for a long time, and know how power flows in this country. In a paper Digital Government through Social Networks: A Natural Alliance? they get real about how this could happen, focusing on real human political behavior. This really makes Read More…

Hey, the folks at the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America have real life experience with bad contractors in both wars. Paul Rieckhoff addresses this problem with real life observations, from when he was over there. .msnbcLinks {font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #999; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: Read More…

Jeff Jarvis recently wrote a great book, What Would Google Do?, and in an article on The Daily Beast, he's makes a very kind allusion to the part of the craigslist philosophy: Get out of the way. This is actually Craig Newmark's law. As Google built the most powerful tool Read More…