In September 2006 I published The Justification of Enterprise Web 2.0 Project Expenditures. It examined differences between the cost justification of current information systems compared with cost justification of older systems. It discussed how some of the rules for calculating and thinking about technology related costs have changed.
All in Social Networking
Dr. Eric Clemons’ editorial Why Advertising Is Failing On The Internet misses a couple of points.
Government Use of Social Media and the Management of Control
Over on GovLoop, David Tallan posted a thoughtful piece titled Barriers to Gov 2.0. Here’s one of his paragraphs:
How Will U.S. Government Procurement Processes Handle the Stimulus Spending Surge?
The Obama Administration has made it official: spending Federal stimulus money will be scrutinized and reported on very carefully and in great detail.
Take Some Social Media for Stress and Call Me In The Morning
I certainly don’t think the current Administration will try to use media either way, based on what I’ve seen so far. Plus, there’s a limit to the number of online videos President Obama can produce that can be distributed directly to the public; I would characterize his mediated social pronouncements so far as somberly constructive and realistic and neither pollyana-ish nor imperialistic.
The report Six Practical Steps to Improve Contracting by Dr. Allan V. Burman, Adjunct Professor, George Mason University, is based on a series of discussions co-sponsored by The IBM Center for the Business of Government and George Mason University concerning government procurement practices.
One recommendations often made to professionals about blogging is that blogging, and reading others’ blog posts and commenting on them, are ways to engage in “conversations.” These conversations, so pundits like me say, can evolve over time into valuable social, professional, and intellectual relationships.
Challenges Facing Recovery.gov and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board
There’s a strong possibility that how the public sees and experiences the programs reported through Recovery.gov will have just as much potential for driving economic improvement as the programs themselves.
Chris Cizilla’s White House Cheat Sheet: Bypassing the Media Filter is an oversimplification of the shifting role of social media in politics. He makes the usual “Obama is using social media to bypass the mainstream media to go directly to voters” comment, which I think misses the point.
Despite its failing as a collaboration tool, though, email still has great value for communication, as Chaney points out. In my own case, email provides not only a tool for two way interaction, it also serves as a type of “glue” that makes it easier for me to interact with the various online groups I belong to.
This Mindmeister “mindmap” updates my list of professional networking tools that I started here. I’ve made the following changes:
A Panel Discussion, "Internet Technology in the Obama Age"
The main question addressed was, given the Obama campaign’s successful use of modern web and social technologies online, what will now be done with these technologies to actually improve government?
One of my favorite scenes in the movie Contact is when young Ellie Arroway’s father counsels her on the value of making incremental improvements in her short wave radio efforts: “Small moves, Ellie - small moves,” he tells her.
The table below lists the posts tagged on this web site with the category tag “eGovernment.”
Comments on the Federal Web Managers Council's "Putting Citizens First" White Paper
The “white paper” published by the Federal Web Managers Council in November of 2008, Putting Citizens First: Transforming Online Government. A White Paper Written for the 2008 – 2009 Presidential Transition Team, contains a series of common-sense recommendations that are clearly stated — and deceptive in their simplicity:
I’ve been getting an increasing number of requests lately from friends and colleagues to explain or help with inividual blogging and professional networking practices. To help I’ve tagged a few of the entries on this web site with the category tag “basics.”
Maddie Grant’s recent comment about everyone in an organization having responsibility for “community management” is a good one:
The presentation supported by this slide deck discussed some of the realities that individuals and organizations face when adopting social media and social networking tools and techniques.
How Closely do Traditional and Social Media Based Customer Support Services Need to be Coordinated?
In Five Challenges Government Faces When Adopting Web 2.0 I wrote about the need to consider the cost impact on the organization of hiring additional “community managers” to support the addition of social media and social networking to overall customer support operations:
Articles such as The Los Angeles Times’ Obama, the first social media president are popping up in the mainstream media and in the blogosphere. The theme is that Obama’s successful use of the web and “social technologies” in his campaign portends a new, more open, and transformative approach to government and public sector transparency.