Blog of Cheeky Geeky

Big vs. Small Federal Agency Government 2.0

It’s almost commonplace to hear things like, Federal agencies are getting better with Government 2.0, transparency, and communicating with the public. But most of the examples of this that I see and hear are from big agencies. You know, agencies like these: DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
DEPARTMENT OF LABOR
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY
DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS

But what about smaller agencies? There are dozens and dozens of them. Agencies and other entities like these: BROADCASTING BOARD OF GOVERNORS
CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION
EXPORT IMPORT BANK OF THE US
FEDERAL HOUSING FINANCE BOARD
MILLENIUM CHALLENGE CORPORATION
NATL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
NATL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD
NATL MEDIATION BOARD
OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT
PEACE CORPS
US COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS
US NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMM
US OFFICE OF GOVERNMENT ETHICS
US POSTAL SERVICE

Now, I didn’t research all of these for this post; maybe some of them are making Gov 2.0 advances. But what I find somewhat interesting is that while small cities and towns seem to be the hotbeds of innovation within the country, within the Federal government it’s the large agencies that innovate most, or so it seems. I imagine that money is the reason in both cases - cities and towns innovate to survive because they don’t have enough money to survive without innovation; large agencies innovate because they can hire/retain people to do it full-time.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Photo: Government Transparency At Work

Senior government officials leave their mobile devices outside the Oval Office with name-ridden notes. (This kind of thing is typical for sensitive government meetings/facilities.) Photo credit: White House.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Seth Godin Releases a Free e-Book

Seth Godin, the well-regarded and original business blogger and author, has a new e-book out. http://sethgodin.typepad.com/files/what-matters-now-1.pdf

It’s a compilation of brief, bold thoughts from a diverse array of thought leaders, each one based around a word or theme. And, it’s great. I suggest that you download it, read it, and share it.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Why Do I Write?

I write a lot. Not as much as some, but way more than most. If you’re reading this, you probably already know that. But why? Why do I write stuff? I was thinking about this on a cross-country flight, and took some notes on a US Airways napkin with a red marker. Thought I’d type it up for you.

(1) To get fame and fortune. Obviously. My blog on Posterous is simply raking in the dough. Next thing you know, I’ll be as famous as Kevin Rose!(2) To lay out arguments and conclusions. I think writing without a story arc, without arguments for something at least somewhat original, and without some natural conclusion is basically not worth much. If you’re writing, you’re probably writing at least partly opinion - I believe in making every article count. Try to convince someone to believe what you do.

(3) To provoke responses. I write what I write because I feel strongly about it (see #2), so I don’t care too much about comments, honestly. Most of them don’t shake my point of view. And I’m not one of these bloggers who writes the beginning and expects my readers to figure out the end - that’s lame. But I do enjoy getting comments in general because some of my posts are little experiments to see who my ‘hidden’ readers are, how controversial a topic is, or which other websites pick up my material. More generally, with blogging, I think that powerful observations + entrepreneurial experimentation + community networking = an innovation engine that helps you achieve greater things in life.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Why Isn't Government Data Fun?

Have you heard of GraphJam? It’s a great site with a simple user interface that lets people make bar graphs, Venn diagrams, and more. The applications are mostly funny - making fun of song lyrics, vacation spots that you want to go to vs. those of your spouse, and so forth. Pop culture. But what I’m wondering is: Why isn’t government data this fun to play with? Data.gov and similar local examples are terrific, to be sure - more government data available to more people creates more opportunities for more benefits to citizens. But you have to be a wizard to figure that stuff out. I’m not even sure I know exactly what XML is for pete’s sake. And I can’t mount an operation like Sunlight Labs, which does outstanding work…with their stable of a dozen computer nerds.

Governments shouldn’t always rely on well-funded non-profits, computer experts, or apps contests for getting useful things done with government data. Those things are really great, but how can the average person occassionally do something useful? A more simple portal that draws people in and helps them participate in tiny ways could be great. Graph Jam has a brain-dead “graph builder” which aids people in making Venn diagrams - even if they don’t know who the hell Venn was, or why these graphs are useful in mathematics and statistics. And frankly, it’s easier to use than Microsoft Powerpoint, which tons of people deal with for work.

Now that data.gov and other initiatives are up and running, a really, really simple user interface for the common citizen would be terrific PR, it would make some citizens think more seriously about what the government is doing, and once in a while something useful may be done with the data. And meanwhile, can’t everybody have some fun?

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Microsoft, IBM, and Jive On Top of the Gartner "Magic Quadrant" for Social Software

From destinationCRM.com (Lauren McKay) -

The market for social software is expansive with hundreds of vendors with myriad functionalities. In order to make sense of the heterogeneous landscape, Gartner Research has narrowed its focus for this fall’s Social Software Magic Quadrant to include only those proficient at social tools for the workplace. Analysts…write that social software buyers seem to be evaluating products that will be used internally differently than those aimed at external usage. Social software supporting external communities for partners and customers will be evaluated by Gartner at a later date. 

Established vendors need to beef up their offerings, whereas, specialty vendors need to invigorate their reputations…Despite the burgeoning level of awareness of the value of social software among enterprises, Gartner notes that cultural misalignment and risk remain roadblocks to adoption. The report states: “Many organizations are finding it hard to align existing practices, and more generally their organizational culture, with the end0-user empowerment promised by social software environments.” 

Leaders:

Gartner notes that leaders are well-established vendors with solid customer bases. The report says, “Their leadership is being established through an early recognition of user needs in this market, their overall market presence, and their success in delivering user-friendly and solution-focused suites with broad capabilities.” These vendors are continually investing in social support and are seeing consistent traction. 

• IBM: “IBM is a leader by virtue of being ahead of the market with a strong market presence,” the analysts write. IBM is not only an established technology vendor, but the report points out that IBM Lotus Connections 2.5 offers a comprehensive social software suite and that the company offers many flexible deployment options. One caution is that IBM could stand to improve its usability.
  
• Jive Software: The analysts point to Jive’s “mature product, solution focus, vision of bridging internal and external communities and strong evidence of market acceptance” as reasons for its leadership in the market. Gartner also states that there has been positive feedback surrounding the company’s Social Business Software. The only caution is that Jive needs to be careful with its growth strategy as it establishes its footing as an enterprise vendor. 
• Microsoft: Microsoft has for years used SharePoint to deliver “good enough” social capabilities to organizations, Gartner writes. Recently Microsoft has invested more in social networking with the introduction of SharePoint’s My Sites functionality. The vendor also allows for integration between its Office tools and other business applications such as unified communications, and Web based meetings. Gartner cautions that there are functional gaps in the version of SharePoint 2007 including social tagging and social search. However, these will likely be addressed in the 2010 version of SharePoint.
  

For information about Challengers, and more, read the entire article here.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

State Department Blocks Weblink to O'Reilly's Gov 2.0 Conference as Spam

From time to time I send emails to people I know at the State Department. Lately, I couldn’t figure out why they were getting sent back to me. Multiple people over there, multiple email addresses I have, multiple times and days. Well, I finally bothered to look at the error message. Here it is:

So, the State Department’s spam filters have the website for the Government 2.0 Expo (which almost certainly people from the State Department will attend and speak at) blocked as an evil URL. Ironically, I was trying to email people there doing great work on Gov 2.0, such as the Democracy Video Challenge. State is in fact one of the very most progressive agencies with regard to innovative social engagement around the world.

I don’t know everything about cybersecurity, spam filters, and the like, but this seems silly. I’m the co-chair of the Gov 2.0 Expo in May, and I have the web address in my email signature. No other enterprise (including the Defense Department and other government entities), to my knowledge, has blocked this. It’s unfortunate that State does. I wonder what other completely legitimate and probably useful weblinks are getting caught in their spam filters? I wonder who else’s emails have been blocked? Sometimes we get so excited about all the progressiveness of open government that we forget the basics.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

The Future Networked Non-Elite City #sn09 #gov20

San Francisco, CA - At the Supernova 2009 conference, Adam Greenfield of Nokia gave a talk about the future networked city. More humans now live in cities than ever before. But the cities withing which new technologies are being developed and tested (San Francisco, New York, London…) are different from developing urban environments where most of the people are - Rio, Lagos, new emerging cities in China, and so forth. There are a number of consequences to this. Are we thinking about this? Are technologists thinking about this? Are governments? Adam pointed out that advertising campaigns can seem awfully geared towards an upscake, white, educated elite, yet most urban conditions don’t match up to that envisioned standard.

This dovetails with government missions, particularly in other countries where the military, the State Department, USAID, and other groups like the Red Cross or World Bank may be involved. What is the relationship between information and communications technology (ICT), reconstruction operations or emerging markets/democracies, and the new tech that’s largely being developed in the Western world. In a different talk today at Supernova 2009, Microsoft researcher danah boyd (@zephoria) commented that online social networks like MySpace and Twitter give us a public window into other people’s lives. We have the right to look, but do we know how to properly interpret what we see? Can we properly understand someone’s MySpace profile through their eyes, through their community’s collective eyes?

Social networks are a wonderful opportunity to see into worlds different than our own. But humans, a tribal species, tend to associate with people like ourselves. The irony is that many people most evangelistic about developing the tools may be the least likely to peer into the lives of the average people - in the U.S. and around the world - who could use them to improve their lives and their communities. The application of social tools and other emerging technologies to people in developing economies and in stabilization and reconstruction operations, in my view, is an important and underdeveloped topic in Government 2.0 discussions.

Follow #sn09 on Twitter for real-time comments from Supernova 2009 attendees for the next few days. Submit ideas about Gov 2.0, ICT, and cities (or other topics) to the upcoming Gov 2.0 Expo at http://gov2expo.com - as co-chair, I welcome them!

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Why Facebook Email is a Facebook E-Fail

I was having lunch with Adriel Hampton today (who many of you know as the first person to declare candidacy for Congress via Twitter), and the subject turned to Facebook. We’re both overwhelmed by Facebook’s popularity, and subsequent deluge of data. Everyone’s seemingly got a friend they recommend you add, a group they recommend you join, and an event they recommend you attend. (My personal time management system is to spend 10 seconds per day saying “yes” to every friend request, “maybe” to every event request, and “no” to every group/fan request…which is a Facebook “fail” in itself - where are the useful filters? I’m in DC, why do I have to respond to a request about an event tonight in CA? - but that’s not the topic of this post.)

Perhaps the most overwhelming feature of Facebook is its email. I get tons of email about everything because that is the primary information distribution mechanism for friends, fans, groups, events, causes, and everything else. It’s not efficient. Adriel and I compared it a bit to RSS, which also has become overwhelming. There’s a big bold number at the top like *56* that’s the number of unread blog posts you have. That’s how I feel about Facebook - what’s the most efficient way to clear the decks and get to the fabled “inbox zero”?

Usually, I do this in a quick, elegant two-step process. One, I “select all.” Two, I click “mark as read.” Easy, right? The reality is that I almost never read all the stuff everyone is sending me. About the only exception is someone I recently met who doesn’t have my email or phone number, and is initially reaching out to me. I see the name, recognize, and reply.

But here’s where it gets really interesting, and why Facebook email is a Facebook e-fail. Often one of the first things I tell someone connecting with me for the first time, whom I want to talk to more, is something like, “Why don’t you write me at xxxxx@gmail.com and we’ll continue this discussion there?” Why not, right? Gmail is my “real” email. But that’s exactly the *opposite* of what Facebook wants. They should want us using their system for email for all sorts of reasons. But we don’t. There’s no reason in particular Icouldnt do the opposite, right? Meaning, tell people contacting me through email via my business card to friend me on Facebook and contact me through my Facebook email, since that’s where I’m most engaged.

Has *anyone* ever done this?? I doubt it very seriously. Email - whether it’s Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, or corporate mail - is still the preferred social network of choice (which reminds me of a blog post by Jeremiah Owyang a while back…)

People find Facebook useful for all sorts of reasons. I get a lot of mileage out of posting things like this on my personal Facebook wall, for example. But when you look at what is and is not successful on Facebook, I wonder how the platform will mature over the next few years. What do you think?

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

An Investigation: Who Has the Best and Worst Congressional Websites?

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

Kevin Rose Fantasizes About the Most Powerful People in Technology

The November 30 issue of Forbes is themed with profiling The World’s Most Powerful People. Very important stuff. Henry Kissinger contributed a list on the most powerful people in history, Karl Rove made a list of the most powerful people in Washington, Dr. Elias Zerhouni wrote his list of the most powerful people in medicine. Lots of good material here. Kevin Rose, co-founder of Digg.com, spent some time working on his list of the most powerful people in technology (p. 98). Interesting list. Here it is, in order of most to least powerful:

1. Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Evan Williams (Twitter)
2. Jonathan Ive (Apple)
3. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
4. Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn)
5. Julius Genachowski (FCC)
6. Chris Anderson (TED Conference)
7. Leo Laporte (This Week In Tech) Ever seen that SNL skit where the charters say “Really? Really??” a lot? They should do a parody of this list that goes something like this…

“Really? Jack Dorsey. Really. The galavanting chairman of Twitter. And his friend whose name is Biz that is in the tech biz? Really. And really, LinkedIn? Really? The powerful desert of a social networking wasteland. Really. Leo Laporte - really? He’s doing a podcast from his mom’s basement. Yeah, really. Chris Anderson? Really? He runs a conference where other people shine. Really? Really.” Now, that’s done in humor, but this list is a little whack. I’m not even sure those are the most powerful tech people in the greater San Francisco area (let’s put Genachowski to the side, since he’s on everyones list right now), but let’s look at the bigger picture. All the most powerful people in tech work on web stuff? And are entrepreneurs basically? No one from MIT or Caltech, no one from an Italian or Japanese car company, nobody working on energy or clean technology - and nobody from outside the United States???

This could go on and on, but what’s the point? Maybe a couple of these people should indeed be on such a list, but I find the myopia of Silicon Valley and its extended entrepreneur, web, and venture capital community a little frightening. An overly inflated sense of self-worth combined with a seeming ignorance of anything you can’t acces from a smartphone results in some really wacky views of what technology is, and who is powerful in that sphere. And even if we are only talking about IT (which the magazine doesn’t designate), really? No one from IBM? Google? Microsoft? I don’t really fault Kevin Rose for making a list, though it would be easy for Forbes to find 25 people who work in technology that are more qualified than he is. I do fault the thought process behind it though, and I fault even more that this list made it past Forbes’ editors,who should know better. Put up against the other lists in the issue, and the overall list, Rose’s list is almost comical in its naivity.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

You Worry About Powerful Registered Lobbyists; I'll Worry About Powerful Unregistered Non-Lobbyists

Today the Washington Post ran a story about how the Obama administration will bar registered lobbyists from sitting on the nearly 1,000 advisory panels to the Federal government. These are panels of subject matter experts with named like the Defense Science Board who conduct studies that the government doesn’t have time to perform, and provide subject-matter expertise the government doesn’t necessarily have.

These new rules about lobbyists sitting on Federal advisory panels will be ineffective at “curbing negative influence” on the government for at least two reasons.

One, lobbying firms will find simple ways around the new rules. They will change people’s job descriptions, alter the number of hours they spend lobbying on behalf of clients, and other maneuveurs to make employees eligible for advisory panels under the new rules, in cases where it is important. Tom Daschle is the ultimate example of effectively lobbying without being an actual registered lobbyist. New people will also be hired as non-lobbyists to sit on these boards in situations where it makes sense to have a presence on them. Two, unregistered non-lobbyists can be just as influential, devious, and self-interested as registered lobbyists. There are many people who have all kinds of special interests that do and will sit on these boards, and they will use the information they glean from them in ways that may help the country, but may also help them. And a great many of these people work in the private sector. Is there anything wrong with that? Not necessarily, it’s just that it’s not much different than what lobbyists do. And more dangerously, an unregistered non-lobbyist is much closer to a wolf in sheep’s clothing - you don’t see them coming until it’s too late.

My biggest problem with stories like these is that they report the ‘action’ (ban lobbyists) but spend little if any time talking about the ‘reaction’ (skirting the rules to get what you want anyway). But the reaction is at least as important, if not more so. Stories like the one in the Post make me think of a terrorist who defeats a billion dollar spy satellite with a baseball cap. In government, in business, in life, when the action is high-effort and the reaction is low-effort, it’s a loser.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

When Did Government Become a Business?

When did government become a business? I keep hearing government called a business, and business terms like “efficiency” creeps into the lexicon here among progressive Washington folk. Sorry, government is not a business any more than the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, or a public high school. Yes, they have some things in common, but so what? Governments do not even meet the most basic definition of a business. From Wikipedia: Besides the fact that governments generally don’t have customers and aren’t designed to compete within a market sector and usually don’t generate a profit, there’s a bigger problem with applying terms like “efficiency” to government. Governments are purposely designed to be inefficient! Do you really think that the whole checks-and-balances idea was done in the interest of efficiency? That the way the Senate operates is done in the interest of efficiency? One of the smartest things I heard after I moved to Washington, DC was from a senior person at the Library of Congress. She asked the room, “How many of you think Congress is designed to pass laws?” Everybody raised their hand. She said, “Wrong. Congress is designed to not pass bad laws.”

Congress is inefficient for a reason, and to some degree all parts of government are. For all the complaining about gigantic, evil corporations not caring about their customers or the public at large, and in the middle of a recession in which greedy businesspeople nearly destroyed a global financial system, I can’t imagine why anyone would be eager to associate the word “business” with government. The government has enough issues, thanks.

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

What You Should Read About Monetizing Your Tweetstream

There’s been a lot of discussion about the authority of Twitter users, and how users with many followers, or authority, or subject-matter expertise, might monetize their tweetstream via inserting paid advertisements. Here are the most important articles I’ve seen about this debate. I recommend reading them in the order below. The New York Times has a piece that makes it sound cool and neat-o.

Paul Carr has a piece at TechCrunch that makes it sound like the end of civilization. A venture capitalist investor in one of the services wrote a piece defending the idea.

Robert Scoble crunches some numbers and writes a good piece that digs deeper. Finally, read this piece about the hypothetical SuperTweet with a “metadata payload.”

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »

IBM Knows How To Monetize Your Friends

IBM researcher Ching Yun Lin gave an interesting talk about the monetary value of having friends today at Web 2.0 Expo in New York. IBM is a gigantic company with thousands of people, mobile, global, and moving around. How do you find the right person to answer a unique question or problem? How does one unlock the power of existing social networks? Where within networks does knowledge actually reside? I can’t hope to summarize the talk, injected with math and graphics and jargon as it was. But here’s the big takeaway: Your friends are worth money to your organization. Somehow, IBM scientists have not only determined that network size is positively correlated with performance, they also somehow know that every email in an address book is worth 948 dollars!

Researchers also found that stuctural diverse networks within which few people are connected are correlated with higher performance, and that having strong social links to managers also was positively correlated with performance. Some of the research information should be available here: http://smallblue.research.ibm.com To me, this is really cool because I am an advocate of social networking as a positive influence on the workplace, even if such networking is not strictly work-related. IBM seems to have data that back up my more anecdotal and street-smart notions about this, which I’ve been speaking about lately under the guide of “Social Networking: The Two Dirtiest Words in Government 2.0” - and I will continue to do so!

Posted via email from Mark’s Cheeky Posterous | Comment »