Last weekend I was reading an interesting article from the Jan. 2008 American City and County Magazine about local government officials maintaining blogs to aid their communications with the public. I found this really interesting, especially in how different individuals manage their site and deal with the wide range of comments they get from the public.  Some examples of city managers maintaining blogs I’ll list here so you can check them out for yourself:

West Des Moines, IO: City Manger, Jeff Pomeranz: http://wdmblog.wdm-ia.com/ Eden Prairie, MN: City Manager, Scott Neal & Fire Chief George Esbensen: http://edenprairieweblogs.org/ Round Lake, IL: Mayor, Bill Gentes: http://www.eroundlake.com/blog/ Santa Paula, CA: City Manager, Wally Bobkiewicz: http://ci.santa-paula.ca.us/blog/ Davison, MI: City Manager, Pete Auger: http://www.cityofdavisonweblogs.org/peterauger/ In each case, it is delightful to see efforts to improve communication with people in the community.  Clearly, creating fresh content and subject material that is interesting for readers is part of the challenge.  Pete Auger is cited (in Am.City& Co.Mag.) about benefits he sees including finding people who are a good fit to serve on boards…. and he said maintaining a blog helps him keep a focus on what the city is doing and what values really are meaningful to people.  The other element that is especially intriguing is how different public sector bloggers manage comments.   Of course, the whole blog concept is to develop conversations and share ideas.  Yet public conversations can have risks and may need to be managed rather than just enabling auto-posting.  Posting a “comments’ policy” makes some sense.  Bill Gentes and others provide thoughts on this at their blog sites. A common strategy is to have comments viewed by the blog site administrator who can then select, edit/redact or post as they consider appropriate.  We’ll talk more on this issue, soon.   Mark

I was reading an on-line article from Government Technology this morning about Scot Rouke who was just named, “Intelligent Community Visionary of the Year for 2008″ by the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF). You can click on my Gov.Tech. link above to read the article…. but the gist is, he has been successful collaborating with Case Western Reserve University (where my step-son Gabriel was an undergrad… he now works for Epic) and several other public and private entities to develop an ultra-broadband community network serving first the city of Cleveland and then the entire Northeast Ohio region. Rourke said, “We remain committed to our transformative efforts in education, health care, workforce development and government that have helped establish our region as a model for communities worldwide.” I would add that it is through efforts like this that we can see the transformative use of technology to improve citizen participation in government, environmental protection and sustainable economic development as well as those areas identified by Scot Rourke. His work as well as the work of ICF are to be commended. Mark

The Winter 2007-08 issue of The Public Manager (Vol.36, No.4) has several articles devoted to “citizen involvement in the Digital Age”. [These links get you to the Home Page and article abstracts.]

John Sindelar’s, The Promise and Potential of E-Government lists 3 trends, “driving the implementation of e-government… creating the demand for a shared-services environment with information technology (IT) as the enabler…”

1. funding pressures = constrained budget resources
2. global challenges, including defense and international market competition
3. constituent demands for transparent and secure online services

Sindelar also points out the “grey tsunami” is now a reality… and that we must seek to attract the next generation of public sector leaders who are Web 2.0 savvy to replace the tidal wave of retirements in government.

Since it’s initiation in 2001, the office of E-Government and Information Technology at the US Office of Management and Budget, has been focusing on expanding E-Government’s goal of utilizing technology to improve how the Federal Government serves citizens, businesses and agencies. Through the initiation of Mark Forman and his successor, Karen Evans, 24 projects demonstrate progress in improving the value of government to citizens that are “market-based, results-oriented and citizen-centered” [Mark Forman, Aug.2001] which simplify access by citizens to resources and unify redundant systems. Some examples from the Report to Congress on the Benefits of E-Government Initiatives from FY 2007 include:

USAJobs.gov: a single point of reference for Federal online recruitment

Grants.gov: has its origins in the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999, also known as Public Law 106-107; this Web site is now a central storehouse for information on over 1,000 grant programs and provides access to approximately $400 billion in annual awards

GovBenefits.gov: a single point of access for citizens to determine eligibility for government benefits

USA.gov: which has become listed with other Web sites featured on the “Can’t Live Without” list (which includes Amazon, eBay, Google, and WebMD; see an announcement regarding this in Time Magazine’s Web site at 25 Sites We Can’t Live Without)

Sindelar does not point out, however, that these sites are examples of the Web 1.0 realm and Web 2.0 is already here… and many are now talking about the next step, Web 3.0. Sindelar does point out that “government has been working he same way since the Hoover Commission … in 1949, and it has served this country very well, but the promise of e-government must e fulfilled to maintain this institution’s strength in a perilous world. Although it took nearly sixty years to build agencies with silos of expertise critically needed in the past, those silos must now evolve to a more agile, responsive, horizontal form of government…”

Understanding and implementing evolving technologies which enable “market-based, results-oriented and citizen-centered” initiatives and which simplify access by citizens to resources and unify redundant systems must be our primary strategic goal against which we align initiatives and measure our success. Mark

I wanted to share with you a short article from 18Feb.2008, eWeek (see www.eWeek.com &/or see a video on Web 2.0 in the WorkPlace that was put up in Dec.07).  The article, Enterprises eye Web 2.0 skills suggests that although most IT depts have resisted Web 2.0 skills, as we continue looking for ways to save money, these technologies may help save money and promote innovation.  “Web 2.0 is likely to make enterprise inroads first in places where information worker problems remain unresolved, such as helpdesk ticket resolution, IT project management, documentation tracking and e-mail.”   Other areas include RSS deployment and the use of blogs and wikis for knowledge workers.  Personnally, I don’t see the connection with e-mail but using these tools to facilitate project communication makes some sense to me.  What do you think?  Mark

Money Magazine’s Feb.2007 edition (p.105), has a short article with a word of caution regarding social networks. The title is “Stay away from LinkedIn and Facebook. Joining a social network is asking for trouble.” The article then actually suggests “…getting your feet wet” by starting with LinkedIn “which is geared toward professionals.” The article also suggests using Facebook but says you should monitor your site in case someone else adds a note… and says you should become familiar with how to manage privacy settings. Contrary to the title, the article advocates using good judgement when using a social networking site and posting information. I would think this would be obvious…  Mark

In the January 2008 edition of Scholastic Administr@tion (yes, the @ sign is in the title), the Executive Editor, Kevin Hogan, pointed out that a July 2007 study showed that 96% of children with Internet access between the ages of 9 & 17, have used social-networking sites and 71% of them use this technology weekly.  Hogan went on to point out that professionals associated with the education field need to understand this technology better & he recommended starting Facebook &/or MySpace accounts and learning to use them, not just to understand what students are doing with them but to improve communications with students and parents.

I found this very compelling as I have been very focused on “team collaboration” tools for the last few years here at the Madison Metropolitan School District.  I attended a workshop on social-networking near Chicago last fall and made a personal commitment to learn more about how to use these “Web-2” tools.  In Nov.07, I created a Linkedin account and then in Dec.07, I started a site where I can share Web links: http://del.icio.us/MarkEvans.  By early Jan.08, I created a blog, http://teamsnprojects.blogspot.com/ both to share ideas on managing teams, but more importantly right now, to learn more about how to use this technology.  I’ve also created a Facebook account, but now figure I should be hiring a 10 year old to show me more about how to use it.

The key is that we as Certified Public Managers^® have the ongoing responsibility to be life-long-learners and model the effective use of new technologies which can continue to improve our personal and organizational effectiveness in serving the public.  Toward that end, we in the Wisconsin Society of Certified Public Managers^® will spend some of our effort in 2008 within the context of our meetings and organizational communications to use and learn more about Web 2 tools.

If you have thoughts on this issue, please add your comments to this blog.  If you have reservations about using these tools, voice them.  If you have experience using these tools you can share, please do so.  Together, we are going to learn more about this topic.  One thing is clear: new employees entering our workforce coming from our schools and colleges, will likely already be very experienced with these tools.

Mark Evans, WSCPM President