The Empire Strikes Back: How the death of GDS puts all government innovators at risk
The UK Government Digital Service(GDS) is dead. I’m sure it will continue to exist in some form, but from what I’ve read it appears to have been gutted of its…
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Government Procurement Failure: BC Ministry of Education Case Study
Apologies for the lack of posts. I’ve been in business mode – both helping a number of organizations I’m proud of and working on my own business. For those interested…
The Importance of Open Data Critiques – thoughts and context
Over at the Programmable City website Rob Kitchin has a thoughtful blog post on open data critiques. It is very much worth reading and wider discussion. Specifically, there are two…
What Traffic Lights Say About the Future of Regulation
I have a piece up on TechPresident about some crazy regulations that took place in Florida that put citizens at greater risk all so the state and local governments can…
Some Nice Journalistic Data Visualization – Global’s Crude Awakening
Over at Global, David Skok and his team have created a very nice visualization of the over 28,666 crude oil spills that have happened on Alberta pipelines over the last…
The Value of Open Data – Don’t Measure Growth, Measure Destruction
Alexander Howard – who, in my mind, is the best guy covering the Gov 2.0 space – pinged me the other night to ask “What’s the best evidence of open…
Canada Post and the War on Open Data, Innovation & Common Sense (continued, sadly)
Almost exactly a year ago I wrote a blog post on Canada Post’s War on the 21st Century, Innovation & Productivity. In it I highlighted how Canada Post launched a…
Toronto Star Op-Ed: Muzzled Scientists, Open Government and the Limits of Rules
I’ve a piece in today’s Toronto Star ”Rules are no substitute for cultivating a culture of open government“ about the Information Commissioners decision to investigate the muzzling of Canadian scientists.…
Ontario’s Open Data Policy: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and the (Missed?) Opportunity
Yesterday the province of Ontario launched its Open Data portal. This is great news and is the culmination of a lot of work by a number of good people. The…
The UK’s Digital Government Strategy – Worth a Peek
I’ve got a piece up on TechPresident about the UK Government’s Digital Strategy which was released today. The strategy (and my piece!) are worth checking out. They are saying a…
How Government should interact with Developers, Data Geeks and Analysts
Below is a screen shot from the Opendatabc google group from about two months ago. I meant to blog about this earlier but life has been in the way. For…
Containers, Facebook, Baseball & the Dark Matter around Open Data (#IOGDC keynote)
Below is a extended blog post that summarizes the keynote address I gave at the World Bank/Data.gov International Open Government Data Conference in Washington DC on Wednesday July 11th. Yesterday,…
Should we Start a Government as Platform Business Association
I have an idea. I want to suggest starting a community of disruptive software companies that are trying to sell products to local and regional governments. I know we can…
The End of the World: The State vs. the Internet
Last weekend at FooCamp, I co-hosted a session titled “The End of the World: Will the Internet Destroy the State, or Will the State Destroy the Internet?” What follows are…
The US Government’s Digital Strategy: The New Benchmark and Some Lessons
Last week the White House launched its new roadmap for digital government. This included the publication of Digital Government: Building a 21st Century Platform to Better Serve the American People…
The I Lost My Wallet – Doing Government Service Delivery Right
A couple of years ago I was in Portugal to give a talk on Gov 2.0 at a conference the government was organizing. After the talk I went for dinner…
Lessons from Michigan’s “Innovation Fund” for Government Software
So it was with great interest that several weeks ago a reader emailed me this news article coming out of Michigan. Turns out the state recently approved a $2.5 million…
Mainstreaming The Gov 2.0 Message in the Canadian Public Service
A couple of years ago I wrote a Globe Op-Ed “A Click Heard Across the Public Service” that outlined the significance of the clerk using GCPEDIA to communicate with public…
Canada’s Action Plan on Open Government: A Review
The other day the Canadian Government published its Action Plan on Open Government, a high level document that both lays out the Government’s goals on this file as well as…
Government, Digital Services & IT Procurement Reform
Next semester I’ll be teaching a course on why healthcare.gov initially turned into a disaster. Why? Because sadly, the failure of healthcare.gov was not special. Conservative estimates suggest over half…