Yearly Archives 2009

A simple and potentially disruptive question from Andrea DiMaio on the Gartner blog: As governments embrace "bottom-up experimentation" online, is the traditional model of outside technology consulting viable? It's the next incarnation of the problem non-profits often have with vendors like Convio. To make it profitable to sell and implement new toolsets, business productize their tools and their approach, often to the point where clients must twist their process and staff to fit a tool's limitations, instead of consultants adapting tools and strategies to fit an organization's needs. But as institutions learn that successful citizen/customer outreach must be authentic and constituent-driven, streamlined tech projects based on cookie-cutter tools lose what little appeal they ever had. DiMaio writes: Government 2.0 is about spending less rather than more, it is about leveraging existing resources (employees, public data, consumer tools) rather than increasing them ... it is about listening rather than talking. So,…

Cell phone users didn't need Verizon to tell us that AT&T's wireless service isn't as good as Verizon's. AT&T reinforced it themselves when all their ads boasted improved coverage after the merger with Cingular. But seeing AT&T get all whiny about the Verizon "map" ads that overemphasize the disparity in 3G coverage, I get pretty disgusted. Some people are allowed to complain and some people aren't. Remember when white guys started kvetching (we probably didn't call it that) about getting squoze out because of "multi-culturalism?" Or when corporations started taking more and more advantage of their funny, useful, legal status as quasi-citizens? That just shouldn't be allowed. Fine, I know that legally some of it has to be allowed. But does anyone really want to hear AT&T whine about how Verizon isn't playing fair? Everyone should have thought of that before the FTC changed the rules about comparative advertising in…

There's an article by me in the latest newsletter from the Citizen Services office of the General Service Administration. The issue is devoted questions of citizen participation in governance. I had the chance to interview some personal heroes of participatory culture, including Eben Moglen, a crystalline communicator and evangelist for the end of information ownership; Brian Reich, a guru of change-means-change and not just cool tools; and Beth Noveck, author of Wiki Government and, more importantly, keeper of the Open Government initiative at the White House.

Close