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NRCC Plans "Digital College" for Hill Staffers

BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, April 18 2013

The National Republican Congressional Committee plans to start a "digital college" training program for Hill staffers, Campaigns and Elections reported. Under the program beginning in May, staffers will learn about setting up webpages, e-mail outreach and Google Adwords, with a special focus on accountability metrics, according to C & R. Read More

Controversial Cybersecurity Legislation CISPA Sails Through The House

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, April 18 2013

A controversial bill aimed at encouraging the private sector to be more forthcoming with the sharing of potential threat information with U.S. military entities sailed through the House Thursday by a vote of 288 to 127, ... Read More

WeGov

French Ministers Disclose Country Homes and Cars on New Website

BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, April 18 2013

French government ministers and the French Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault are now publishing a list of their assets on a special government website. The news comes just weeks after Budget Minister Jerome Cahuzac resigned following a report on an investigative French website, Mediapart, that he had an undeclared Swiss bank account. Read More

First POST: Open, or Not

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, April 18 2013

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Not-quite-"open" behavior from Philadelphia city officials; looking online for support of an amateur blogger whose work is essential for journalism pros; and more in today's round-up of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

WeGov

Verboice: New Tool for Social Outreach in Cambodia

BY Jessica McKenzie | Thursday, April 18 2013

Phnom Penh, Cambodia (Milei.vencel)

Social outreach organizations including the Women’s Media Centre of Cambodia and Better Factories Cambodia have begun using Verboice to reach communities otherwise cut off by literacy or technological barriers – lack of mobile support of local dialects, for example. It has been used to give women and children on demand health information, to increase access to reproductive and sexual health services, and to monitor working conditions in garment factories.

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Google Fiber Planned for Third City, Signal of New Power for Cities Bargaining for Broadband

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, April 17 2013

Google has announced that Provo, Utah will become the third city in the U.S. to get Google Fiber, the search company's entry into broadband Internet and TV service. Read More

Oakland Gets A New Data Visualization Site for Its Budget

BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Wednesday, April 17 2013

The civic hacking group OpenOakland unveiled a new budget visualization Web site called Open Budget Oakland Wednesday. The site enables visitors to visualize total department expenditures, the details of spending within ... Read More

National Design Service? Gov.uk Wins Design of the Year Award

BY Miranda Neubauer | Wednesday, April 17 2013

The website of the British Government Digital Service, GOV.UK, last night won the London Design Museum's Design of the Year Award. "The jury unanimously agreed that GOV.UK was the overall winner for Design of the Year 2013 for its well thought out yet understated design, making the user experience faster and easier. The website is regarded as one of the leading government websites in the world," the museum stated in a press release. Read More

WeGov

Measuring Net Freedom and “Outrage” to Predict Next Arab Spring

BY Jessica McKenzie | Wednesday, April 17 2013

Screengrab from Freedom House map of Freedom on the Net 2012

While many have extolled the use of the Internet and social media in particular as a positive, democratic, organizing force in recent revolutions and turned to the web as both a tool for revolution and for predicting revolution, others say repressive regimes can effectively squash online activism. The ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for Development blog tried to predict where the next major revolution might take place by using indexes that measure Internet freedoms, autocracy and repression, and ICT development. They pitted constraint against outrage using the Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net score, The Economist Democracy Index, and the ITU’s ICT Development Index, and came up with two versions of The Revolution 2.0 Index.

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First POST: Formula Error

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, April 17 2013

Exclusively for Personal Democracy Plus subscribers: Facebook's behind-the-scenes immigration lobbying; the Excel spreadsheet error that shifted economic policy; and more in today's round-up of news about technology in politics from around the web. Read More

News Briefs

RSS Feed today >

Honda Campaign Rolls Out Endorsements From Asian American Stars

Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) rolled out several additional endorsements from Asian American leaders and celebrities Tuesday, with one of them vouching for his high-tech bona fides. GO

Here Are The People President Obama Hopes Will Repair American Elections

The Presidential Commission on Election Administration established by President Obama after problematic 2012 elections now has a web presence at SupporttheVoter.gov. Obama established the commission by executive order on March 28 "to identify best practices in election administration and to make recommendations to improve the voting experience." GO

After Oklahoma Disaster, Neighbors Look Online for Ways To Help

In echoes of the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in the Northeast, social media sites and small business websites in and around tornado-wracked Moore, Okla., are full of offers of help, questions about missing pets and loved ones, and evidence that neighbors are willing to reach out to help one another in a disaster. On a single Facebook group, there's a Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City promising free meals to first responders or people hit by the tornado; a mother a few hours' drive from Moore offering to open her door for children who might need a place to stay; a resident sharing a picture of a found dog and contact information for the owner to get in touch. GO

Change.org Lands $15 Million From Omidyar

Change.org capped an extraordinary few years of growth Tuesday with the announcement that it has landed a $15 million investment led by the Omidyar Network. GO

What German Politicians Think of Google Glass

The German government led by Chancellor Angela Merkel has not had the easiest relationship with Google. The company launched a public campaign against a law backed by her coalition that would require search engines to pay to show news articles in search results, with mixed results. What's more, Google has long had to navigate the privacy waters in Germany and throughout the European Union. But that has not stopped her federal minister for economics and technology, Philipp Rösler, from giving Google Glass an enthusiastic test run as he leads a delegation of German technology companies and politicians on a trip to Silicon Valley this week as part of German Valley Week. GO

Crowdsourcing Waste Management Solutions in Montenegro

For once we aren't talking about the worldwide scarcity of toilets, just good old-fashioned household waste. Montenegro has a garbage problem so bad even the tourists are complaining about it. A new mobile app sponsored by the Agency for Environmental Protection, NGO Ozon and United Nations Development Programme in Montenegro will hopefully get citizens involved in reporting illegal garbage dumps. GO

monday >

Her Majesty's Government Wants to Monetize Open Data

A new paper from the chair of the U.K. government's Open Strategy Board outlines the best practices for the government's open data policies. The government-commissioned Shakespeare Review – after author Stephan Shakespeare – looks into ways to monetize open data, and recommends an all-encompassing National Data Strategy.

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Will Silicon Valley "Disrupt" Politics With a Candidate for Congress?

Sean Parker, of Napster fame and now executive general partner at venture capital firm Founders Fund, has invested in political startups before. But last week, he went a step further — co-hosting a fundraising event for a candidate for Congress. Parker and SV Angel co-founder Ron Conway organized a crowd of Internet industry luminaries to support Ro Khanna, a former assistant deputy secretary in Barack Obama's Commerce Department. Khanna is preparing a challenge to Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), whose newly redrawn congressional district encompasses Silicon Valley. GO

Burma's Upcoming Telecom Revolution Will Probably Not Bring Internet Freedom

Burma (Myanmar) is on the threshold of an Internet revolution, but Human Rights Watch has warned companies to proceed with caution or risk trampling Burmese citizens' rights. GO

friday >

Chilean Anti-Corruption Resource: A Crowdsourced Database of Social and Political Connections

In countries where a small minority of social circles have a majority of the political and economic power, personal relationships can affect major decision-making, a serious concern of anti-corruption activists. A new web platform stores personal profiles of key players in Chilean business and politics, complete with biographies and personal and professional connections through family, education, social circles, employers and coworkers, to make tracking social relationships and conflict-of-interest easier. Called Poderopedia (from the Spanish word for power), the project sounds kind of like LinkedIn, but the creation and management of profiles is being crowdsourced out to journalists, activists and concerned citizens.

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Middle Eastern Telecom Accused of Working With Saudi Arabia to Spy on Citizens

Mobily, an arm of the state-owned Middle Eastern telecom giant Etihad Etisalat, has been accused of working with Saudi Arabia to develop software that would allow the government to bypass protections for social media users. The exposé comes from Moxie Marlinspike (neé Matthew Rosenfield), an expert in a certain type of malicious Internet attack called MITM (man-in-the-middle), whereby attackers intercept and secretly alter private messages exchanged via email and other social media platforms. GO

Saudi Religious Leader Warns Twitter Users of Consequences in the Afterlife

In late March, Saudi Arabia's top religious cleric said Twitter was for clowns and corrupters. Earlier this week, he said anyone using social media, in particular Twitter, “has lost this world and the afterlife.” His comments might be laughable, if they did not come at a time when the Saudi government is looking into monitoring or blocking social media sites and eliminating user anonymity.

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thursday >

What The Other Silicon Valley Immigration Group Is Doing This Month

A bipartisan coalition of political advocacy, business and tech groups are moving ahead to launch a social media blitz next week designed to persuade members of the Senate to vote in favor of immigration reform legislation supported in Silicon Valley. "We're going to create a virtual digital storm," said Jeremy Robbins in a Wednesday ... GO

The New Yorker Hopes "Strongbox" Is a Wiretap-Proof Sieve for Leaks

The New Yorker yesterday became the first outlet to implement DeadDrop, a new system for sources to submit information to journalists online in a more secure and anonymous way than, for example, email. GO

Female Organizer of Pakistan's First Hackathon Stresses Collaboration Over Competition

After Pakistan banned Valentine's Day this year, Sabeen Mahmud started an online protest in which people uploaded photos to mock the government ban. In the weeks following she received death threats and menacing phone calls, and early on she had to stay home from work. That did nothing, however, to keep her from further organizing. Last month, the café she started in Karachi hosted Pakistan's first ever hackathon, which tackled problems including sanitation, crime, disaster management, and education. She even invited a government representative to observe the initial conversations, tackling sensitive areas like government inefficiency and elections.

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wednesday >

White House Innovation Fellows Project Spins Off Into A Business

Clay Johnson and Adam Becker joined the Presidential Innovation Fellows program to help the White House fix the way government does business. Now they're turning that mission into a business themselves. GO

Fighting Fires With Data, New York City Launches New Safety Inspection System

Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that New York City has implemented city-wide a new risk based inspection system focused on fire safety that is driven by analytics from multiple city agencies. GO

Chinese Netizens Use Digital Initiative to Gain Media Attention for Unsolved Poisoning Case

Last month a medical science student at a Shanghai university died from poisoning, allegedly murdered by his roommate. The specifics of the crime echoed a case from the mid-1990s, in which a 19-year-old student was poisoned with thallium. That case has once again been thrown into the media spotlight, but after 18 years the media has changed and the spotlight means a trending hashtag on Sina Weibo or an online petition to the U.S. President.

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PDF France 2013: “Au Code, Citoyens!”

This year PDF France will take place in Paris on June 13, with the theme "Au Code, Citoyens!" ("To Code, Citizens!") The speakers' lineup includes some of the continent's leaders in the digital revolution. GO

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