Government

The Obama Administration announced yesterday what had been widely expected, that Vivek Kundra, former Chief Technology Officer of the Washington DC government, would be taking on the role of Federal Chief Information Officer.

I attended a session called "a Day in the Life of a Federal Web Manager" at the Transparency Camp in DC this weekend, and we had a very interesting discussion about the tension that large organizations face with respect to letting different departments and groups at their organization experiment with web 2.0 tools.

The incoming Obama administration is pledging to use some innovative internet strategies to expand citizen access to government information and processes. (This gets us at Forum One pretty jazzed - we've been evangelizing a long while about using online services to expand public access to information, enable new forms of collaboration, and build online communities.)

Our Web Executive Seminar last month featured a terrific case study by District of Columbia CTO Vivek Kundra on the DC Data Catalog -- an archive of over 200 data feeds. Under Kundra's leadership, the District is using simple technologies to become, arguably, one of the most transparent metropolitan governments in the nation.

We've blogged about Kundra's presentation previously, but now his slides are available for the first time (with audio). I've embedded them below. Enjoy!

Yesterday, my colleague Chris von Spiegelfeld shared some impressions of our recent event Web Sites Without Walls.

Blogs provide a platform for personal introspection and dialogue online, which many organizations and individuals -- in business, advocacy organizations, think tanks, news agencies, and commentators -- have learned to use with great value. Government entities and government officials are not generally mentioned in that group.

Kudos to an Oregon web site that helps people learn if they qualify for various social services and gets them started in acquiring the services -- vital services like food stamps, housing assistance, health care and others.