The General Services Administration has announced that it has signed agreements with Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo and blip.tv that make it possible for federal agencies to use new-media tools.
I hope this will allow the federal goverment to let the sunshine in!
The Bush administration viewed the Internet as a necessary evil, something that needed to be placated while the Obama adminstration sees the Internet as a key component to its success not only in getting out its message but interacting with citizens, providing accountability, building trust and delivering services.
To this end, I think this page of government blogs will seem antiquated pretty soon but its a start. Could the government start leading again on Internet innovation now that we have a President who sees the web as a critical and ever-expanding component of our daily lives?
The White House has just released its “Expanding E-Government” report and its very rosy and happy and focused on shared platforms, security and IT competency. Only one small section called, “Improve E-Gov Initiatives’ Performance Measures” explicitly mentions “Customer Satisfaction.”
I’m glad they are building a shared platform, improving security and IT competency but they could do a lot more to improve the useability of the Federal Government websites and I’d like the next initiative to focus on: consistency of Federal Government websites’ look and feel, findability, transparency, and taking a page out of the great Seattle municipal website, teachability; how well do they inform the user about how to utilize the government services in their own lives as they navigate through the website.
Hat tip to docuticker.com
Oops!
According this class action lawsuit filed in Illinois Federal court, Pay.gov violated FACTA which requires that vendors not print the last four digits of the purchaser’s credit card.
Complaint courtesy Courthousenews
Happy New Year! (Probably won’t post again until the 2nd.)
Reading Tea Leaves by Randy Wilson 