How networks of public and private sensors can change how the public sector operates during routine or emergency operations.
It’s 1991, and some computer science professors are tired of walking into their computer lab of the University of Cambridge only to find an empty pot of coffee. Their solution: install a camera and connect it to the server so they could ascertain the status of the coffee pot from their desks. The rest is internet history. Keep reading →
Social media and a renewed emphasis on innovation and DIY – exemplified by the Maker Movement and the rise of intrapreneurs – is transforming how government agencies operate and how they interact with citizens. Within the past four years, the number of networked computers that can connect to public or private sensors and feed into or draw from massive databases has exploded, both in terms of absolute numbers and relative to the population.
The effect of these converging factors is that governments at every level are finding new ways to improve three critical tasks: Keep reading →
I ‘m in Seoul, South Korea, this week for a Global e-Government Forum. Seoul is 13 hours ahead of Washington, DC, so for more than half the day, it’s tomorrow. But that’s not the only way that Seoul is in the future. The smell of kimchi mixes with the omnipresent electronica of smartphone rings and tablet notifications.
The Samsung building is visible from my hotel room, and its logo appears on at a majority of devices I’ve seen in this city. I’ve learned that this country is home to nearly 50 million people and 30 million smartphones, about 10% higher than smartphone usage in the U.S. Keep reading →
Data is often compared to water: people talk about data purity, data flow, and of course, data leaks.
One of the ways that companies try to avoid data leaks is through keeping tight control over the pipelines through which data moves, but when most (or all) of an organization’s employees carry smartphones through which they access data, it’s like having a spigot in every pocket. Organizations then face a choice: limit the functionality of devices by restricting their access to data, install technological filters on the devices to minimize the chance of a leak, or trust their employees to safeguard their devices and the data that they either hold or can access, or some combination of the latter two.
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This is the second in a five-part series examining the issues that governments and organizations need to address in the absence of a BYOD policy, originally published by the IBM Center for the Business of Government. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, like us on Facebook.
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New college graduates entering the workforce this year may have gotten their first iPhone in high school and their first email address in middle school. While the class of 2007 used laptops for research in their dorm rooms, this year’s graduates could fact-check.
Surely, these new hires will have different expectations for the technology employers will provide and how it will be used. Keep reading →
What makes today’s young professionals different than previous generations?For the past decade at least, Americans have been subject to variations of “40 is the new 30.” A mantra that is supposed to allow older people to do the things that had previously been relegated to younger people, either because their bodies were more capable, or society looked at those activities as within the province of youth. Keep reading →
South by Southwest (SXSW, or just SX for initiates) is crowdsourcing their panel selection for 2013, and as in prior years, there is a host of Gov 2.0-related offerings. Of the 3,123 proposals this year, 82 have been tagged as “Government or Citizen Engagement.”
Those tagged include presentations on law, coding, public participation, open government/innovation, and news from the nexus of politics, technology, and social media. Keep reading →