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Ask the PM

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 18 2009

The U.K.'s Gordon Brown isn't exactly the cuddliest politician on the planet. But even the often gruff and occasionally dour PM has taken to YouTube to solicit questions and comments from the assorted masses. This is serious business, though, not freewheeling tomfoolery. Video questions must stay under a one minute cap. And the musn't descend into "party political content," whatever that might be. CitizenTube has more.

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NYC Open Data Advocates Focus on Quality And Value Over Quantity

The New York City Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications plans to publish more than double the amount of datasets this year than it published to the portal last year, new Commissioner Anne Roest wrote last week in an annual report mandated by the city's open data law, with 135 datasets scheduled to be released this year, and almost 100 more to come in 2015. But as preparations are underway for City Council open data oversight hearings in the fall, what matters more to advocates than the absolute number of the datasets is their quality. GO

Civic Tech and Engagement: Announcing a New Series on What Makes it "Thick"

Announcing a new series of feature articles that we will be publishing over the next several months, thanks to the support of the Rita Allen Foundation. Our focus is on digitally-enabled civic engagement, and in particular, how and under what conditions "thick" digital civic engagement occurs. What we're after is answers to this question: When does a tech tool or platform enable actual people to make ongoing and significant contributions to each other, to a place or cause, at a scale that produces demonstrable change? GO

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