Archives for December, 2010
by Andrea Di Maio | December 28, 2010 | 8 Comments
As I did last year, I decided to share my personal top ten in the area of government 2.0 and the likes. Once more, I am following the tradition of many top tens, by going in reverse order, from number ten to number one. This ranking is my own, o course, and – as such [...]
Category: cloud e-government open government data Tags: digital divide, EU, government 2.0, GSA, OMB, social media
by Andrea Di Maio | December 23, 2010 | 1 Comment
Today there is still a lot of buzz on many social media and the press about the Skype downtime, presumably due to a software problem. Many users felt lost, often also in corporation that rely on Skype for communication with remote clients and employees. Earlier this year there have been cases of downtime for other [...]
Category: web 2.0 in government Tags: social media
by Andrea Di Maio | December 23, 2010 | 2 Comments
A few days ago I criticized the EU Action Plan on eGovernment, by stressing its limitations but also recognizing the difficulties of developing plans in areas where the EU has close to no regulatory power and can mostly leverage its political influence. A comment to my post highlighted that in looking at what happened in [...]
Category: e-government Tags: EU, local government
by Andrea Di Maio | December 22, 2010 | 6 Comments
The more I discuss with clients about cloud computing, the more I find that there is really little new. Not long ago I wrote about the interesting similarities between Open Source and Cloud adoption and dynamics in the public sector: when I read “cloud first” in a policy or strategy document, I cannot forget the [...]
Category: cloud Tags: GSA, open source, outsourcing
by Andrea Di Maio | December 21, 2010 | 2 Comments
I still remember the first time I met Bryan Sivak, the CTO of Washington DC. It was February, few days after the major snowstorm. He made time to meet although logistics were challenging, and even apologized for not wearing a tie, as the dressing code had clearly being altered by snow plowing. I had only [...]
Category: e-government Uncategorized Tags: digital divide
by Andrea Di Maio | December 21, 2010 | 4 Comments
After yesterday’s post about how the increasing complexity of technology may dwarf even the best attempts at bridging the digital divide, Alex Howard of O’Reilly Radar, who often acts as a very helpful watchdog for my posts, pointed me to the excellent District of Columbia Citywide Digital Divide Strategy that the Office of the CTO [...]
Category: e-government Tags: digital divide
by Andrea Di Maio | December 20, 2010 | 6 Comments
A while ago I wrote about the struggle that two members of my family had by owning iPhone 3G and suffering from upgrading to iOS 4.1.For my daughter, I downgraded the phone. For my wife I kept it on 4.1, then moved to 4.2, which made her iPhone almost impossible to use, as battery would [...]
Category: e-government Tags: digital divide, iPhone
by Andrea Di Maio | December 17, 2010 | 7 Comments
On December 15, in conjunction with the conference on Lift Off Open Government (see previous post), the European Commission issued its communication to to other European institutions (such as the Parliament and the Council) about the European eGovernment Action Plan 2011-2015. The subtitle of the communication is quite intriguing: Harnessing ICT to promote smart, sustainable [...]
Category: e-government Europe and IT Tags: European Commission, open government
by Andrea Di Maio | December 16, 2010 | 5 Comments
On December 15 and 16 the Belgian EU presidency and the European Commission are holding in Brussels a conference with an inspiring title: Lift-Off Toward Open Government. From what I can tell, this is as far as inspiration goes, because what I have seen so far through its program, opening speech and several tweets, does [...]
Category: e-government Europe and IT Tags: EU, government 2.0, open government
by Andrea Di Maio | December 15, 2010 | 2 Comments
As I have often being griping about government disservice to exemplify inadequate use of technology, I’d like to share a positive example, just for a change. I had to go to the closest Tax Agency branch for a boring administrative obligation. I took my ticket from a kiosk and started my presumably long wait before [...]
Category: e-government Tags: employee-centric