5 Days to Government Information Liberation
Yesterday I said I was going to talk about the Government Information Online project as yet another example of how government information librarians can work together across geography and institutional lines. In a nutshell, since February 11, 2008, about 26 libraries (private, public, academic and state libraries) have been using OCLC's questionpoint software to answer email questions and host chat sessions from the public. In fact, I am going to be on chat duty in about 45 minutes from now. Here are some preliminary figures: Total number of sessions registered on the system for emails and chats: 6,121. This averages about 500 sessions per month. Total for emails: 3,713 Total for chats: 2,408 February: 693 390: emails 303: chats March: 573 315: emails 258: chats April: 612 353: emails 259: chats May: 492 314: emails 178: chats June: 512 295: emails 217: chats July: 460 281: emails 179: chats August: 411 272: emails 139: chats September: 596 382: emails 214: chats October: 787 495: emails 292: chats November: 586 389: emails 197: chats December: 399 227: emails 172: chats I think in terms of numbers and quality of service, this project stands as an excellent example of how librarians from a multitude of institutions can reach out to the public. The response, and support from the institutions and GPO, have been excellent. I will speak a bit more about the service implications of this kind of model tomorrow. Continue reading
International Perspective: Making Government More Transparent
The government consulting firm Accenture has released a report in which they analyze their research to help public service organizations around the world serve citizens better.
- Leadership in Customer Service Report: Creating Shared Responsibility for Better Outcomes. Accenture. 2009.
Video Games for Recruiting – Army Experience Center
CNN reports that the Army Experience Center located in the Franklin Mills Mall in Philadelphia is using video games to attract new recruits. It is a 14,500 square foot facility that has 60 computers which offers virtual reality games for the youth. This new marketing strategy has been employed to educate the general public about the careers available in the Army. Continue reading
New aggregator of open government technology blogs
Josh Tauberer, tireless freedom-fighter, has created a blog aggregator that combines many of the open government technology blogs: http://planetopen.occams.info/ There are RSS and Atom feeds. This is a convenient way to follow lots of open-government conversations! So far, he is aggregating these blogs:
* CDT (Open Government category) * Free Government Information (FGI) * GPO FDSYS * GovTrack.us * Joshua Tauberer * Just a Govy * LII Announce * LII b-screeds * Larry Lessig * Library of Congress (LC Web site category) * Open Congress * Open Secrets * Sunlight Foundation * The Open House Project * The Open Senate ProjectAlso, don't forget that FGI provides similar aggregations for the govdocs community. Just follow the In other news... link at the top of every FGI page. Continue reading
New Medicare Personal Health Record (PHR) Choice for Arizona & Utah
A recent article in Government Technology states that Medicare Personal Health Record (PHR) Choice Pilot has been released by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). This program has been introduced in Arizona and Utah. Using this tool, Medicare beneficiaries can select one of the PHR products provided by the companies participating in this program “to maintain their health record information electronically and Medicare will add claims data directly to the PHRs for this pilot.” Consumers can regularly check and manage information related to their personal health and health care services with the help of this tool. Continue reading