citizen engagement

See the following -

Contacting Lawmakers At The Click Of A Button

Joseph Marks | Nextgov | February 6, 2013

Writing to your legislator used to actually mean…well, writing to your legislator. Then it meant emailing. Now the state of Washington is taking things one step further by letting people write to their lawmakers by commenting directly on a piece of proposed legislation. Read More »

Data Challenge Spotlight: The Art Of Community Wellness

Alice Murphy | GovFresh | November 12, 2012

“Data Challenge Spotlight” is a collaboration with the National Conference on Citizenship and GovFresh that highlights winners of the 2012 Civic Data Challenge... Read More »

Demand Better: Making Government More Open And Accountable

John Kachuba and Elissa Yancey | Soapbox | August 27, 2013

When President Obama extolled the virtues of open data in government in a 2010 speech before the United Nations, he created opportunities for hackers, entrepreneurs and governments at all levels to embrace innovation through radical shifts in information exchange. [...] Read More »

Department of Health and Human Services Innovations Team Is Connecting with You!

Steven Randazzo | GovLoop | September 13, 2012

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Innovation Team is taking new steps to make it easier for people to connect and find information on our innovation activities. As an example, we have used Twitter to promote the first time public voting for selecting input on the HHSinnovates Program. Read More »

Do We Need Five-Star Open Development?

Claudia Schwegmann | OpenAid | September 17, 2012

According to Beth Noveck open data can probably not make government more transparent and accountable. Instead, she holds the value of open data is primarily in making use of the wisdom of crowds to solve complex problems in society. Read More »

Driving Better Governance With Open Source

Clarice Africa | OpenSource.com | July 1, 2013

"Ten years ago, open source—notably Linux—was often labelled a ‘fad’ or destined for the ‘hobbyist’ market,” said Mark Bohannon, Vice President for Corporate Affairs & Global Public Policy at Red Hat... Read More »

Enabling The Internet Of Things: Q&A With Libelium CEO Alicia Asin

Will Dalton | ITProPortal | September 2, 2013

As part of a busy September for ITProPortal, we'll be attending GigaOm's Structure:Europe cloud conference from the 18th to 19th. We caught up with one of the event's headline speakers ahead of the London show - Alicia Asin, CEO and Co-founder of Spain's Libelium. Read More »

From Ushahidi To Al Jazeera: The Role Of Mobile In Kenya’s Elections

Stuart Thomas | Memburn | March 4, 2013

The people of Kenya will today start voting in a presidential election. Things have been tense in the lead up to polling day and mobile will play a critical role in both the monitoring and reporting of the situation on the ground. Read More »

FrontlineSMS Bring A Free, Innovative Solution To African Broadcasters

Russell Southwood | AllAfrica | August 29, 2012

As TV and radio broadcast markets intensify across several liberalized African countries, broadcasters need to find solutions to create more interactive with their audiences and build loyalty among them. SMS is one of those. Read More »

FrontlineSMS-Radio used in edu-tainment initiative to engage Cambodian youth in civic responsibility

Emily Cholette | FrontlineSMS | December 21, 2012

I’ve been volunteering with the FrontlineSMS:Radio project and recently had the pleasure of speaking with Colin Spurway of BBC Media Action [...]. Colin is the Project Director of Loy9 (pronounced ‘Loy Pram-booun’), a multimedia initiative in Cambodia geared towards encouraging youth participation in civic life through the use of a television series, phone-in radio shows, online discussions and roadshows. Read More »

Grant Awarded To Project Lungisa – Cape Town SA

Louise Vickers | Indigo Trust | August 30, 2012

We are delighted to announce that we have awarded a grant of £12,000 to Cell Life towards project Lungisa.   Lungisa – which means “fix it” in isiXhosa – will provide a platform to enable Cape Town citizens to send text based, audio and video reports outlining challenges in service delivery. Read More »

HarassMap: Help Reach The Tipping Point

Kelli Merritz | Ushahidi | May 30, 2013

There is nothing more empowering than enacting the change that you wish to see; and along the way, battling the stereotypes and the social stigma that sexual harassment brings. This is what HarassMap continues to do, as Egypt’s first independent initiative to directly address sexual harassment... Read More »

Help Crowdfund This Open-Source Crowdsourced Environmental Monitoring Platform

Derek Markham | TreeHugger | June 5, 2013

By empowering communities to collect data from their local environment and contribute to an interactive, worldwide environmental database, the folks behind the Smart Citizen Kit are enabling a whole new level of participation from citizen scientists. Read More »

Hitting The Ground Running With The Digital Strategy

Steven VanRoekel | www.whitehouse.gov | June 21, 2012

Last month, the Obama Administration launched the Digital Government Strategy (PDF/ HTML5), a comprehensive roadmap aimed at building a 21st Century Digital Government that delivers better digital services to the American people. We’ve hit the ground running and are already hard at work driving the strategy forward. Read More »

How Andrew Krzmarzick Uses Open Source To Empower Citizens In Government

As the Community Manager of GovLoop—a highly active online community connecting more than 50,000 public sector professionals, including Federal CTO Todd Park—Andrew Krzmarzick suspects his role is pretty similar to leading an open source project. The open source way guides the company's decisions, communications, and interactions. And open source solutions enable them to empower citizens around the country (and the world!) who don't want to wait for their cities to make updates to a page or build apps and resources that makes their lives easier. Read More »