In my last blog about the President’s Executive Order on Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service, I focused on various aspects of OMB’s implementing guidance. In this post, I’ll discuss a few examples of how to make customer service relevant to the mission – keeping a keen eye on customer service outcomes that provide value, not simply a better connection with government. Navigating the efficiency/effectiveness maze is key to [...]
As the firestorm over the future of Open Government raged across Twitter and blogs last week following Vivek Kundra’s departure announcement, there were federal employees quietly scheduling meetings, chatting in the hallways or just simply asking questions about how Open Government can help them. Most of these employees don’t have public voices. They’re not loud. Most don’t have Twitter handles and don’t want to friend us on Facebook. But they see the real value in many of the basic principles and want to make government work better.
Over the past few weeks I had the pleasure of serving as a global judge for the MIT Global Challenge which ended in an exciting awards ceremony Monday in Cambridge, Mass. The Challenge is designed to connect students” with the passion and talent to improve the world with the experience and resources of the MIT community worldwide.” MIT views innovation and entrepreneurship as public service through this annual competition that [...]
Though it’s being overshadowed by the budget discussions this week, it’s important to note (and celebrate!) that today (April 7th) is the one year anniversary of Agency Open Government Plans. Just one year ago, almost 30 plans were released from cabinet-level and independent Agencies that detailed how they would become more: • Transparent in their work; • Participatory in seeking the ideas and expertise of citizens; and • Collaborative in [...]
The Phase One team has had another productive year helping the Forest Service streamline and automate their processes surrounding the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). We’ve helped our clients leverage data that is entered to comply with legal mandates into useful information for their public websites; we have given them tools to make their procedures more open and transparent by streamlining and automating the process to get NEPA information out [...]
Prizes and competitions provide one way to stimulate innovation and tap “solver communities” that may not have been leveraged previously when considering some of our nation’s grand challenges. As I wrote this past summer, both on my featured jennovation series on Govloop and the Phase One Consulting Group Transformation in the Federal Sector Blog, there have historically been several hurdles to Federal agencies conducting prizes and competitions, including explicit authorization [...]
These past two weeks have been a whirlwind of travel and conferences. I’ve enjoyed several typical byproducts of those types of events (networking, learning, etc…) but also a few things that are much rarer: inspiration and re-energized passion. This is largely thanks to my most recent stop: NASA’s Education Innovation Summit, held in Orlando, FL from October 30-November 1. This event focused on how partnerships and student inspiration can act [...]
This installment of my featured jennovation series on Govloop and the Phase One Consulting Group (POCG) Transformation in the Federal Sector Blog, was inspired by the recent Open Government Community Summit held at NASA on October 13, 2010 and many recent blog postings discussing variations on the death, sophomore slump and/or decline of Gov 2.0 and Open Gov (including “Sophomore slump for Open Government?”, comment thread of “What Gov 2.0 [...]
It’s been over a month since my last posting on my featured jennovation series on Govloop and the Phase One Consulting Group (POCG) Transformation in the Federal Sector Blog, but for good reason. It’s been a busy Fall season on many fronts: POCG’s Growing Open Gov and Innovation Team: POCG has recently hired two rock stars to join our Open Government and innovation practice: Justin Herman (@JustinHerman) and Dmitry Kachaev [...]
