Category: PSleader

The Honourable Tony Clement, President of the Treasury Board, recently spoke about the Government of Canada’s first national appathon, the Canadian Open Data Experience (CODE), to students and data enthusiasts at Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo.

“Our Government is promoting and supporting CODE to encourage entrepreneurial innovation that leads to the start-up of new business, economic expansion and job creation,” said Minister Clement. “Innovations like the apps created at CODE will ensure Canada remains at the forefront of the global Open Data movement.”

The Canadian Open Data Experience will appeal to innovators, students, technology experts and developers, who will be challenged to use and explore roughly 200,000 datasets on data.gc.ca, the Government of Canada’s Open Data Portal. The contest will take place next February, and will encourage participants to create apps that solve real world problems for the benefit of Canadians.

One of the leaders we most admire in Web 2.0 government world is Nick Charney @NickCharney a man who is living on the edge of this ongoing social revolution in all associated contexts. We were over the top when he agreed to allow us to share his phenomenal content here on the PSleader blog and his are some of the most insightful of the great contributions we have had to date.

At the PSengage event in November we were also very pleased that the new Guideline for External Use of Web 2.0 for the Government of Canada was announced by Minister Tony Clement (see video). Since that time we have been working diligently on delving further into development of training and other supporting materials for application and use of this guideline on a practical “day to day” level.

How you tell the story of something whether your best friend’s recent golf incident – or the introduction of a new paradigm into an old channel matters. It matters more and more so in the instant gratification and short time frame attention span economy. How our brains process information now is based on how fast does it answer basic questions. If you cannot tell the story of why something should be done using outside references then figure out how to tell the story using those from inside.

Time matters. People’s time matters the more that you are demanding they contemplate either large expenditures or something technical in nature or both. If you can tell the story in a simple to understand, bite size version, you are more likely to get a buy-in from skeptical management or budget conscious bean counters.

So frame your story as if you were sitting around a family dinner table. Keep it simple. Use basic language. Sure you can let loose with fancy nomenclature and or highly technical terms to show you know your stuff. But – relate it to the here and now, why is something practical, applicable and affordable at this period in time? Tell the story of other Government agencies doing what you propose. Tell the story of successful wins from the actions you seek.

There will be more in the PS Engage talk, but this is the basic outline of what I am addressing in Ottawa on November 22, 2011.

Alan Silberberg

Abstract: Developing the appropriate behaviors and competencies to integrate into society is a crucial test for any concept of citizenship1. Virtual society today is a connected community of global citizens thriving across multiple platforms and social networks. People are dispersed geographically, culturally and politically and are unconstrained by whom they interact with and why they interact. In virtual worlds, the borders are fluid and physically unconstrained. The personal surrogate encoded as an avatar can move about freely and participate in dynamic, multiple states at the same time. The avatar is valued more for his performance, skill and abilities in the context of the virtual world, rather than by his race, pay grade or political affiliation.

Beginning on February, 2nd 2011 at 8:00pm eastern we are pleased to announce that right here on @PSleader we will feature a #GovChat SPECIAL Chat guest on a LIVE tweetchat hosted by @ThomKearney !

These tweet chats will be conducted utilizing the hashtag #GovChat and can be followed through the #GovChat link at what the #hashtag http://wthashtag.com/Govchat And our ongoing schedule for future chats as well as the links to transcripts from our chats already completed will always be available at http://bit.ly/GovChat

Please join us the first Wednesday evening of each month for #GovChat to personally get to know, discuss hot topics and ask questions of our SPECIAL guests on #GovChat !

Last week, the US Office of Management and Budget hosted a Forum on Information Technology Management Reform at the White House. In the below video, following an introduction by Jeff Science, Vivek Kundra presents the 25 point action plan for the US governments IT strategy going forward. Already, they have been able to reduce budget by $3 Billion dollars and improve delivery of projects by 50%.

The numbers in this presentation absolutely boggle the mind and the amount of waste identified and now in process of being recovered is nothing less than incredible.

I recently came across this funny (and too true) post by Todd Heim on social media villains that piqued both my long-time interest in super-heroes and super-villains and all things Government 2.0 too. While we pump up the Gov 2.0 Heroes (and even had an entire Day dedicated to them), and we hold conferences to highlight the work done by these heroes, I haven’t seen the opposite side get its due. Well, I’d like to dedicate this post to the people who make government innovation so difficult, the people who have stood in our way for years, the people who have been classified as hurdles, obstacles, and barriers – the Villains of Gov 2.0. Link to entire post on Steve Radick’s Social Media Strategery blog

How do you feel about influence? Do you actively try to map it in your organization? Over the last few months, I’ve begun to hear this theme come up more and more in the workplace. To me, this is like the puzzle piece we’ve been missing. I became more personally interested in it when I met Josh Letourneau of Knight & Bishop earlier this year. Today I’m at the Conference Board’s Senior HR Executive Conference and it appears to be a theme they are picking up on as well.

Eric Mosley, Chief Executive Officer of Globoforce presented one of the finest sessions I’ve seen all year. I’d like to share some of the items he covered regarding the internal social networks in organizations and the impact of tracking the relationships.

Analysis by J. Letourneau of knightbishop.com

The discussion began around how the word “social” means different things to different companies. It’s one of those words that is everywhere lately, much like innovation. So, the first step has to be defining what the word social means in your organizational culture. For purposes of his discussion, social did not just mean social network platforms. It mainly meant the internal network that we each have in our organization in order to share information. Link to full post on Trish McFarlane’s HR Ringleader blog