Nick Mudge’s Technology and Government Weblog

David Fletcher: "Each year, the number of political and government blogs grows at a rate faster than the previous."

2:27pm | government resources - egovernment - blogs - open government | no comments

From Neville Hobson:

Looking for something on one of the British government websites, I came across this - the blog being written by David Miliband, Minister of Communities and Local Government.

Not only a government minister but also a member of the Cabinet, the committee at the center of the British political system and the supreme decision-making body in government.

Just started blogging publicly in March.

Found it through Barbara Haven, a blogger and employee at the California Department of Technology Services.

12:36pm | government resources - egovernment - blogs - open government | no comments

I you haven't yet, check out Public CIO's new site. It has some nice new features, including a nice new look that is consistent with the hardcopy magazine, Thought Leadership Profiles, a new search engine, and you can comment on the articles now.

You can also expect magazine stories to be added more frequently because the Public CIO magazine is being published every 2 months now instead of 3.

12:22pm | government resources | no comments

If unconferences are of any interest to you, you'll probably find this post by David Berlind very interesting: Old-school conferences R.I.P.

This post expains how a recent unconference was done and how it went.

I think regular conferences are good and I enjoy them. This unconference thing though seems rather fun and exciting to me as well.

I did a little news item about this unconference that this post talks about because ChicagoCrime.org won second place for best mashup.

10:32am | government resources - technology governance - egovernment - open government - public relations | no comments

Ramon Padilla wrote an interesting piece called Open source=political suicide?

4:56pm | government resources - egovernment - enterprise architecture | no comments

Coach Ken Carter keynoted GTC South West. Wayne Hanson wrote a great article about it.

It starts off:

Ordinarily, people hope a keynote speaker will have something important to say, waiting for a magic moment that will change their lives, or at least brighten up the overcast day outside. At GTC in Austin this morning, they were not disappointed.

Coach Ken Carter

4:06pm | government resources | no comments

Government Technology now has a Government Contract News site. It consists of newly awarded IT contracts awarded by state, local, and federal governments.

For years Government Technology has been sending out through email weekly, biweekly and monthly enewsletters about government IT. (GTEN is a daily) These newsletters are now being put on the govtech.net website as well. A brand new archive of these newsletters is on the lower part of the publications web page.

5:41pm | government resources - egovernment | no comments

There's a state blog about rural Utah.

Here's part of the description:

The primary purpose of "What's Happening in Rural Utah" is to share good news about economic development across rural Utah. In addition, we will share information about important economic development issues impacting rural Utah.

2:15pm | web technology - government resources - egovernment - blogs | no comments

About 3 weeks ago I went to the 2005 California Best of the Web.

I was standing in the hall and a lady got my attention. She told me she does the Experimental Space blog. I instantly knew who she was. I often check over at that blog because it has some good tech and egov news there sometimes and I like it. Recently I decided to post the New Oxford American Dictionary: 'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year story in GT News after seeing her mention it in her blog.

This is the first time I've met in person another blogger I knew about through the web, and who knew me through my blog (and we never directly communicated or address each other before, through email or anything. Just read each other's blogs.) It was exciting and I really enjoyed it, and I'm amazed by how similar our knowledge and action is. I asked her if she uses del.icio.us. She said yes, and said she reads David Fletcher's bookmarks. That's awesome. I told her I read his bookmarks too. (For a Govtech News editor, a Gov IT director's travels around the Web is an amazing resource.) I asked her how she knew it was me that does this blog that you're seeing right now. She said she read my name tag I was wearing; it said Nick Mudge.

I've read about other bloggers and people meeting in person. It's nice to experience it.

Afterwards I realized that one of the person's bookmarks I have within my del.icio.us account is bhaven, and I realized that those are Barbara Haven's bookmarks. I had been looking at her bookmarks without knowing who she was. I recently blogged about Tim Berners-Lee starting a blog, which I found through her bookmarks, though I knew it was her by then.

9:35pm | web technology - government resources - egovernment - blogs | no comments

The state of Nevada has an Information Technology Research Unit.

Here's its Mission:

To research current and emerging areas of technology and other states trends to ensure efficient and cost effective deployment of government services, reduce the risks of innovation through IT analysis, and disseminate relevant information via various outlets.

On it's website to the left it has current links to the information technology departments of all 50 states, and to the right it is displaying GT News using the GT News RSS feed.

10:01am | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment - rss - best practices | no comments

I just added three new blogs to Govfeed.com:

Miami-Dade Fire Rescue blog

Utah Senate Site blog

The First Response Coalition blog

They are now in the Gov. Blog Directory and in the Gov. Blog Aggregator.

9:19pm | web technology - government resources - blogs | no comments

In my opinion Govtech.net had one of its best months ever in September in terms of a lot of good content.

Here are the articles and news I found notable:

GT Mag Stories:

GT Online Features:

Digital Communities Website

News:

10:33pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - egovernment - xml - identity - SOA - enterprise architecture - wireless - best practices - open source - open standards - open government - security - workforce | no comments

There was a lot of good content and news in last week's Government Technology Executive News (GTEN) newsletter, so I've thrown it up on the web. Tell me what you think.

12:22pm | web technology - government resources - govtech web site - technology governance - wireless - workforce | no comments

9:11am | government resources | no comments

Andy Budd, a web designer and consultant in the U.K., recently spoke to a group of government communications professionals in England on the subject of blogging in the public sector.

Today I had the pleasure of giving a talk to members of the e-communications network, part of the larger Government Communication Network. As the name suggests, the e-communications network is a group of civil servants responsible for managing the governments use of the Internet as a communication tool.

Andy Budd talked about using blogs internally in government for management and communication needs. This is a great usage of blogs. He said the government attendees were especially interested in internal blogs and this is where blogs are most likely to start off and develop. Here's Andy's notes. More from his blog post:

Tom then picked up where I left off, discussing how blogging culture was impacting the world and how you were either part of the conversation on not. Tom discussed how blogs could be used just for their technical abilities such as using RSS for press releases or for more B2B style communications. However the main benefit of governmental weblogging was the ability to communicate directly with the community, bypassing both internal and news based editorial control. Tom talked about how governmental weblogs could give a human face to often monolithic organisations and mentioned how Robert Scoble had helped change the public perception of Microsoft.

Robert Scoble has to a marked degree changed the public perception of Microsoft for the better. Just one blogger.

Personally, I started liking Microsoft a lot more after I found and started reading Robert Scoble's blog and Kim Cameron's blog. (Kim Cameron, Microsoft's identity architect.) As long as Kim is in control of how identity systems are developed, deployed and managed, I'll be okay with what Microsoft wants to do with identity. I got that confidence through reading Kim's blog. If you don't trust Microsoft with identity, go read Kim's blog for awhile. Send me an email about what you think afterwards.
11:10pm | government resources - egovernment - blogs | 1 comment