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Stephen Goldsmith, e-Government Advocate, Leaves Bloomberg Administration

BY Nick Judd | Friday, August 5 2011

E-government advocate Stephen Goldsmith is leaving the administration of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg for "opportunities" in the private sector, the city announced yesterday. Goldsmith served just 14 months in ... Read More

North Carolina Town Commission Swaps Paper for iPads

BY Nick Judd | Thursday, June 30 2011

The town commission of Cornelius, N.C., has gone completely paperless: each commissioner now has a town-owned iPad, with meeting agendas, maps and worksheets served up through proprietary software. The Herald Weekly of ... Read More

New e-Gov Deputy CIO for U.S.

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, June 2 2011

The U.S. gets a new deputy CIO doing electronic government work, reports Chris Dorobek. Meet Lisa Schlosser. Read More

E-Government and Public Records Down on the Bayou

BY Nick Judd | Tuesday, May 24 2011

The Louisiana state legislature is trying to figure out how to improve its government services online: BATON ROUGE -- The Senate Finance Committee approved a bill Monday that would allow a private vendor to operate the ... Read More

Bryan Sivak is Maryland's New 'Chief Innovation Officer'

BY Nick Judd | Wednesday, April 27 2011

Former Washington, D.C. Chief Technology Officer Bryan Sivak is now Maryland's first-ever "chief innovation officer." Sivak is on his second day at work today as the newest member of Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's team, ... Read More

British Columbia's question: What to do about water?

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, December 23 2009

British Columbia's provincial government says that the Water Act-- written in 1909 to govern the authorities' administration of the province's aquifers, lakes, streams, and other fresh water sources -- is in need of a ... Read More

1 Out of 5 Adults Want Elected Official Contact Info on Their Personal Web Pages

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, December 21 2009

Over on USA.gov, they're running an interesting dialogue about how to improve the site, which is a primary portal for citizens seeking all kinds of information from government. (Compete.com says USA.gov averages just ... Read More

SeeClickFix Now Covering 25,000 Towns, 8,000 Neighborhoods

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, October 14 2009

The civic software movement took another leap forward this past week with the announcement by SeeClickFix that the site now covers more than 25,000 towns and cities across the U.S., along with 8,000 discrete ... Read More

Bloomberg's "Connected City": E-govt Instead of We.Gov

BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, October 2 2009

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced his "Connected City" initiative, rolling out a series of programs aimed at transforming how New Yorkers interact with and get services from city government. Read More

From Australia, An E-Participatory Budgeting Experiment

BY Tiago Peixoto | Wednesday, September 23 2009

The government of the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW), in an attempt to mitigate the effects of the economic downturn and stimulate local economies, has allocated the equivalent of US$30 million to the ... Read More

News Briefs

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The Thicker China's "Great Firewall" Becomes, the Subtler the Doors to Sneak Through

As China announces it will tighten restrictions on access to the Internet, Chinese citizens show that they've developed new ways around them. GO

tuesday >

Cory Booker Hires Democratic Organizing Veteran Addisu Demissie To Manage Senate Run

Newark Mayor Cory Booker has hired a veteran of the Democratic organizing world Addisu Demissie to manage his run to succeed the late New Jersey Democratic Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey. GO

ShareProgress Debuts Social Sharing Optimization Tools

ShareProgress, a left-leaning tech startup in downtown San Francisco, launched its social sharing optimization platform Tuesday after several months of testing with the progressive advocacy group CREDO Action. GO

New Organizing Institute to Move from Collecting Election Data to Organizing Election Officials

The New Organizing Institute, a progressive nonprofit that trains campaigners and is no led by former Obama for America data director Ethan Roeder, is launching a new initiative next week aiming to "fix that" for local elections. NOI will announce a national network where local election administration officials can congregate to share solutions to common issues. It's a transition for a team at NOI that had previously been managing the Voting Information Project, which collects data on polling places, election districts and voter registration deadlines and prepares it for third parties in machine-readable format. In the 2012 election cycle, backed by the Pew Charitable Trusts and partnered with Google, VIP made information available in all 50 states. GO

Russian SOPA Passed First Reading

A first draft of a law nicknamed “Russian SOPA” was approved by the Russian parliament last Friday, June 14. Like the original Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill will establish penalties and procedures for online copyright violations.

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monday >

Czech Prime Minister Resigns Following Corruption and Surveillance Scandal

The prime minister of the Czech Republic resigned yesterday, irreparably damaged by a corruption scandal and the possibility of impropriety in his personal life. According to the Czech constitution, his entire government will also have to relinquish office.

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friday >

Mayors of New York City and San Francisco Announce "Digital Cities" Summit

The Mayors of New York City and San Francisco announced Friday that they're co-hosting meetings in the Fall and early next year to examine the "best practices" that lead to tech-enabled economic growth. The meetings are follow-ups to the initial Bloomberg Technology Summit held last year in New York City. This year's summit in New York ... GO

New York State Joins GitHub to Get Feedback on Open Data Policy

New York is the first state to publish an initial draft of its open data guidelines on GitHub to seek feedback from the public, Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press release Thursday. GO

Brazilians Protest Forced Evictions on YouTube and in Mock World Cup

Tomorrow Brazilians who have been forced out of their housing in advance of the 2014 World Cup will stage their own “People's Cup” in Rio de Janeiro to draw awareness to forced evictions.

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A “Fix-Rate” for Corruption: Integrity Action Wins the Google Global Impact Award

“From wanachi (“citizen”) to up there,” Emmanuel Dzombo explains with an upward sweep of his hand, is how Integrity Action has begun to reverse the bureaucratic top-down approach that has often blocked development work in Kenya. Dzombo is a local leader in Chengoni, Kenya, a country that ranks towards the very bottom of Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index – at 139. The organization believes it could do more, and Google.org seems to agree. The Google Impact Challenge will provide the charity with £500,000 that will allow it to develop a mobile application for tracking and collecting data from citizens. GO

Crowdsourced "Danger Maps" Track Air, Soil and Water Pollution in China

Chinese citizens are exposing sources of pollution and other environmental problems by contributing to the partially crowdsourced website 'Danger Maps'. So far, the Chinese government is letting them get away with it.

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thursday >

U.S. Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board To Meet Next Wednesday

A long dormant independent agency that was at least nominally supposed to exercise a modicum of oversight over the booming intelligence-industrial complex is scrambling to meet up next Wednesday, but the public will still be none the wiser about what it plans to do, since it is a closed door meeting. The only indication that the toothless ... GO

Despite Software Problems, Civic Hackers are Pedaling Bike Share Data

Reporters are shoaling around the news that New York City's new bike sharing system, Citi Bike, is benighted with problems stemming from its high-tech software. But that's not putting the brakes on plans to explore what programmers might do with data generated by the system by hosting a Citi Bike Civic Hack Night later this month. GO

Grassroots Republicans Are Not Waiting for the RNC To Revamp Their Digital Strategy

Several members of the Republican Party rank and file aren't waiting around for the GOP to reinvent itself on the technological front. They're organizing events themselves to explore what a tech-enabled GOP might look like for the 2014 cycle. GO

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