Weekly Round-up: April 29, 2011

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• Government Employees as Guides, not just Subjects.  IBM Center author Ines Mergel argues in a blog post that "constantly including practitioners into the research process and not only as subjects (i.e., interview partners), but as equal partners who guide the research, evaluate its feasibility and to keep the research grounded and unbiased."
• Open Gov via JQuery and iFrame? Alex Howard has an interesting analysis of the White House's document sharing and its importance relative to open government initaitves across agencies: "Can open government be embedded?"
• How Will We Know It Works? I wrote another post on the State Department's new social media portal, Corridor.  This week I looked at some prospective success metrics.
• They Have Snow in Maryland, Too. The first time I heard of Bryan Sivak, it was in reference to his participation in the Great Snowball Fight of 2010.  That was shortly after he joined DC as its Chief Technology Officer.  Now he's Maryland's first Chief Innovation Officer - but I hear that they have snowball fights in Annapolis, too!
• It's not Always Cloudy - and That's a Problem. Andrea Di Maio on Amazon Cloud Service's recent outages and its relevance to government in the cloud.

John Kamensky

• The Cost of the Continuing Resolution. What was likely intuitive to most, the Pentagon acquisition chief said out loud to a conservative audience at the Heritage Foundation. According to Government Executive’s Robert Brodsky, Pentagon official Ashton Carter said: "It is uneconomical to proceed in this herky-jerky fashion. . . It cost billions for us to operate in this way. It's like a hidden tax."
• New Customer Service Executive Order. President Obama signed a new executive order, "Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service," updating the original 1993 executive order. Agencies are to deliver plans on how they will implement, in 180 days (around October 27), and include a "signature initiative." The directive touts the importance of technology and best practices in the private sector, noting" "best practices include increasingly popular lower-cost, self-service options accessed by the Internet or mobile phone and improved processes that deliver services faster and more responsively, reducing the overall need for customer inquiries and complaints."

Dan Chenok

• No more http://fcw.com/articles/2011/04/26/federal-register-print-is-dead.aspx?s...">Federal Register in print -- another venerable Federal paper-based program goes electronic.
• GSA Leadership: acquisition isn't just for contracts anymore.
• White House cyber leader Howard Schmidt on where the government stands.
• Progress continues on making IT Program Managers a senior cadre of leaders.

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