HUD

For all the discussion about the economy in last night’s presidential debate and on the campaign trail, one key topic that the incumbent and his challenger have largely been silent about is what to do about the once-mighty engine of housing in America’s economy – and how it might get stoked once again.

As our AOL colleague Teke Wiggin, at AOL Real Estate, notes: Keep reading →


The Partnership for Public Service honored the nine winners of this year’s Samuel J. Heyman Service to America Medals at a Washington, D.C. gala Thursday evening.

This video features Susan Angell of the Department of Veterans Affairs and Mark Johnston of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, winners of the Citizen Services medal. Angell and Johnston worked together on an interdepartmental program that reduced veterans homelessness by 12 percent in one year. Keep reading →

FedStats.gov provides links to government data at http://www.fedstats.gov/qf/

Data.gov has been around for about three years now and is touted as the prime example of the Open Government Data Initiative based on its growth in number of data sets and communities using them. However, there have been two activities that have been around much longer, with more high-quality data sets, and a larger community, namely FedStats.gov and FedStats.net, which deserve continued attention in the government data community.

I was part of the FedStats Team that built FedStats.gov and led the FedStats.net Team. (You can read more about that team in a related story.) We received the Gore Hammer Award for that work to “Reinvent Government.” While Data.gov has helped focus attention on available government data, I see trying to reinvent that reinvention without the expertise that we had across the government at that time. The Data.gov Agency Points of Contact are not the same as the Federal Statistics Community. Keep reading →

The White House has unveiled a new government web site section designed to help accelerate the environmental review and permitting process for 14 high priority infrastructure projects.

The new Federal Infrastructure Projects Dashboard is also intended to bring greater public attention to the projects, and the promise of jobs associated with them, said Jeff Zients, deputy director for management and chief performance officer at the White House Office of Management and Budget in a blog post yesterday. Keep reading →