Social Government

Dear Social Government Fan,

After a long hiatus so I could focus on my journalism career, today marks the return of Social Government.

You can continue to expect great stories on how Web 2.0 and social media are used in government at both the federal and state/local level. How-to posts like our killer Twitter in government agencies guide will also continue to be regular features.

But when I was rethinking this blog over the summer, I didn’t have to think hard about one thing we could do differently.

I hope this blog becomes an established part of the D.C. community — something I mostly failed to take advantage of in the spring. I hope to attend events like NASA’s Sept. 24 STS-127 Tweetup. I want to meet my readers — government Web managers, developers, community managers and civilian social media fans. I’d love to do in-person interviews and get to know all of you.

But I don’t want to ignore people outside the Beltway, too — the folks involved in state and local governments. Going stateside will return! Please give me some ideas on what I should cover.

Of course, this blog doesn’t work without your participation. Please leave comments on our posts, tweet us or just e-mail me.

Call me crazy, but I encourage you to put me on your agency’s press release distribution list. Oftentimes an interesting project you’re working on will get my attention!

A word about post frequency: I’ll be posting a few times a week — and will focus on quality rather than quantity. If you’re interesting in writing for the blog, drop me a line!

So that’s it for now. I’ll be back with another post later in the day. For now, thanks for reading this and thanks for joining me for the ride … again.

Best,

/s/

Ethan Klapper

Here’s an update on what’s going on right now and what’s going to happen with this blog.

Basically, I decided to take the summer off to focus on my personal career aspirations as a journalist. I work as an intern reporter for a mid-sized Gannett newspaper in New York. I’ve been having a blast, but the job requires me to work hard and I realized that I would not have the kind of time I need to run this blog over the summer.

That’s why I took off. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven’t noticed, we’ve been sort of quiet here lately.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be looking at Social Government from the ground up and will decide the best way forward.

Rest assured, we’re not gone.

Thanks for your understanding!

Ethan

For an administration that prides itself on its superior use of technology, the Obama White House Web site notably lacks one important feature that the Bush White House Web site had: regularly scheduled online chats with administration officials, also known as “Ask the White House.”

Started in April 2003, the online chats featured everyone from “Turkey Guy” JD Estes to the former president himself. They were held multiple times a month, and sometimes even three or more times in a single week. Read the rest of this entry »

After a long week of finals, I’m pleased to say that the blog is back in business.

Seems like we chose the wrong week to take off, since government got a lot more social since the last post here:

• The White House started tweeting!
• The White House, along with about 30 federal agencies (according to Time) also joined Facebook!
• The U.S. Senate now has XML vote data!
• The New York State Senate unveiled a new Web site today, which also includes open data!

Whoa… that’s a lot. In the coming days, we’ll be analyzing all this and more. Stay tuned!

Although there might still be a “coming soon” box on the much-anticipated data.gov Web site, that isn’t stopping Google from getting a head start on developing new capabilities that will allow users to easily search and compare vast amounts of numbers and statistics in the public domain. Yesterday, the Internet giant announced that it will begin this endeavor with unemployment and population data provided by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau’s Population Division. Read the rest of this entry »

Once again, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s social media use impresses us.

As the agency plays a key role in the latest public health issue, the Swine Flue outbreak, one can find updated information from the Atlanta-based agency on Twitter, at @CDCemergency. For hashtags, #swine and #swineflu have yielded lots of information. Read the rest of this entry »

The Utah government recently released the first government-produced iPhone application (iTunes link). The application is designed to be a repository of information useful for the citizens of Utah. It is searchable and browsable- but requires an Internet connection, as it provides links to Utah state websites instead of local information. The application also provides some featured news, though it is unclear how those stories are selected. Read the rest of this entry »