Weekly Round-up: Palindrome Issue: 10/01

Gadi Ben-Yehuda

• I'm feeling Neighborly - a social network in development that is location-based.  I'll be interested to see it in action.
• Anyone else giving MediaPost, a new aggregator, a try?  So far, I've found a few articles I might not have read otherwise.
• Two ways to be wrong about social media.  Newsweek's "The Sad Truth about Facebook" and the New Yorker's "Small Change" (by Daniel Lyons and Malcolm Gladwell respectively) rain on the current Silicon Valley parade.  I think Lyons has a point (that he blows out of proportion), but Gladwell pretty much has only a straw man (which he blows away, congrats!).  I think both kind of miss the point.
• Wondering what the states are doing in the social media space?  Wonder no longer! "Friends, Followers, and Feeds" answers your questions.
• Tom Shoop assesses "The True Size of the Federal Workforce" 
• And from the vaults, Anthony Graber, famous for recording himself on his motorcycle driving at 127 miles an hour, popping wheelies, and then capturing on tape a plain-clothes police officer pulling his gun unprovoked, has some vindication.  A circuit court judge threw out the wiretapping case against him.  Best part?  The judge quoted Alan Moore to do it: " 'Sed quis custodiet ipsos cutodes'"

John Kamensky

• Senate Passes Plain Writing Bill. Government Executive’s Norah Swanson reports the Senate has passed a bipartisan bill requiring federal agencies to use “plain writing” in all public documents. The House passed its version of the bill in March. The two bills need reconciled before it becomes law . . . but it looks promising!  http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0910/092810n1.htm 
• Senate committee adopts modernization amendments to Results Act. In another bipartisan move, a committee has sent a bill to the floor of the Senate to significantly revise the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act. The rewrite largely incorporates changes supported by the Obama Administration to make performance information both useful and used. Changes include quarterly reporting of high priority goals set by agencies and cross-cutting goals set by OMB.
• Six ways to crowdsource government. Scott Stadium describes in Governing magazine six examples of how federal agencies are using crowdsourcing approaches to do their work. Examples include Challenge.gov to solicit ideas for solving problems posted by agencies and the Library of Congress’s The Extraordinaries which uses “micro-volunteering” to help label photos in its on-line collection.
• IBM Center launches new blog on agency cost savings. The IBM Center launches a new blog today to serve as a resource to agencies facing budget cuts but still wanting to improve performance. The entries will be written by experts across IBM bringing commercial best practices to government.

Business of Government Radio Show: Richard A. Spires

The Business of Government Hour features a conversation about management with a government executive who is changing the way government does business. The executives discuss their careers and the management challenges facing their organizations. Past government executives include Administrators, Chief Financial Officers, Chief Information Officers, Chief Operating Officers, Commissioners, Controllers, Directors, and Undersecretaries.

Richard A. Spires serves as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chief Information Officer (CIO). In this capacity, Mr. Spires is responsible for the department’s $6.4 billion investment in Information Technology (IT) and facilitates the development, implementation, and maintenance of the department’s IT architecture.

Each week, The Business of Government Hour interviews government executive who are changing the way government does business. The show airs four times a week on two radio stations in the DC Metro Area.  If you can't wait, though, we also put it online. You can also search our audio archives for your favorite interview.