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Conversations, Not Memos
Last week saw the launch of a new blog, the Ideas for Development blog. Authors include the Director General of the World Trade Organization, the President of the African Development Bank, the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, and other A-list types. A quick scan of the posts (why are there no dates on the landing page?) shows big chunks of text with no hyperlinks. This tells me that it's a one-way conversation. A blog is not a memo distribution system. A blog is an online conversation.
And speaking of conversations, James Jacobs responds to my World Library post.
Moving on in the blogosphere, Simon Johnson, Director of Research for the International Monetary Fund, launched a blog last week. Yes, this is the second blog launched by the IMF in the past month. "Strange days indeed".
Finally, a short requiem for the IFC's Innovations in Emerging Markets blog, which appears to have died over the summer. I am sad because these folks, along with the PSD blog, were the ones who introduced blogging to our IFI community. The fact that the IFC let this blog die tells me we still have a ways to go in convincing organizations of the benefits of blogging.
Continue readingThe IMF Starts Blogging
The International Monetary Fund launched its very first blog yesterday; the Public Financial Management blog. Some blurbage on this new blog:
The PFM blog aims at sharing the IMF staff's vast experience with PFM practitioners in Ministries of Finance and other fiscal agencies, academia, students, non-governmental organizations, as well as with the general public. It will also feature current news, resources and ideas about public financial management systems, their operation and improvement, and their contribution to economic growth and achieving national objectives, including economic and financial stability.
There will probably be more to come. The new managing director of the IMF (Dominique Strauss-Kahn) has been blogging since last year. He even set up a blog for his campaign to become MD.
Continue reading
Sunlight Foundation Mashup Contest Winners
I've posted about this earlier at my home blog, but I thought it was worth a revisit and fuller entry because it did not get the attention it deserved. The Sunlight Foundation, the group that has fostered Congresspedia , the Open House Project, & OpenCongress.org, held a government "mashup" competition in April. In May, the winner, Uninfluence , was announced and won $2000. What follows is a list of the winner and the top 5 finalists. The 'project descriptions' are copied from the Sunlight project page. Additional entries can also be found there.
Winner
Uninfluence Developed by Skye Bender-deMoll and Greg Michalec. Project Description: Uninfluence, is an interactive information visualization of state level political contribution data. Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/unfluence/unfluence.html Mashup: http://unfluence.primate.net/index.htmlThe Finalists
CityCon (First Runner Up) Project Description: CityCon allows you to find detailed information about any member of the current 110th U.S. Congress. Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/citycon/CityCon%20FInal.html Mashup: http://www.tetonpost.com/citycon OpenHearings Live (Second Runner Up) Project Description: A mini-site of schedules for current and future Senate committee hearings. Includes links to live audio and video of hearings in progress, anRSS feed of live hearings, iCalendar schedules for all committees and hearings, and the ability to import the "Live Hearing" view into your personalized Google homepage. Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/openhearingslive/OpenHearings.org%20-%20final.html Mashup: http://openhearings.org/live EchoDitto's Congressional Similarity Visualizer Project Description: Java applet that lets users explore which legislators vote most similarly to one another. (Detailed explanation on the site provides background on the statistical analysis the visualization represents.) Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/Echoditto3/Echoditto3.html Mashup: http://labs.echoditto.com/projects/sunlight/ Second Life Congressional Info Project Description: A mashup of the Sunlight APIs with Second Life, creating an interactive info center (kiosk) at the virtual Capitol Hill - a pro-bono educational area - in Second Life. Visitors can (and do!) access the information in a venue where they can discuss the information in the context of politics, policy and place. Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/secondlife4/Second%20Life4.html Writeup: http://clearnightsky.com/node/288 State-Machine Project Description: Data Visualization showing the relationship between members of Congress and political access committees. (Watchingscreencast and reading description highly recommended.) Screencast: http://sunlightlabs.com/mashupfinalists/statemachine/State%20Machine%20-%20final.html Mashup: http://state-machine.org/ -- Tim Dennis Continue readingFEC aims to restrict Inspector General reports
Politico reporter John Bresnahan noted a brief item currently on the front page of CQ's PoliticalMoneyLine about the "minor changes" the Federal Election Commission wants to make to its System of Records.
"In a bland Federal Register Notice requesting public comment on a System of Records, the Federal Election Commission seeks to restrict access to the reports of the agency’s Inspector General unless the requestor has the permission of the individual involved."Bresnahan explains that a former FEC official is being investigated for misappropriation of funds that were used to settle a sexual harassment complaint. According to PoliticalMoneyLine:
"For the FEC this means the Inspector General’s report on the activities of the last Staff Director and his supervision, or lack of supervision, by the Commissioners could not be made available to the White House or Congress unless the former staff director and other individuals involved granted approval."The FEC is accepting public comments on the requested revisions until the end of the business day tomorrow. Here's how to submit a comment, from the Federal Register notice:
Comments should be addressed in writing to Thomasenia P. Duncan, Privacy Act Officer, Federal Election Commission, 999 E Street, NW., Washington, DC 20463, and must be received by close of business on February 23, 2007. Comments also may be sent via electronic mail to Privacy@fec.gov.Continue reading
Transparency and the President’s Management Agenda
Peggy Garvin reported on the SLA Government Information Division blog that the Office of Management and Budget launched FedSpending.gov this past week.
"The website is intended to provide a searchable database of federal grants, contracts, loans, and other spending. This initial version fulfills a requirement in the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (PL 109-282), known as FFATA."The site is sparse right now, but it does have a PDF copy of the FFATA and its implementation schedule. The OMB has been using e-government websites as a method of providing transparency, as seen with ExpectMore.gov and Results.gov. The latter site is geared towards federal employees and aims to show how well government agencies are performing in relation to the President's Management Agenda. It's kind of a strange site, though. One of the boxes on the front page is entitled, "Don't You Agree? Apply to You?" This reminds me of a subject heading from a Nigerian scam email for some reason. I find the rating system for the Executive Branch Management Scorecard a bit silly:
The ratings are given for each agency at its highest level. This is understandable, but a classmate of mine pointed out that you're not seeing how divisions of the agencies are performing. If you work for the IRS, you're only seeing how the Treasury Department is doing on the whole. If you work for the USCIS, you're only seeing how Homeland Security is performing. (Or not performing, if you look at the PDF of the December 2006 scorecard.) I don't know how much guidance each division receives on how to improve or maintain their scores, though. If you have any insights on this, please feel free to comment. Continue reading
- Green for success,
- Yellow for mixed results, and
- Red for unsatisfactory.
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