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First POST: Oligarchs for a Little Less Corruption

BY Micah L. Sifry | Monday, April 21 2014

Sean Parker's plans to change US politics; the New York Times' front-pages mesh networking; the Pirate Times reviews the party's impact on the European Parliament; and much, much more. Read More

First POST: Cockamamie and Catastrophic

BY Micah L. Sifry | Wednesday, April 9 2014

More fallout from the "Cuban Twitter" misfire; Snowden explains how he is not like Assange; the benefits of open data; and much, much more. Read More

Noveck on Lessons Learned

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, March 23 2011

In a 1-2-3-part interview with Asia-based FutureGov, former U.S. Deputy Beth Noveck argues a point that seems to be gaining traction in open government circles: that while the "institutionalization" of open ... Read More

White House Spots Gov't Innovation's Green Shoots

BY Nancy Scola | Friday, March 18 2011

Over on the White House blog, Aneesh Chopra, the U.S. CTO, and his new deputy Chris Vein pluck out a trio of trends they see "fostering government innovation." Let's call 'em the helpers, the builders, and the ... Read More

White House Taps Top City CIO to Replace Beth Noveck as Deputy CTO for Innovation

BY Nick Judd | Monday, February 28 2011

Chris Vein, widely known as the groundbreaking chief information officer for the city of San Francisco, has departed for the White House, you may have heard already from Luke Fretwell at Fedscoop. His new title, ... Read More

W.H. Open Gov Lead on Why She's Headed Back to Academia

BY Nancy Scola | Tuesday, January 11 2011

Beth Simone Noveck; photo credit: Joi Ito Read More

Deputy U.S. CTO McLaughlin Leaves White House Post

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, December 23 2010

Photo credit: Elon University Read More

PdF '10: Aneesh Chopra on Making Government Work for Us

BY Nancy Scola | Wednesday, June 23 2010

In his talk at PdF '10, U.S Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra delivered a progress report on the Obama administration's work to Read More

Consumer Watchdog Reacts to McLaughlin Reprimand

BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, May 20 2010

Consumer Watchdog's reaction to Deputy U.S. CTO Andrew McLaughlin's limited, though inappropriate, contact with his former colleagues at Google is to say that the McLaughlin's Google ties alone were never the problem. Read More

White House Deputy CTO Andrew McLaughlin Slapped for Gmailing with Googlers

BY Nancy Scola | Monday, May 17 2010

A 2008 photo of Andrew McLaughlin taken by Joi Ito, used under a Creative Commons license. Read More

News Briefs

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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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Tweets2Rue Helps Homeless to Help Themselves Through Twitter

While most solutions to homelessness focus on addressing physical needs -- a roof over the head and food to eat -- one initiative in France known as Tweets2Rue knows that for the homeless, a house is still not a home, so to speak: the homeless are often entrenched in a viscous cycle of social isolation that keeps them invisible and powerless. GO

Oakland's Sudo Mesh Looks to Counter Censorship and Digital Divide With a Mesh Network

In Oakland, a city with deep roots in radical activism and a growing tech scene at odds with the hyper-capital-driven Silicon Valley, those at the Sudo Room hackerspace believe that the solution to a wide range of problems, from censorship to the digital divide, is a mesh net, a type of decentralized network that is resilient to censorship and disruption and can also bring connectivity to poor communities.

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