“To help and defend”

New Orleans citizens didn’t need any confirmation of their fear that rogue behavior was metastasizing throughout the NOPD when the Department of Justice announced investigations into civil rights violations, including a conspiracy to cover up police shootings of unarmed citizens on the Danziger Bridge in the days after Hurricane Katrina.
The public already feared the… »

Seattle open data policy will improve public access to city information

Seattle is the next city to follow in the footsteps of open data reforms implemented by San Francisco, New York City, the District of Columbia, and other cities. Data.Seattle.gov is planned as a Web site that will publish city data sets to be downloaded by citizens, or used by citizen programmers to build Web-based applications… »

TechStat: A new way to manage IT projects

President Obama’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra has initiated a new accountability process to reduce waste and manage the success of federal IT projects.
TechStat accountability sessions will inform management decisions with a “data-driven, action-focused and results-oriented” process, evaluating federal IT projects across an array of project metrics to satisfy President Obama’s priorities:

Manage IT investments effectively.
Leverage… »

An engine for increasing the velocity of democracy

It’s an accepted truth that a healthy democracy requires citizens who participate in the civic life of their communities, and who engage with government institutions. But while civic participation is vital for a healthy democracy, it’s an inadequate prescription.
Government institutions also have to effectively engage and respond to citizen concerns, and by extension, government institutions… »

President Obama: A “presumption of openness”

What does President Obama think about government transparency?
The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration form the cornerstone of an open government. Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies… »

President Obama uses the new IT dashboard

An image posted on White House CTO Vivek Kundra’s blog shows his boss using the new IT spending… »

IT dashboard halts 45 wasteful Veteran’s Affairs projects

The Department of Veteran’s affairs halted 45 IT projects totaling $200 million in fiscal year 2009 alone, the nation’s Chief Information Officer Vivek Kundra announced on his blog today.
Kundra wrote that one of the projects was 110% over budget and 17 months behind schedule.
The VA will audit the projects in the coming weeks to… »

Shelley Midura bows out of the Council District A race

Council Member Shelley Midura has been a great public servant.
While not parting words, in her announcement that she would not seek re-election, she provided some profound insight into the entrenched problems of City Hall (emphasis added):
What troubles me most about New Orleans is the democracy gap between the priorities of the people and the… »

$70 billion in federal IT spending at a glance

President Obama’s CIO, Vivek Kundra, unveiled a new IT contracting dashboard yesterday at the Personal Democracy Forum conference in New York City.
Project managers and the public alike can now see an instant assessment of how well, or how poorly, $70 billion in federal IT investments are being managed.
The Federal IT Dashboard is an… »

“The goal is to give all Americans a voice in their government and ensure that they know exactly how we’re spending their money – and can hold us accountable for the results”

Obama names Chopra, Zients to top posts
New Mexico Business Daily
President Barack Obama named two men who have been executives at Washington-area businesses to lead efforts to improve the government’s use of technology and the performance of federal employees.
In his weekly Saturday morning radio address, Obama said he appointed Aneesh Chopra, Virginia’s secretary of technology and… »